Monthly Archives: June 2012

I Pledge Allegiance – to the Maple Leaf?

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Saskatchewan RoughridersMy son and I are big CFL (Canadian Football League) fans.  We make the long drive from our Montana home to Regina, SK for a game every summer, and listen to our beloved Roughriders on the web.

The Rider fans are amazing – they paint the town green for every home game.  They yell and scream and guzzle Molson Canadian beer, and wear watermelons on their heads.  It’s about as fun a football atmosphere as you could want (well, except for the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium).  And the Canadian rules make for a fast and furious game of football (“He’s at the fifty!  the fifty-five!  and down at the 53-yard line!”)

But that’s not what this blog is aboot (Canadian for “about”), eh?

Whenever we attend a Canadian football game, or listen on the internet, I can’t help but notice that they always play O Canada, the Canadian national anthem, but then never play the Star Spangled Banner.   Never.  The same is true at a Canadian hockey game, baseball game, or any other public event.  They never recognize the US.

By rule, 19 of the 42 players on any CFL team are from the United States.  Obviously, there are not that many good Canadian native football players.  The best players are all from the US, as are the coaches.  Canadians love their football, but it is an American game.  Still, there is never any recognition of the United States at any CFL game.  No flag.  No national anthem. Nothing.  It’s all about Canada.

Now, I don’t have a problem with this.  Really.  It’s their country, it’s their league, they are very patriotic about it, and more power to them.  The Canadian fans welcome my son and I as a curiosity, and frankly as “football experts from the States, eh?”  Our celebrity status is very cool, just like that great Canadian beer.

What I don’t understand is this:  last weekend my band played music for three nights at the fantastic rodeo weekend in Augusta, MT, and we enjoyed watching the rodeo on Sunday.  In addition to the athletic prowess and the terrific Western atmosphere, there was a lot of pageantry and patriotism.  As far as I know, there were no Canadian participants in the event.  There may have been a couple of Canadian spectators.  Still, the rodeo officials made a big deal of riding the Canadian maple leaf flag around the arena, and playing O Canada before our national anthem.

Why?

Even stranger than that, about HALF of the spectators stood there with hands over their hearts for the Canadian anthem!  Like they were pledging allegiance to Canada!

Why?

Here in Lewistown we have local drag races on summer weekends.  What a great American event!  Vintage American Chevies and Fords,  classic Beach Boys music – it just doesn’t get better.  So why the heck do we have to listen to O Canada before our own precious Star Spangled Banner?  I mean, I like Bachman Turner Overdrive as well as the next guy, but hey!  This is American Drag Racing!

I don’t think the Canucks need to pay homage to the US at their events.  But I also don’t think “O Canada” is required at ours.

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On the Right Side

American Woman, Stay Away from Me! – the Guess Who

The Rattle of Jerking Knees

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Hear that noise?  It’s the sound of knees jerking all over the place from the news that the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

I have to admit, I was puzzled too when Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts sided with the transparently liberal judges on this one.  I kept thinking, “there has to be more to this than meets the eye.”  The reaction by many conservative pundits was to lament that Roberts caved in to the evil liberals, for any number of purported reasons.  My knee started to twitch, but failed to fully jerk.

First of all, we want our judges and justices to be apolitical, so don’t go there.  Second, there has never been any indication that Justice Roberts is wishy-washy on the Constitution.  And third, back in 2009 when President Obama was vehemently denying that his “mandate” penalty was not a tax, I was thinking, “Of course it’s a tax.  When you have to pay money to the IRS, for whatever purpose, it sure smells like a tax to me.”

Now that the smoke has cleared the battlefield, we can assess the extent of the damage.  Or of victory.  And I am leaning in the direction of the latter.  By ruling that the ObamaCare mandate is a tax, Chief Justice Roberts took the whole “Commerce Clause” justification off the table.  I was seriously concerned that a constitutional victory for the mandate could open the Pandora’s Box, allowing the government the tool to force citizens into anything.   This would have set a dangerous precedent in Constitutional interpretation, but Roberts threw an extra padlock on the box.

Uncle SamThe proponents of the Act act one time publicly insisted that the mandate is not a tax.  Then the solicitor general insisted to the Supreme Court that it is, in fact, a tax.  No one can know exactly what Roberts’ motivations were, but the result is the same.  By labeling the mandate a tax, Roberts ensured that President Obama is the proud owner of an enormous tax increase, a deceptive one at that, and this will likely cost him a second term.  The frosting on that cake is the fact that tax laws are easily repealed, requiring only 51 votes in the Senate, so ObamaCare will likely be tossed to the ash-heap of history anyway.

An excellent analysis was made by Timothy Dalrymple – he pulled together a number of “silver linings” for conservatives in the wake of the SCOTUS decision.

Still, knee-jerk exercises are in order for conservatives.  We need to be in shape for some serious butt-kicking this fall.

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On the Right Side

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
TAX MAN – the Beatles

Let’s Just Ignore That Law

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I’ve heard it said that the United States is “a nation of laws.”  I’m not aware of any recent re-write of the Constitution, but last week it seems something changed.

Oh, the laws are still there, but our current president and attorney general have decided that they don’t feel our law officials need to enforce some of them.  For instance, they say that as many as 800,000 illegal immigrants will not be deported “as long as they aren’t doing something ‘illegal’.”  You can’t make this stuff up.

White House advisor David Ploufe insisted on TV that it’s not a political move intended to pander to Hispanic voters.  I’m sure the thought of trading amnesty for votes never crossed their minds.

My lovely bride had a great idea.  She said, “Why don’t we decide to not enforce the capital gains tax?”

That got me thinking.  There are a lot of laws that might be best forgotten.  I’ll bet the rancher who lost 58 of his sheep to a single grizzly bear last week near Conrad, Montana would like to say, “Oh sorry – heh, heh – I thought I could just ignore that little rule about shooting grizzlies.  My bad!”

MUS - Mexico Borderaybe next time I’m in that long line at the airport waiting to get groped by the TSA guy, I might just jump right over their little retaining rope, bypass the whole security checkpoint, and have time to grab a tasty Cinnabon roll  before my flight.  I say the groping laws should only be applied to nervous-looking bearded guys in turbans praying in Arabic, anyway.

But I suppose I am just dreaming.  Ordinary citizens don’t get to choose which rules they want to have enforced, at least not in our “nation of laws”.  Only a dictator could get away with something like that.

 

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

“I Fought the Law, and the Law Won” – Bobby Fuller Four

 

“First Class” Travel? Or “Government Class?”

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Just a few random ideas for cutting government spending . . .Image

  • Require all government employees to travel in coach with the rest of us.  There was an effort to clamp down on first-class and business-class travel by government employees several years ago, but it appears that this perk has quietly become acceptable again.  Next time you are herded with the other cattle back into those crowded coach seats, take a good look as you walk through the comfy first-class cabin.  There’s a good chance most of these passengers are there on the taxpayer’s dime.
  • Take a good look at the use of expensive “smart phones” by government employees.  Most government employees would be adequately served by inexpensive “dumb” cell phones, and in fact most employees already have, or would purchase, their own cell phones.  I’ll bet the cost of this item, including air time for web surfing, is shocking.
  • Stop paying government employees for all of their accumulated “sick pay” when they retire.  You should get sick pay when you are sick.  That’s why they call it “sick pay!”  Or maybe take sick pay out of the employee’s retirement account.  Some government employees receive six figure checks for accumulated sick pay at retirement in addition to a fat guaranteed pension plan.

This is just a start. The notion that government costs can not be reduced is ridiculous – give me a room full of retired, miserly old accountants and we could cut the budget by a third in no time, without reducing services.  And for crying out loud, could we please at least pass a budget?

Red Herring – favorite food of the Left

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What?  You don’t want to increase taxes on the RICH?  Why are you against teachers and policemen!  You must hate children!  You must not care if women get raped on street corners!   What about the millions of homeless people, the polluted rivers and the poor endangered snail darters!  You want dirty air and dirty water for our children!  Oh, you are so hateful!

The sad thing is the average guy and gal on the street are incapable of thinking deeply enough to see through an obvious RED HERRING (a statement or clue intended to distract from the real issue).  For generations now our schools have taught children to nevRed herringer question authority or cause any kind of conflict.  We must get along with each other, not be judgmental.  If you disagree it could be viewed as (here it comes, the new psycho-babble buzzword du jour) BULLYING!  Break out the ritalin!

If it sounds warm and fuzzy, or green – it must be good for us.

The Red Herring has been a favorite arrow in the quiver of the Left forever, it seems.  Decades ago I lived in a small city that had a mosquito problem.  Whenever the city council wanted more money, they would always say “we will have to cut back on our mosquito spraying this summer if we don’t get more funds”.  They knew that nobody would care if they couldn’t afford that 17th secretary at city hall, or if there was to be one fewer bike trail.  But mosquitos?  We hate them!  Here’s more money, take all you need!

School districts use this tactic religiously.  If you oppose any request for funds, you obviously hate children – even if the money is used to buy another $600,000 cruiser bus with video screens on each seat for the tennis team.  You are not allowed to question where the money goes.  Just keep forking it over, stupid.  A fellow blogger, Barbara Rush, makes a similar observation here.

I wish I had a solution, a way to get through to the can’t-thinkers.  All I can offer is Margaret Thatcher’s overused quote: “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On The Right Side

“Tax the rich, feed the poor, ’til there ain’t no rich no more” – I’D LOVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD – Ten Year After

Sorry, I Wrote Off California

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As a conservative, and living in beautiful Montana, I admit I wrote off California a long time ago.

I had grown so tired of the lunacy that oozes from the Golden State on a daily basis – sanctuary cities, more-than-equal-rights for gays, barrio gang warfare, brainless Hollywood celebs, Pelosi and Waters and Boxer – I decided that if an earthquake shook the whole state into the sea, oh well.

I have an ex-Montana friend who lives in the Central Valley, and he was sending me daily S.O.S. messages, as his own government officials sold out the entire valley, trashing its economy and destroying thousands of jobs and businesses, by shutting off their water to protect a tiny fish.

I shook my head as the scandals piled on – Solyndra, small-town-mayors with monstrous salaries and pensions, and the $16 billion deficit.

But last month my wife and I took a short trip to California and I had a change of heart.

We found many good, hard-working people there, who were just as baffled and upset about the state’s problems as the rest of us are.  It’s a beautiful place, and in spite of its travails, California still has much talent, energy, and resources to offer the nation and the world.

If the USA is a family, California is our crazy, misguided, hyper little brother.  He might end up a superstar, or could be lying in a gutter soon.  There’s not much the rest of us can do to save him – he will have to learn on his own that he can’t spend money he doesn’t have, and he will have to get a haircut and get a real job.

Either way, he’s still part of the family and we should all keep trying to teach him what’s right.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On The Right Side

“We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.”  Hotel California – the Eagles

cartoon courtesy of Tony Branco – see more of his great work here.

One person CAN make a difference!

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A few months ago Judy Tankink was struggling.  She had been asked to reorganize and reinvigorate a Tea Party organization that was, well, sagging.  And she worried that she was in over her head.  She didn’t know if she was tough enough.

But Judy was so firm in her resolve that something had to be done, she threw her whole heart and soul into it.

She bought a new computer and installed web design software.  With help from a Tea Party friend (me!), she built a new website.  And then she rolled up her sleeves and went to work.  Judy started attending local government meetings.  She read and studied and learned about the tactics of the left, and their misguided intentions.  She organized meetings and presentations about important topics, from local (the exploding wolf population in Montana) to international (Agenda 21).

Then she learned that her city council was about to implement the Agenda 21 “Complete Streets” program.  Judy mobilized her troops, rallied at a series of presentations and city council meetings, and got the program rejected.  She single-handedly turned an expensive, freedom-threatening, heavy-handed government program on its head against all odds.

Judy, you are an inspiration!

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On The Right Side

Ain’t That Tough Enough?! – the Fabulous Thunderbirds

RightOnLine ROCKS!

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Oh yeah!  Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Scott Rasmussen, Jonah Goldberg, James O’Keefe, me . . . all of us conservative superstars (well, some of us are wannabes!) were beaming last weekend at the beautiful Venetian in Las Vegas.

It was educational, inspirational, motivational and a hell of a lot of fun.

Tears were shed and glasses raised in memory of Andrew Breitbart.  New citizen journalists were given swords and marching orders.  Veteran conservative bloggers shared war stories and compared beards.  Except the blog-ettes, of course.

Michelle brought down the house, coyly recalling her smackdown of Juan “I’m a reporter, not a BLOGGER!” Williams.  Sarah cut the competition’s knees off with her incisive, on-the-button analysis of failed policies and missed opportunities.  And James O’Keefe – if you have seen any of his expose’ videos, you know the only thing worse than his pimp costume is his Scottish / Irish accent.  Hilarious and devastating in equal measure.

The Montana contingent included AFP/Tea Party/talk radio raconteur Henry Kriegel, Voices of Montana star Aaron Flint, Bozeman radio ace Mark Allen, legislator and new AFP-Montana chief Joe Balyeat, and yours truly – the newbie blogger and trouble-maker Rockin’ On The Right Side.

Everything good was there in abundance – the rooms were huge and beautiful, the food was magnificent, all of the speakers and presenters were top-notch.  But best of all was the abundance of Optimism.  We learned that the conservative new media is winning on all fronts. And it is driving the effete liberals and the inside-the-beltway good-ole-boys and the dead-tree-writers and the I’m-not-a-blogger pundits CRAZY!

Everyone left the conference energized and motivated.  Hell, I’m so motivated I started a new blog, and you’re the first one to read it!

TOM BALEK – Rockin’ On The Right Side

THE HEAT IS ON!  – Glenn Frey