So, contrary to the Dinosaur Duopoly, their media ideologues and the near mindless parrots simply regurgitating the party line, a third party can begin, grow and ultimately challenge the establishment.  I believe we are at a unique time in history, a time we should not turn our backs on. A 3rd party can win, Independents can reawaken and retake control. The current shenanigans in Washington are a gift. The legislative leviathan has roused the LARGEST voting block in the United States. 2012 is the tipping point.

Feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to trash me on Twitter

I suggest you malign me on MySpace

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

I have an idea. Well, sort of an idea. It’s more of a political action plan really. What say we reinstate the draft next year, with a few tweaks? I say we use it to summon “public servants” to active duty. A conscription, not for combat troops but for everyday citizens to answer the call to government service. Not to wage war but to work the aisles and offices of Washington, DC. Not unlike jury duty, what say we “draft” regular folks to run for elected public office. No more professional politicians seeking life long terms, no more Lex Luthor proteges.

One day the phones rings, you answer and the voice on the other end says, “Mr. (or Mrs.) XYZ, you have been called up to active duty in your Nation’s Capital. You are one of two citizens running for President of the United States.” or “Mrs. (or Mr.) ABC, you’ve been picked in the ‘legislative lottery.’ We’re recruiting you to run for the Senate or the House of Representatives.” Or “We’re notifying you that you are next to run for Congress. It’s your turn to work on Capitol Hill.” You don’t announce your candidacy, you simply accept the call.

Be truthful. Do all the “experts” of late, political and economic, deserve to be treated as the saviors of our country? With all of their combined “experience” are we truly any better off than say, 50 or 100 years ago? Are we not currently the byproduct of all of our alleged governmental experts? Expertise? What a joke.

Honestly, most that aspire to public office are uniquely unqualified to hold that office.

If the patriotic members of the current political class are so moved to public service, so deeply called to defened the Constitution, let them now trade their marble halls for humvees, their podiums for places in a battle formation. Let them trade their suits for boots. Truth be told, I’ve met 100′s of politicians over the years and not many of them have the courage of a soldier.

Let the draft be for citizens, not as soldiers but as statesmen, not as warriors but as the new round that We the People send, on our behalf, to Washington.

Feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to trash me on Twitter

I suggest you malign me on MySpace

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

In the episode of Liberty’s Line in the Sand we highlight some of the spin surrounding the debt ceiling debate. Additionally, we highlight the real tragedy behind the demagogic dragon and why we simply cannot fall for its deception.

Feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to trash me on Twitter

I suggest you malign me on MySpace

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

Politicians and a Rorschach Test

Come on. It takes a serious set of something to be Nancy Pelosi. Though see is a walking, living, breathing poster child for psychological testing for all politicians prior to them taking the oath of office, you gotta love Ms. Pelosi. She doesn’t blink or miss a beat when she tells NPR Friday morning “We didn’t lose because of me.” Instead she blames “$100 million of outside, undefined funding.”

So, in addition to being delusional, the California Democrat is deaf as well. Members both incoming and outgoing of her own party are calling for her not to run. Instead of graciously passing her gavel on to the new Speaker of the House and admitting defeat–losing 60 seats sounds like defeat to me–she wants to retain whatever power she can.

According to the article in the Wall Street Journal highlighting her comments on NPR Friday morning, Ms. Pelosi believes “The reason they had to take me down is because I’ve been effective in fighting special interests in Washington, D.C.,” Ms. Pelosi said, citing the health insurance and financial services industries. “I’m effective. They had to take me out. I’m also the most significant attractor to support for the Democrats” adding, “We don’t let the Republicans choose our leaders, and again, our members understand, they made me a target because I’m effective, politically and policy-wise.”

I wouldn’t be standing too close to the word “wise” if I were her. Way too easy to draw a distinction.

Now, we could go on discussing Ms. Pelosi’s megalomania, her lust and thirst for power, but I don’t like kicking someone while they are down. Truth be told she isn’t the only Capitol Hill Hugger out there. But I will ask one last question. We drug test our pilots, our cops, our teachers. We give psychological evaluations to a host of applicants for sensitive jobs and other positions in our country. Why not a Rorschach Test or two for returning and recently elected public servants? What’s wrong with a couple of hours on a shrink’s couch for “public servants” before we swear them in? Now that would be a part of Health Care overhaul I could support!

**In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve had multiple Rorschach Tests and spent numerous lying down in front of more than a few Psychiatrists. I’m way too crazy to run for public office. At least I admit it.**

Please feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to ridicule me on Twitter

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

Next time you wonder about the political class and just how naggingly annoying they can be, think of this. Ever notice that many of our “public servants” will dial or robo call us ad nauseam, litter the hell out of our roadways with their yard signs or fill our airwaves with useless, dishonest commercials when they need our help, yet turn a deaf ear when it comes to accurately reflecting our hopes and desires once they get to Washington, DC? Does it seem that campaign communications are a short-term, oneway street?

Weird, they want our favorable input on election day and then they want us to lose their number.

If you know of a politician or a candidate that is robo calling to leave you their personal pager number or one that posts a yard sign with the direct-dial number to his/her office, please email me back. If you find one post election commercial airing an actual email address for you newly elected public servant, please send me the link.

Please feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to ridicule me on Twitter

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

One of the things I am most looking forward to this Tuesday is just how cluelessly the Republicans and their media pundits will misread the outcome. Looking for someone to malign, they will grab the magnifying glass, belly up to the microphone and moralize ad nauseam. Well prior to the polls closing, the pundits will place blame on President Obama and his policies, warning the White House of a tide change in Washington.  As the champagne pops, before the corks ricochet off the ceiling and hit the floor, many in the GOP will be counting the tallies and licking their chops. Before Hannity high-fives Rove and Dick Morris reminds Fox viewers yet again of his website address, Republicans across the country will misinterpret the outcome as “a mandate.”

On the other side of the aisle, Maddow, Olbermann, Matthews and their gang will echo the thoughts of columnist Joe Klein or Senator John Kerry that we are “a nation of dodos” or that our country is gripped in “know nothingism” or  that we are too “scared” to “think clearly” if you listen to President Obama. They will lament an electorate that proved itself too dimwitted and pea-brained to know any better, while others in the  mainstream media will erroneously claim the vote as a normal migration of voters in a midterm election; a natural campaign cycle. Ah, opinion journalism at its best!

How long will it take for the political class and the media pundits that support them to realize we are tired of our elected “public servants” taking care of themselves and choosing their cohorts over their constituents? Our government is gridlocked simply because they are looking out for themselves, backlogged while the bureaucrats are too busy battling for power. Just how gullible must we seem?

This election day, mainly unbeknownst to the political class, we are not pulling them to the center nor we are not pushing them to the left or the right. We are pushing them out of the way. It’s more than anti-incumbent. It’s more than pro-change. We’re not angry, we’re awake to their shenanigans and we’re not going to sit idly by nor are we going to stand for it anymore.

Liberty, smaller government, freedom…they are worth voting for!

Please feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to ridicule me on Twitter

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

After being dispatched, I’d arrive to interview the victim(s), speak with any witnesses if available, collect any evidence and then hang at the scene for awhile. My goal, as strange as it must sound, was to imagine what the suspect(s) did 10 seconds before the crime, 10 minutes, an hour, the night before and so on. What were they thinking? What were they looking for? Why did they pick the place they did? Only then could I start to move forward. Though I left the department shortly after my father’s suicide, those same skills of investigation are still with me.

Politics has always been a passion of mine. When I was very young my Mom would make me recite “Republican born, Republican bread, I’ll be a Republican until I’m dead.” By my 12th birthday I was already disappointing her, volunteering stuffing envelopes for a democrat running for County Legislator. Later on, as a member of the national advance team for a presidential candidate, I’m sure she wondered where she had gone wrong?

Over the last few years, reaching back to the Bush presidency, I’ve wondered how our government, at all levels, seems to have grown unchecked. How has our Constitution deteriorated into a political speed-bump for those trying to hijack our freedoms? How can numerous crimes against the citizenry continue to steal greater amounts of liberty at every turn? How have we gone from a government who worked for us, to a political class that works to control our lives at every turn?

So, I started my investigation by going backwards. I reversed the days in the Obama administration, months into the Bush and Clinton presidencies, years back through Presidents Roosevelt, Wilson, Lincoln and Washington, centuries in reverse through monarchs and rulers as far back as I could go. England, Greece, Egypt all the way back to the Babylonian king Hammurabi.

For me, Jefferson’s belief “That government is best which governs least” is the clearest and most succinct way to distill the contents of my personal investigation.

Governments–and the laws they propagate–spread like weeds. Like vines that parasitically encircle small trees competing for water, nutrients from the soil and even sunlight, governments at all levels of society do what they can to suffocate creativity, liberty and freedom. Laws and the people who beget them spread like spores on the wind. Only problem, it’s unnatural for human beings to be continually and systematically controlled and manipulated.

Humans are natural born Libertarians. Not unlike an operating system for your computer, the underlying software is libertarianism. Now early in life, a few laws, rules and codes similar to computer programs are added to the young mind for its own good and protection. These societal norms and directives are those boundaries that establish an idea of right and wrong, compassion and evil, fair and unjust. As adolescence wanes, many extra rules and regulations are discarded.  Like a childish need for the curfews or bedtimes of our youth, or the need for training wheels or water wings to aid our balance and flotation, there comes a time when we toss aside certain dependencies of our youth. Do you know many 50 year olds still riding their bicycles with training wheels attached? Adulthood is about taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. Growth only works outside the box.

Political parties work painstakingly hard to convince us that we still need our childish safety nets, our crutches, our need for protection and direction.  Going it alone is the mark of a radical, they campaign to assure us. Continuing to load ever increasing programs, software and malware on to our natural operating system, they reassure us that “Society needs software.”  Now, they promise us that we are still all libertarians at heart. Though it doesn’t feel natural to us, it soon feels normal and therefore tolerable. Eventually our operating systems grind to a halt as we grow too tired to resist.

I don’t want my children stifled, enslaved and overrun with oppressive, malicious software, viruses and worms. I’ve given them an operating system, educated them on how to employ it and trust in them to run their own programs as they see fit.

Libertarians have faith in themselves and the ideals of personal freedom. They believe in the lessons they teach their children and the ultimate ability of a human mind and passion to run its computer courageously, compassionately and creatively as long as their original firmware remains unencumbered by overwhelming political-class-programming. I’m raising my children as Libertarians because it’s how they were born, it’s naturally who they are.

Please feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to ridicule me on Twitter

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

Are you growing tired of being told what you want, what you like or dislike? Are you fed up being told how you feel or what you want to see?

“The American people are tired of …. __________.”

“The American people want a ….__________.”

“I know what the American people are looking for in a candidate” most politicians claim. It would be funny if it were not so disgusting.

Perhaps left over from the “I feel your pain” days of former President Clinton, ever notice how politicians use the political cliche and tactic of claiming to have their fingers on your pulse? That they have an intimate idea of your trials, travails and challenges? It is a disingenuous, crafty lie and most people with a second grade reading level know it.

As if that were not enough, the one thing that really grabs me is when they speak as if the “American people” or the “American voters” is a set or a classification that they are not grouped with. Think about it. They never say, “we are tired of higher taxes” it’s always the “American people are tired of higher taxes.” They never say, “We are looking for change in Washington, DC” it’s always the “American people are looking for change in Washington, DC.”

“I hear what the American people are saying.” What, are you a foreigner? I expect Putin, Castro, Chavez and the like to refer to us as “the Americans” but our own politicians refer to us as a differentiated set of people? Obviously, they’ve forgotten they are a piece or a constituent part of the very constituency they distance themselves from?

Do you ever refer to your foot as “the foot” or your fingers as “the fingers?” If you have a pounding headache do you say, “Hey Doc, the headaches?”

This isn’t a semantic debate. Listen to their words. The political class is outside the group “the American people. It isn’t a “We” but an antithetical “they” when politicians refer to us, to you and me. Politicians feel themselves to be “other than” the people that elect them, they articulate their positions from outside the unit, in mathematical terms, of the majority. They believe themselves contrary to us and their very words prove it, a Freudian Slip if there ever was one, an idiotic idiom that we should hold them accountable for on election day.

Please feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to ridicule me on Twitter

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand

Now, before you see the video highlighting the case filed in a federal lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Institute for Justice, please know that tour operators Bill Main and Tonia Edwards have already paid the appropriate taxes and fees to conduct business within the DC jurisdiction. These additional fees are for speaking, a tax on talking if you will.

Is Free Speech “free” if you have to pay for it first?

More 2 Explore

Institute For Justice article.

Case Highlights Video

For me, the only Ivy education I’ve ever experienced gave me an itchy-rash that lasted for weeks and “august” was a month in late summer, I thought.  “Oh Brian, you doltish human-being haven’t you heard about the dignified and venerable character of the Senate?”

Now, I’m not an expert on those individuals that signed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. I don’t have a degree in “The Founders” nor am I a historian of the times. That said, the three groups of signatories on some of the most revered and important documents in the history of our Country had some of their own issues. Boozers, womanizers, slave owners, rebels, brawlers and malcontents made up the list. If Franklin, Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton were around today, we’d probably think they were bonkers!

Some good guys, some with questionable pasts, all crazy and courageous at the same time. Today we revere them for their bravery, grit and stubbornness in confronting a government disconnected from its people. We are thankful for their demented determination in facing the crazy odds stacked against them. We don’t give a crap about their decorum.

The next time you hear that candidate may not be fit to serve, ask yourself, by what definition?

Please feel free to slam me on Facebook

You are welcome to ridicule me on Twitter

Join me at The Brian Brawdy Show, Liberty’s Line in the Sand