I have obviously been ignoring my “views of China” and such by not posting any photo albums lately, lets blame lack of hours of day light on that.  That’s right, I have been continuing to take pictures, just not categorizing them, converting them to JPG format and then uploading them.  Fear not, for that is going to get caught up to date!  My taxes are now filed, all of them, and the wife and I have planed a special trip to as close to Tibet as you can get without actually going (the Chinese government just lifted travel restrictions to foreigners there a couple of weeks past as our trip is booked so we can change).  The trip is to YuNan which borders the province Lhasa is in(Tibet), similar altitudes and climates, no special visa required.  Due to this I wanted to reduce my back logged work and will be adding 4 new albums.

We spend a weekend in Su Zhou at the beginning of the month, it is a smaller town just outside of Shanghai that has a HUGE industrial park, about the size of my high school town in acres, and an interesting history.  I will be adding 2 albums from this trip due to the volume of pictures I have to share.  One is just from the Humble Administrator’s Garden, one of only a handful of 5-star attractions in China – the Great Wall is in this exclusive list as well.  The other is from around Su Zhou city and parks, small museums, and the city museum designed by local son I. M. Pei, the world renowned architect who designed the Louvre Pyramids, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Raffles City Singapore, Bank of China Tower Hong Kong, among many others.

This past weekend was a busy one for me photographically.  The 13th Annual Shanghai Auto Show will conclude this week and I got a chance to attend.  I braved the crowds so you don’t have to.  I got some pictures of world debut autos and concepts as well as uniquely Shanghai approaches to the Auto Show (I missed the Italian exhibit which packed up and left before I got there).  Yes, there were models showing off new cars and they seemed to be getting the lion’s share of the attention instead of the world introduction of new BMW’s, Volkswagens, and electric and hybrid cars, who know scantly clad women has such draw?

Finally I have pictures from a day trip to a close by nature park with a twist.  Dong Fan Shi Zhou is a huge nature park that offers anything you could dream of for a day trip, physically challenging activities from confidence courses and outdoor rock climbing to sailing to nature trails and to China’s first and currently only air craft carrier (its a static display and China will launch a real CVN in the next year or so, so this may just well show us what to expect).  All in all there are plenty of pictures for everyone to find something they like.  We went picking strawberries after that, but I didn’t snap any fun filled pictures of strawberries, sorry.

From Times Online: April 24, 2009
North Korea is fully fledged nuclear power, experts agree
The world’s intelligence agencies and defence experts are quietly acknowledging that North Korea has become a fully fledged nuclear power with the capacity to wipe out entire cities in Japan and South Korea. The new reality has emerged in off-hand remarks and in single sentences buried in lengthy reports. Increasing numbers of authoritative experts — from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the US Defence Secretary — are admitting that North Korea has miniaturised nuclear warheads to the extent that they can be launched on medium-range missiles, according to intelligence briefings.

 

The successful work enabling the nuclear devices to be mounted on weapons happened towards the end of last year, according to Daniel Pinkston, of the International Crisis Group think-tank. He says that he has been shown detailed intelligence assessments of the new nuclear capability by a foreign government. Last December, the US Forces Joint Command published an annual report which, for the first time, listed North Korea, alongside China, India, Pakistan and Russia, as one of Asia’s nuclear powers. The US Government insisted that this did not reflect its official policy — but then James Schlesinger, a former US Defence Secretary, delivered a report by a Pentagon task force saying the same thing. “North Korea, India and Pakistan have acquired both nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems,” he said. In January Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, published an article in Foreign Affairs in which he referred to the “arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east”.

 

The danger lies with shorter-range weapons, some of which are difficult to detect. They include variants of the Scud, which could strike South Korea, and the Nodong, which could reach much of Japan. Pyongyang also has a short range weapon called the Toksa, which is highly accurate up to 75 miles. The Musudan, which can be transported by road, could reach US bases on the Pacific island of Guam.

Chicago Tribune Headline: Obama legal team wants to limit defendants' rights

Supreme Court case is stark example of the White House seeking to limit rights.

 

From The Associated Press 4:08 PM CDT, April 23, 2009

 

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule long-standing law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights.  The administration's action -- and several others -- have disappointed civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, after the Democrat's call for change during the 2008 campaign.

 

Since taking office, Obama has drawn criticism for backing the continued imprisonment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan without trial, invoking the "state secrets" privilege to avoid releasing information in lawsuits and limiting the rights of prisoners to test genetic evidence used to convict them.  The case at issue is Michigan v. Jackson, in which the Supreme Court said in 1986 that police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one, unless the attorney is present. The decision applies even to defendants who agree to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.  Anything police learn through such questioning cannot be used against the defendant at trial. The opinion was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the only current justice who was on the court at the time.

 

The justices could decide as early as Friday whether they want to hear arguments on the issue as they wrestle with an ongoing case from Louisiana that involves police questioning of an indigent defendant that led to a murder confession and a death sentence.  The Justice Department, in a brief signed by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, said the 1986 decision "serves no real purpose" and offers only "meager benefits." The government said defendants who don't wish to talk to police don't have to and that officers must respect that decision. But it said there is no reason a defendant who wants to should not be able to respond to officers' questions.

 

At the same time, the administration acknowledges that the decision "only occasionally prevents federal prosecutors from obtaining appropriate convictions."

The administration's legal move is a reminder that Obama, who has moved from campaigning to governing, now speaks for federal prosecutors.  The administration's position assumes a level playing field, with equally savvy police and criminal suspects, lawyers on the other side of the case said. But the protection offered by the court in Stevens' 1986 opinion is especially important for vulnerable defendants, including the mentally and developmentally disabled, addicts, juveniles and the poor, the lawyers said.  "Your right to assistance of counsel can be undermined if somebody on the other side who is much more sophisticated than you are comes and talks to you and asks for information," said Sidney Rosdeitcher, a New York lawyer who advises the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

 

Stephen B. Bright, a lawyer who works with poor defendants at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, said the administration's position "is disappointing, no question."  Bright said that poor defendants' constitutional right to a lawyer, spelled out by the high court in 1965, has been neglected in recent years. "I would hope that this administration would be doing things to shore up the right to counsel for poor people accused of crimes," said Bright, whose group joined with the Brennan Center and other rights organizations in a court filing opposing the administration's position. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and former FBI Director William Sessions are among 19 one-time judges and prosecutors urging the court to leave the decision in place because it has been incorporated into routine police practice and establishes a rule on interrogations that is easy to follow. Eleven states also are echoing the administration's call to overrule the 1986 case.

 

Justice Samuel Alito first raised the prospect of overruling the decision at arguments in January over the rights of Jesse Montejo, the Louisiana death row inmate.

Montejo's lawyer, Donald Verrilli, urged the court not to do it. Since then, Verrilli has joined the Justice Department, but played no role in the department's brief. Copyright Chicago Tribune.

Remember the huge hole in the ozone layer thing that was going to kill us all in the 1980's?  You know, the one that led to the ban of CFC's, propellants in air horns, hair spray, air conditioners, some plastics manufacturing, etc.  Well, just like that famous 1980's horror movie line form Poltergeist, "Their baaaaack"!  That's right, the good old ozone, the part of our atmosphere that protects us from harmful UV radiation from the Sun and space and keeps us from getting skin cancer, go blind, and fry all the vegetation on the surface.  Below is a NEW article stating the ozone is getting better, much better in some places, not so hot in others, please read below for details and then we can discuss the article and its impact on our global warming, I mean climate change, thing.

Ozone Layer Faces Bumpy Return to Health
Emily Sohn, Discovery News
April 23, 2009

The Earth's ailing ozone layer will probably recover, but it will never look exactly like it used to.  That is the conclusion of a new study, which found that greenhouse gasses are interfering with ozone's rebound in complicated ways.  The study predicts a patchy future for the ozone layer, with some sections becoming even thicker than they were before bans on ozone-damaging chemicals kicked in.  Other sections, meanwhile, may remain sparse.

"This shows that greenhouse gas increases could have some surprising effects on ozone," said Feng Li, an atmosheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The ozone layer lies in the stratosphere, the region of the atmosphere that stretches from about 10 miles to 30 miles above the planet's surface.  Up there, ozone gas plays an important, even life-saving role.  By absorbing most of the sun's ultraviolet rays, stratospheric ozone protects people from skin cancer and guards plants, animals, and ecosystems forms from the blistering effects of UV radiation.

Lower down, ozone has a worse reputation -- as a major component of smog.

Stratospheric ozone was hard hit by emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related chemicals, which used to be found in aerosol cans, refrigerants, aircraft, and other places.  Then, in the late 1980s, as part of the international Montreal Protocol, many governments banned these chemicals.  Those bans, said Darryn Waugh, an atmospheric scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, seem to have made a big difference: Chlorine, one component of CFCs, has peaked in the upper atmosphere, and scientists expect it to drop back to 1970s levels by 2060.  But will the decline in chlorine and other ozone-damaging substances lead directly to the revival of ozone? That's something researchers have been trying to figure out.

Scientists know that the accumulation of greenhouse gasses, including carbon dioxide, actually makes the stratosphere colder, even as it traps heats lower down.  That's a good thing for the ozone layer, because the reactions that break down ozone happen more slowly in colder conditions.  But the increase in greenhouse gasses also speeds up the circulation of ozone through the atmosphere. Normally, ozone forms in the tropics, where it rises to the upper stratosphere and then moves toward the poles.  Li wanted to know what a quickening of this process would do to the ozone layer.  With a computer model that looked at how climate change might affect ozone recovery over the next century, his team found that faster circulation through the stratosphere is depositing lots of ozone in mid- and high-latitude regions -- so much so that these areas are "super-recovering" to levels higher than in the pre-CFC era.

Faster circulation, however, is also bringing more ozone-poor air from the lower atmosphere into the stratosphere above the tropics. "This speeding up prevents the full recovery of tropical ozone," Li said. The study appeared in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The findings may have policy implications, Waugh told Discovery News.  "If all that mattered was the amount of chlorine in the atmosphere, and chlorine is expected to go back to what it was in 1970, then you would expect ozone to go back to what it was in 1970," he said. "Now they're saying there are other things that are going to be impacting ozone."  In that way, he added, the ozone layer's healing process resembles a person's recovery from serious disease. "If it takes you 30 years to recover from something, you're not going to recover to how you were when you were 20," Waugh said.         -- copyright on above belongs to Discovery News.

So our efforts have not only stopped the spread of the gaping hole in the ozone, we have grown NEW ozone thicker then it was when I was born in 1970, the era of hair spray and modernizing the us by putting AC everywhere.  Now there is no doubt that our pollutants released since the 1800's industrial revolution have had impact on the environment, but it seems our efforts can do more in 20 years then in 200!  Granted the hole is still there, but the ozone getting thicker then it was 20 years ago after 200 years of pollution then it seriously makes one think what is going on here.  Only fully indoctrinated leftist eco-warriors will look past the science of this report and only to the hypothesis that questionably support for their cause.  The truth is we have no definitive answer on our ability to impact the global environment of our planet.  2/3 of the globe is ocean, of the land mass the vast majority is NOT inhabited, deserts, mountains, high plains, rain forests, etc.  So here were are, still believing we are such a powerful and overwhelming species as to impact our massive environment one way or the other is still not fully understood enough to know what is natural and what is man influenced. 

Now trash in the ocean is one thing, so is pharmaceuticals in our rivers and lakes, the state of our spheres, ice caps, etc. is just speculation.  All this is hypothesis based off of incomplete mathematic computations, incomplete data, and insufficient length of observation and computer models based off of the above data.  You know, you can engineer a computer model to give you the answers you are expecting, subliminally of course.  The jury is still out on this, in the mean time, cutting back on emitting bad things is a good course of action, but we should be moderate, not radical.  By going into the sheer lunacy that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, and lefty idiots insist we do will only economically hamstring us, sell out our prosperity and economic status, and provide a windfall of opportunity to emerging markets that will take more US based jobs, influence, and global ability to be the masters of our own destiny.  

Moderation my friends, moderation.  Let’s cut back but not to a degree manufacturing goes overseas, energy costs for average Americans electricity goes up 30%, gas prices go up 20%, China, India, and South East Asia now steer the global economy, policy, and direction.  Our policies need to maintain our world influence, not undercut it.  Lets cut back at sustainable levels until the science Obama so proudly touts can give us a clearer picture and not use faith in Obama as he states is ignorant and backwards thinking.  If we are to say yes to science and no to faith then let’s do it all the way in all instances, lets be consistent in our approaches, not pick and choose as it fits our needs.

One note, some of the songs are in Quick Time format, so you may need appropriate software to download those paticular songs.

Report: US is ripe for recruiting by extremists

By EILEEN SULLIVAN – 14 April 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security officials are warning that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit members to their cause.

In an intelligence assessment issued to law enforcement last week, Homeland Security officials said there was no specific information about an attack in the works by right-wing extremists.

The agency warns that an extended economic downturn with real estate foreclosures, unemployment and an inability to obtain credit could foster an environment for extremists to recruit members who may not have been supportive of these causes in the past.

Homeland Security spokesman Sean Smith said the report is one in a series of assessments issued by the agency's intelligence and analysis unit. The agency describes these assessments as part of a series published "to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States."

In February, the department issued a report to law enforcement that said left-wing extremist groups were likely to use cyber attacks more often in the next 10 years to further their cause. And in September, the agency issued a report that highlighted how right-wing extremists over the past five years have used the immigration debate as a recruiting tool.

And so it begins...  Our new Socialist People's Republic of America, lead by Marxists Pelosi, Ried, Frank, and out teleprompter and blunder in chief Obama have put together such a team that is galvanizing power and using their slobbering love affair in the US main steam media to push the country into a new Cuba or old China.  Many of you may believe I have fallen off the deep end, drank too much kool-aid, or become so narrow minded and jaded that my views have narrowed to tunnel like fashion seeing only what I want to see.  I really wish this were the case.  I really wish this were so.  I really wish I have become disillusioned and hardened so much that I was seeing things that were not there, the sad truth is that it is not the case.  Our liberties, values, and freedoms are under attack now more then they were in the 1700's.

This Department of Homeland Security Report is 8 pages of paranoid, disorganized, and fear mongering drivel I have ever seen come out of our federal government (excluding cover and back page).  On the week before massive conservative rallies to voice dissatisfaction and dissent in our leader's passage of massive spending, taxation, and expansion of government that would make Stalin, Mao, and Castro proud.  The conservative movement is becoming mobilized and doing so successfully.  The conservatives may now finally shed the yoke of the GOP and reshape or form a new party that is more accessible, tolerant of different views but similar ideals, and modernized.  But in the light of our movement's reshaping we see the government becoming increasingly paranoid and initiating measures we have seen in previous countries slip into turmoil.  Janet Napolitano seems to be laying out battle plans to offset the rising tide of conservative concerns the freedoms, securities, and rights we have enjoyed since 1776 are being eroded, sold, and buried under expanding government and tax burdens.

What is scary is that of all the left wing's noise and left slanted media coverage of the Patriot Act, warrantless wire taps, and excessive executive powers there is slightly a peep of noise over the potential restriction of freedoms suggested of this document. Why?  The left only is concerned when 'their' freedoms are questioned, they seem to forget most of us conservatives were worried by these issues as well and voiced our opposition but they care not return the favor.  Only the Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson states the report "... is beyond sloppy. It irresponsibly conflates murderous hate-crime-committing white supremacists and homegrown terrorists like Timothy McVeigh with run of the mill right-wingers who, God love ‘em, have every right to vehemently oppose the federal government, abortion, and immigration." is the only voice of concern from the left since the April 7th publication of the report and its immediate release by conservative media outlets, 8 days of little to no coverage, why, because the left only cares about their rights, not the rights of Americans. Seems the ACLU should change their name to the DCLU.

American Legion's national commander David K. Rehbein, an Army veteran, so outraged that he had to send an open letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano explaining the obvious errors and dangers of using such a broad brush to paint a picture of 'right wing extremists' and suggest law enforcement needing to keep an eye on all right-wing minded individuals for possibility of domestic terrorist actions.  As a conservative minded US Navy vet who owns and loves guns, believes in God, and holds strong Libertarian views I feel as though I am now an enemy of the state.  The rights of assembly, politically opposition speech, and demands for access to their leaders and to let them know they represent more then just the left wing agenda of their party's affiliation seem to all be enemies of the state as well.  Meanwhile the knights and warriors of free speech and demonstrations are curiously absent and silent over these reports.  All the media can muster is to point out that the DHS had released a left wing extremist paper in January, that report only outlines the far left wings intent to use computers and computer systems to attack, or use environmental terrorism to mark their goals, all with the minimal of violence.  That paper does not stoke the fires of worry and fear that this one does.  It seems we were never invited to this free speech party, and are not welcome to use its themes and messages.

If you want to wage war there are a few things you have to accomplish before any actions begin.  Define, demonize, and marginalize the enemy is one of them.  Establish a propaganda campaign to achieve the messages needed to muster and keep support.  According to DHS "Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."  So right wing extremists are in 2 camps, hate groups (right to life, defending religious inclusion in our society and lives, and anti illegal immigration groups) and antigovernment (concerned increasing sizes of government, increasing aid programs, increasing federal taxes and deficit spending).  How is it that the obviously broken system of immigration control in our country and voicing concerns on it and fleshing out their views in public debate is now a right wing extremist lumped in with skinheads and the KKK?  I and my fellow conservative minded Americans are NOT anti-government, we aganist the ideals and principles of: taxation without representation, ram-rodding extreme liberal agenda legislation without public debate and review, our government representatives ignoring and marginalizing 50% of the country with a first grader's attitude of 'nanny nanny boo boo your side lost so there, deal with it', the total whoring out of our security and future to the Chinese and others just so we can pass measuers, budgets, and plans that have been brewing for 40 years in the rotten minds of people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Ron Frank, and mostly we are concerned the MOST over an irresposible use of and abuse of power demonstrated in our government since November.  No we are not anti-government, we want the government to work and to reflect on the ideals and values of the Constitution that guides it, not seeing the government try to reshape the Constitution into a bastardized rellic by plunging the country into Socialism.

The report states that the economy will help extremists recruit vets who are returning and not able to find satisfaction upon return to the country.  Maybe if we didn’t try to spend our way out of debt, signal they want to get rid of guns, and vilify the military the left would not have to worry about vets.  Maybe if the left were not trying to pass 40 years of legislation and socialization in 2 years then they would not have to worry about antigovernment sentiment.  And as for lack of federal government control, that is what this country was founded on, and our states are sovereign, that is why they all have their own constitutions and we have state's rights in our constitution.  As for immigration, we all know we need to do more, and more quickly.  We need to open debate on this, and all issues for that matter, because the government is about finding a way forward through debate, not being dictated to by an intellectual elite isolated in Washington and feeling the masses are too ignorant and disinterested to have a voice in this government.  This document only helps to paint and increasingly bleak picture of where the country is sliding into, socialism here we come!  After 3 years in China I am getting pretty good at living in a totalitarian country.  All hail Obama.  Pelosi 2016!

Originally Aired October 27th, 1964 in Los Angeles California at the Republican National Convention, speaking Ronald Reagan to delegates.

Thank you.  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 Fulbright 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% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% 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.

photos, video, and speech text taken from public domain sources, American Rhetoric website has copyright on their content

Choose a state...

From WillCollier.com evidence that real ideas and items that can work are emerging.

"If the Tea Party movement is going to amount to anything more than people who wouldn't normally go to a protest protesting, it's going to have to come up with a consistent set of concrete (and realistic) goals, and clearly express those goals to the press and to the rest of the public.
Some suggestions:"

1. A moratorium on bailouts, whether for Wall Street bankers, General Motors, or the irresponsible guy down the street who "bought" too much house. "Failures must be allowed to fail."
2. Repeal of all "Stimulus" spending for the years 2011 and beyond. 
3. Repeal of all "Stimulus" pet projects in 2009-2010 with no stimulative effect.
4. Defeat of the Obama 2010 budget, with a new budget set at 2008 levels plus inflation. We've already spent too much money that we don't have.
5. Defeat of any politician who voted for the February "Stimulus" bill.
6. Complete selloff and shutdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and an immediate ban on campaign contributions from both, as well as any other firm in Federal receivership.

What is this Tea Party effort all about?

The Tea Party effort is just a small piece of a much larger movement aimed at restoring the basic free-market principles our country was built on. The Constitution, for the most part, is being ignored by our current government and we intend on working together to correct the problem.

The Tea Party effort is a grassroots, collaborative volunteer organization made up of every day American citizens from across the country. We take pride in the fact that we've built a 50 state network of leaders and activists using nothing more than the internet, a few websites and a burning desire to restore freedom.

Tea Party Movement Links

• New American Tea Party
• ReTeaParty
• Tea Party Revolution
• Free Pocket Constitution
• Tea Party Day
• Tax Day Tea Party