TANSTAAFL: The Sum of the Laws of Thermodynamics

"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
--Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1915)

The Magicians won in Congress yesterday.
It was expected, because I believe that the set called Pols is overwhelmingly populated by people who live in unreality so massive that it is rapidly approaching maximum entropy.
They do not accept the laws of thermodynamics, especially the second law, and therefore they believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch.
Would that they would collapse in utter humiliation. Instead, as we live in dangerous times, I fear it is the economy of this country and all that it has built that will do the collapsing. Unfortunately.

For the benefit of our scientifically illiterate Congress, I present the laws of thermodynamics translated into a form that even a Pol can undertand --if and only if he doesn't try to think and chew gum at the same time.

A most basic law zero has been stated:
0. When two objects or systems A and B are in equilibrium with each other, the energy that flows from A to B will be the same as the energy that flows from B to A.
Translation: There is a game.

Now on to the original three.

1. The Law of Conservation of Energy: Energy out cannot exceed energy in. You cannot get more than 100% efficiency.
Translation: You can't win the game. (You can't get something for nothing).

2. The Law of Entropy*: Any process in a closed system will increase the entropy of said closed system. Any process in an open system will increase the entropy of the universe. The entropy of the universe can never decrease. Loophole: You can have 100% efficiency only at a temperature of absolute zero, meaning you can't get 100% efficiency.
Translation: You can't break even.

*Entropy (S) can be defined as the tendency of a system towards disorder. The second law thus says that a closed system will accumulate disorder, and that an open system can become ordered only at the expense of the universe. Thus, as a bumper sticker I got when I passed P-Chem states, "S happens."

3. The Law of Absolute Zero*: It is impossible to reach the temperature of absolute zero. Thus the loophole above is not real.
Translation: You can't even quit the game.

*Absolute Zero is the temperature at which there is minimal molecular energy so that energy cannot be transferred among systems. Absolute zero, defined as -273.15 degrees C, cannot be achieved artificially or naturally (the third law).

All three laws can be summed up as: TANSTAAFL! There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

And I end with another quote:

"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.
--Seth Lloyd, Nature 430 (2004) p. 971

A Navy Jack for the EG

At the Albuquerque Tea Party, we saw many flags, including the Gadsen "Don't Tread on Me" Flag, which has a coiled rattlesnake on a yellow field, and the First Navy Jack "Don't Tread on Me" Flag, which displays an uncoiled rattlesnake on Union--13 red and white stripes.


Being a Navy Veteran (USS Hepburn), the Engineering Geek wanted a Navy Jack. I looked on line and found many very inexpensive flags, but ended up ordering a quality flag from an American flag maker (made in the USA) through Amazon.

The EG would have objected to an American flag made in China.
I ordered the flag and a spin-free flag pole separately.



The flag arrived first, along with a decal of the same, and we hung it up on the wall in entryway.


The First Navy Jack is exactly that: first. It was first hung from the jackstands of the Continental Navy in 1775 by order of the first commander of the Navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins, as the fleet stood ready on the Delaware river.
NOTE: Please see the comments. There is evidently some controversy about this story concerning Esek Hopkins regarding what flag was the first Navy Jack. More information can be found here. I will leave the story above, but this history is hard to verify. The rest of the history interwoven below is not in doubt.

The rattlesnake was a popular symbol of colonial resistance to British tyranny before and during the Revolutionary War.
The rattlesnake, as an anonymous letter to the editor (now attributed to Benjamin Franklin) explained, is the perfect symbol for America. A rattlesnake does not strike without warning first, but when it strikes it is swift and deadly.


Last night, the EG picked up the flag pole at the Tijeras Post Office, and this morning he put it together in preparation for hanging the flag outside.

He said he'd like me to order another flag pole like this one, as it is of good construction and it is spin-free, so that the flag will not roll around the pole in the ever-present mountain winds. I am also to order another bracket, so that we can fly the Navy Jack and the Stars and Stripes on national holidays.






Another interesting piece of history about this flag is that the Navy ship which has been commissioned the longest and is still serving, flies a special Navy Jack from her jackstand; the flag is special because it is passed to the next ship when the oldest ship is decommissioned.

Here the EG puts the new First Navy Jack onto the jackstand of the USS Los Pecos. When he hangs the ship's bell and the boatswain's pipe from the USS Constitution in the front hall, we will have to have a showdown. Is he the captain and me, the Exec? Or vice versa?

When he puts a lectern on the driveway, and makes us face the flag as we enter--excuse me, cross the quarter deck-- while he stands watch, then I will know he has read How to Simulate Navy Life at Home. Oy.



Another point of information about this flag: since 2002, it flies on the jackstands of all United States Navy ships for the duration of the current hostilities. (I can't remember this weeks politically correct term for the WOT).

Seriously, though, we got this flag because I wanted a "Don't Tread on Me" flag, and the Engineering Geek wanted a Navy Jack.


As more and more taxpayers understand what has been done to our liberty in the last 100 years, we all feel a bit like rattling the rattle and hissing "Don't Tread on Me!"


Like Ben Franklin's rattlesnake, we won't strike without warning, but our patience is not infinite.

Why Progressives Don't Understand the Tea Parties

(Edited on April 24 for clarity and spelling. After reading some of the comments, I realized that my definition of certain terms differs from that of others, so I defined some of them).


In the mainstream media and across the Progressive blogosphere, pundits and ideologues on the left shake their heads at the tea-party goers, accusing us of being used for poltical purposes and of racism, all without the slightest evidence garnered from the actual gatherings; after all, progressives need no evidence. In their own minds they are right, and that rightness, far from being only a matter of fact (which would require evidence), transubstantiates into righteousness, a quality of being on a higher moral plane than the benighted tea-partiers. They have what Thomas Sowell calls The Vision of the Annointed.


On the comments to one of my Tea Party blogs, a comment by Mark sums up the progressive attitude toward the tea parties quite well:

"The simple reason is that the "tea party" movement is not about opposition to government policy. It's about opposition to Barack Obama, plain and simple . . . . it's not a real grassroots movement. It's what political junkies call "astroturfing" - fake grassroots activism. In this case, it was instigated and coordinated by right-wing lobbyists, the Republican Party and Fox News as well as the rest of the conservative media as a means of bashing Obama and rallying support to an otherwise floundering GOP."

This engendered quite a bit of discussion by others, most of whom are surprised at such conclusions made without any good evidence. Although Mark does offer some evidence, it is negative* and backward-looking.** Essentially Mark seems to be saying, "Since you did not protest Bush's spending (though he offers no evidence that we didn't), you cannot be serious about protesting now."

Definition of Terms:

*In science, negative evidence is the absence of some indicator. This term is not perjorative, however negative evidence alone is weak, and is best interpreted in the light of positive evidence of a different sort. Thus in a pregnancy test, a negative result--the titer does not indicate the presence of the hormone HCG--may indicate that the woman is not pregnant, but there may be many other reasons for the result. Definitive presence of HCG, however, is a much more reliable indicator of pregnancy (though not foolproof).

**There is a better term for backwards looking, and for the life of me, I cannot think of it. (Lupus brain!) What I mean here is that Mark is using the lack of a specified previous behavior to interpret current behavior. Again, there may be many reasons why people did not do something in the past, but now are doing it. In the absence of any other evidence for his claims, this is another extremely weak argument. I have my own hypotheses about it, but that's another blog entry.

Sorry, Mark, all "astroturfing" aside, the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. (I really wish the public schools taught the rules of rational discourse better, as well as logic and the emprical principles of science! Drat that NCLB).

Although events are coming fast and furious, and so I have blogged about a great many other things, I have been thinking about this, puzzled that progressives, so ready to take up a cause and organize a protest at the drop of a hat, are unable to see those of us they consider to be their enemies as equally passionate about our ideas.

Today, as I was reading through the posts of the Objectivist Roundup over at Rational Jenn, I came across a speech by Dr. John Lewis that clarified my thinking about this wonderfully. At one point in his talk he said:

"This ruling elite, looking down on us right now, cannot understand gatherings such as these, in which free people gather to defend liberty. They think that this must be orchestrated by a vast conspiracy, because they cannot understand how autonomous human beings might gather by their own choice, to affirm their commitment to liberty.
Our so-called leaders think this because they don’t see autonomous moral beings at all. They see only serfs, sniveling and whining, begging their masters for the scraps needed to survive, acting as a collective mob rather than as thinking individuals."

--Dr. John David Lewis, Charlotte, NC, 15 April 2009

That's the problem. Progressives are collectivists* and cannot imagine individuals coming together autonomously, without being "organized" by some greater entity than themselves, and for purposes that the collective directs. Collectivists simply do not think of individuals as free and autonomous human beings, unencumbered by the group.

*Collectivism is a social or moral outlook that emphasizes the group over the individual, gives priority to group goals, and considers the sum of the whole as greater than the parts. Collectivists use phrases like "the good of the whole" and tend to be concerned with equity. Again, I am not using this term perjoratively here. The Progressive movement since the beginning has been about redistribution of wealth and power, and this is not an individualistic goal, nor is it classically liberal.

The whole speech is worth listening to several times. In it, Dr. Lewis discusses the moral basis of the problems we are facing, and gives a coherent moral justification for political Liberty and for Capitalism, the economic system that sustains it. I have embedded the You Tube video of the speech below. A revised text version can be found at Classical Ideals.

Dr. Lewis has given his kind permission "to read this speech in full wherever defenders of Liberty gather."

Trading Freedom and Security on the Border

"The right of the People to be secure in their persons, houses, papers

and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be

violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,

supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the

place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

--Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1791)

Over the past few weeks, several stories have come across my computer that were all concerned in one way or another with the Fourth Amendment rights of the Constitution, which is understood to guarrantee the right to personal privacy. The first was about a young activist from the Campaign for Liberty, who was illegally held for questioning at the St. Louis Airport at the end of March on the pretext that he was carrying a large amount of cash. He recorded the harrassment he received from TSA officials on his cell phone, which was later played on Fox News' Freedom Watch. (Hat tip to Rational Jenn). At about 2:47 minutes into the recording, a TSA agent says: "If you have nothing to hide then you you can just tell me what it's for . . ."

In another, unrelated story that I found after being directed from Doc's blog to another, I read about Steven Anderson, a Baptist minister from Tempe Arizona, who was detained at an internal DHS/Border Patrol checkpoint, and when he refused to answer any questions, he was moved to a secondary area, forcibly removed from his car, tazed and beaten prior to being arrested or read his Miranda rights. The entire story is related in five parts on You Tube posts of Freedom Watch. In part 4, a video of the encounter shows the DHS/Border Patrol unable to articulate any probable cause, and in part 5, Judge Napolitano discusses the minimum legal requirement for any search and seizure: articulable probable cause. The assumption that if a person will not answer, he must have something to hide is a feature of this story. At one point, you hear the Border Patrol agent say to Pastor Anderson: "And until we prove you are not guilty . . ."

This is a very worrisome statement, given that US law, which is based on English common law states that a person must be considered innocent until proven guilty.

What was even more alarming to me was that when I took a look at the comments to both of the above stories in newspapers online, at You Tube, and the comments at Doc's about this, many Americans are content to believe that if a person defends his right to be secure in his very person, in his property and personal effects, then that person must be hiding something, because, after all, "if he has nothing to hide, he should cooperate."

This kind of statement is a logical fallacy called a false dichotomy. It puts the person being harrassed in the situation of being considered guilty of something if he does not answer the question or consent to the search. The problem is that there are other options than "innocent means nothing to hide" and "refusal means guilt." By being coerced into a response by the false dichotomy, the individual surrenders the principle that he has the right to that security in his person, property and personal effects. And there is no partial surrendering of rights: it's all or nothing. And once a person surrenders any of his rights, he has placed his power into the hands of government. Our founders understood this to be a very dangerous proposition:

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

— Thomas Jefferson

Certainly the treatment of American citizens we have witnessed in these incidents is tyrannical. And the reality is that innocent people are harmed by such abuse of power often enough. There are bad cops. There are bored cops. And there are DHS/Border Patrol agents that do not know or understand the law.

Many people also argue that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Border Patrol is allowed to violate the Constitutional right to security in person and possessions, and that there is a certain territory within 100 miles of the international borders of the United States that are effectively "Constitution-Free Zones." (Hat tip: Consent of the Governed).This is an egregious abuse of power that can effectively end our liberty to move freely within our own borders. Here is what the ACLU has to say about the increasing power we have given over to the Federal government to meddle into our affairs:

"If the current generation of Americans does not challenge this creeping (and sometimes galloping) expansion of federal powers over the individual through the rationale of “border protection,” we are not doing our part to keep alive the rights and freedoms that we inherited, and will soon find that we have lost some or all of their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities." (grammar problems in the original)

The argument that because the Supreme Court has made a ruling means that the particular behavior is constitutional is also false. The Supreme Court has made unconstitutional rulings in the past. For example, consider the infamous Dred Scott decision, Buck v. Bell., or Plessy v. Ferguson. These unconstitutional rulings can do quite a bit of damage to the lives, liberty and property of citizens before they are reversed by the pressure of determined citizens. We must be those citizens and assert our rights against intimidation by false dichotomy or any other means.

I have experienced these "Constitution Free Zones" repeatedly in my travel within New Mexico, and I have always asserted my rights by stating that I am a citizen traveling freely within the borders of the United States. Since the Border Patrol does not have the legitimate authority to enforce the law, other than immigration law, they do not have the right to receive answers to any other question. On the other hand, since I have been detained unreasonably, often far within the borders of my own country, I always ask for the agent's ID. I have the right to know who this person is who is stopping me, and on what authority. However, I have often been waived through these checkpoints because I am driving while white.

As I wrote a few months ago, being On the Border has become fraught with dangers. However, those dangers should not be exacerbated by our government, our peace officers, or federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, which was established by the unconstitutional Patriot Act.

I stand with Benjamin Franklin, who wrote:

"He who would trade freedom for security deserves neither . . ."

. . . and he ends up with neither.

Patriot Days

It is instructive that as I sit facing my calendar, I see that although April 27 is marked as "Freedom Day (South Africa)", the 18th and 19th days of April are not marked at all, and this on a calendar that was "Printed in the United States." It is somewhat reassuring to note that July 4 is marked as Independence Day, and the independence days of other nations are so marked, but it is disconcerting to see that Constitution Day, September 29, is also missing from this calendar.

I will not be purchasing another calendar from this particular publisher.

For to celebrate the 4th of July without marking the day upon which the fight for our liberty had its inception, and the day upon which that liberty was guarranteed by law and oath is to turn it into a holiday with no roots and no wings. By tearing Independence Day out of context, we are throwing the real history of our freedom down Orwell's fabled memory hole, perhaps out of some misplaced politically correct version in which Liberty can be achieved by proclaimation without revolution and the rejection of tyranny.

On the 19th of April, 1775, the Militias of Lexington and Concord took up arms against King George's Redcoats who had come to confiscate their arms, cannon and powder. The British Regulars, under the command of General Gage, had blockaded the Port of Boston, occupied the Town of Boston and placed its denizens under martial law because of the tax resistance of colonists that culminated in New England with the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773.

In addition, the British Crown had confiscated the property of the individuals, quartered their troops in the houses of the citizens, and suspended trial by jury, subjecting the people of Boston to military tribunals.

It is instructive to remember that these violations of the rights of Englishmen were the reason for the American Revolution; the cause for which Colonel Parker and his Militia "fired the shot heard 'round the world." These violations found their way into the Declaration of Independence in the listing of the "crimes of the king" and they were answered in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution. The Founding Generation had direct experience with the coercive actions of a central government whose power went unchecked. They challenged that power by taking up arms to defend their rights first at the Green at Lexington.




And it is instructive to note that those first patriots stood by that "rude bridge that arched the flood" to defend the right to keep and bear arms, a right that was affirmed as the second amendment, not because people like to hunt for sport, but because the founders knew that it might become necessary to defend those rights against an oppressive central government once again.




Today many Americans are waking up to the fact that we have an oppressive central government: An Executive Branch that has been busy accruing power to itself over the past decades; a Congress that no longer properly represents us, but usurps our property rights through confusing and unconstitutional legislation; courts that have ignored the Constitution they are sworn to uphold by making decisions that clearly violate the meaning and the intent of the founders, thus violating our rights. We intend to defend our rights in a peaceful revolution of the ballot box and the soapbox. We earnestly pray that we never have to take up arms against the government established to serve us and protect our rights.


And today, on that sacred ground of the Green at Lexington, we were assured that there are those among our military services, our militias, and our peace officers, who intend to stand by their oath " . . . to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . ." The Oathkeepers stood today there at the cradle of our Liberty and proclaimed the ten orders they would refuse to obey. They did so because most of these illegal orders have been given in recent history in the United States, and shamefully some of their own have obeyed them.



Many citizens who are not in the services took the opportunity to swear the same oath this Patriot Day, vowing to uphold the Constitution of the United States, so pledging "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."




Given the peril to our Constitution, which has been growing over our own lifetimes, there may be many Patriot Days to come; days upon which we will be called upon to risk our lives and our fortunes in order to uphold our sacred honor.


"The tree of Liberty," we were told, "Is nourished by the blood of patriots."

I most sincerely hope that for our generation, as we work to restore our Constitution, these words are figurative rather than real.

The Big Lie

"Saying so don't make it so."

--Mark Twain

"A (member of the press) young man with years of notorious success behind him and a cynical look of twice his age said suddenly, 'I know what I'd like to be:

I wish I could be a man who covers news!' "

--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (empahsis in original).

NOTE: This post is specifically about the news media. I am not talking about talk radio, "news-lite" programs such as The View or Fox and Friends, nor Internet sources like the Huffington Post or World Net Daily.

It has been noticible for some time that newspapers and the network news have become increasingly irrelevant to people in their quest for real news in this country. The reason that is usually given is that the Internet has become more useful to people because it is available to them anytime, and they can search for information that targets their interests. One problem that is frequently brought up in the mainstream media is that the veracity of the information on the internet can be difficult to ascertain, and that much of the news that people view on the internet has not been "vetted" by professional journalists.

"You need us," the Fourth Estate claims. "Because we are professionals and we will tell you what is true."

Except when they don't. Except when what really happens does not fit into their predominantly east-coast understanding of what the people of this diverse country value and want. Except when reporting gets in the way of being opinion-shapers, vetters of presidential appointees, and those running for office. (For more on the media's extremely rude and virulent attacks on certain presidential candidates, see the film Media Malpractice). And this is, I believe, the main reason that many ordinary Americans find the so-called Fourth Estate increasingly irrelevant.

Consider the stunningly incompetent reporting of CNN "reporter" Susan Roesgen, who interrupted a man at the Chicago Tea Party who was discussing Lincoln, telling him (and her viewers) what to think: "Do you know that the 'state of Lincoln' gets 50 billion dollars . . ." She did not let the man finish, and she ended her confrontation with Tea Party goers by saying that they were all anti-government and anti-CNN. At the end, you hear the crowd chanting at her: "You are not a reporter." And this is true. She moved from reporting to confronting, from telling viewers what was happening, to telling them what to think about it. She ended that particular discussion by becoming a salesperson for the "stimulus" package.

(For a better, if not "professional" look at the Chicago Tea Party, see The Chicago Tea Party that Susan Roesgen Missed, by the guy who wants her job).

It was clear that Ms. Roesgen went to Chicago with an agenda, and that agenda was not to report on what was actually happening (good, bad and ugly), but rather to obtain footage for a particular point of view: that the Tea Parties were "anti-government and anti-CNN." Whether this was her own agenda or that of her bosses, she is nevertheless responsible for her unethical behavior. She was not reporting on news, she was, rather, creating propaganda.

This is incompetent reporting.

It was also clear that Ms. Roesgen went to Chicago, the largest city in the "Land of Lincoln" in complete ignorance of that great president's economic views. Any Illiniois school child could have educated her about this, since she failed to prepare herself for her day's work. This is stunningly incompetent.

FYI Ms. Roesgen: The man you interviewed--the one whose child was "already in debt"--was refering to this statement made by Abraham Lincoln:

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association (March 21, 1864).

It took this former Illiniois schoolgirl exactly 40 seconds to pull it up on the Internet. I simply googled the italicized phrase along with the word "Lincoln." Susan, the next time you go to Chicago, and you are dealing with real people--those who can both walk and chew gum at the same time (unlike the Pols) and who (unlike the Pols), do not tell you exactly what you want to hear--be sure to do your homework.

I suppose one could argue that neither CNN nor Fox are real news outlets because they have to foment controversy in order to produce 24 hours of nonstop "news" every day. So, should we consider "responsible" newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times? In an editorial in that paper, Marc Cooper had already labeled the Tea Parties this way: "Anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Parties steeped in insanity." That was before the Tea Parties had even happened.

And then there's my hometown paper, The Albuquerque Journal. I tend to be partial to it because it is independent and published right here. But they have gotten a new breed of reporters lately, ones who are so lazy that they go out to an event for 15 minutes, quote liberally from the AP, and believe they have a story. Thus they told us that "a few thousand" attended the Albuquerque Tea Party, even though there were official numbers that could have been obtained with one phone call to the police. From the AP, they got the idea that all of these Tea Parties were anti-Obama rallies promoted by Dick Army. With a few phone calls and some additional leg work (there's that word again, the one that the lazy reporters avoid), the reporters could have interviewed the five housewives who organized the Tea Party here, and they could have found out that none of them had even talked to Senator Army, and that all funding was local and private, and all the work was done by volunteers.

Instead the Journal has piled on to the Big Lie: The Tea Parties were partisan, about taxes, and poorly attended. And therefore not very important. In fact, they were so unimportant that the President of the United States had a press release put out saying that he didn't know about them. (Consider the logic of that!) Because according to Janet Napolitano of DHS, Tea Party goers are all insane nutjobs that are a threat to the United States. Right up there with war veterans and those of us who understand that the Constitution limits the powers of the Federal government in the 9th and 10th amendments.

This is the strategy of the Big Lie. It is a propaganda technique first defined in Nazi Germany, but it has been in use since Pericles. It means to keep repeating an untruth over and over again, baldly, and without evidence, until it is believed by most people.

President Bush used it to sell the War in Iraq. (We have evidence of weapons of mass destruction . . .)

The press used it to smear Sarah Palin during the last election. (That baby isn't hers. It was conceived by space aliens and implanted . . .).

The President is using it to sell his budget. (Yes, he's going to cut the deficit by cutting entitlements AND provide us all with a chicken in every pot and universal health care ).

Congress used it to sell the Patriot Act and now the so-called Stimulus Bill. (Gee, I didn't know that was in the bill 'cause, well, it was too long to read).

The Press is using the Big Lie now to try to convince us that our concerns are ridiculous and that they "know better" what is good for us. They know more than we do. They are from New York City.

We have gotten to the point where the Executive, both houses of Congress, and the so-called Fourth Estate lie to us with impunity. In fact, like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984, I think they have lied so much that they actually believe it all.

And they wonder why the rest of us have begun to see them as increasingly irrelevant to our daily struggles with reality.

In the meantime, the circulation of The Albuquerque Journal is about to be decreased by at least one household. Why should I pay those reporters good money to tell me what to think about events they were too lazy to actually cover?

Tea Party: We Stand Here This Day . . .

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

--Thomas Jefferson

"You stand here this day, all of you . . . you elders

and you officials . . . you children, you women,

even the stranger that dwells among you,

from woodchopper to drawer of water--

to enter into the covenant . . ."

--Devarim 29: 9 - 11

In the original standing, the people stood to enter into the Covenant of Israel. Yesterday, between 7,000 and 10,000 New Mexicans stretched over three miles, gathered along one of the busiest roads in Albuquerque; they stood to say this:

"We stand here this day, affirming our First Amendment rights:

we elders and we children, we men and we women,

even the strangers that live among us, all of us,

from our professors to our drive-by ice cream vendors,

to say to our servant government: Restore our Covenant,

the Constitution of the United States of America . . ."

The Engineering Geek and the Boychick hold the signs up against the wind behind the Independence Grill.

Flags, including the sign of a nation in distress,

in the parking lot in front of the

Independence Grill, as the Albuquerque

Tea Party gets underway.

The Chemistry Geek Princess joined us on the northwest corner of Montgomery and Louisiana, and took her turn holding one of our signs up agaisnt the wind.

Many of the vehicles driving by honked their horns, and gave signs of support. Some sported flags, like the SUV that has the American flag,

the Army Ranger flag, and another.

This mom is protesting the overly generalized DHS report that was released just before the Tea Parties. Any of us who support the Constitution--limited government, the Second and Tenth Amendments--are now extremists. A Homeland Security Vehicle did drive up and down the street, filming us all.

We are all extremists now!

Along with the American flag, many people had different versions of the Gadsen Flag: Don't Tread on Me. My favorite was the New Mexico Libertarian Party'a rattlesnake (not pictured). The legend on it says: I Dare You to Tread on Me!

Many signs dealt with the bailouts, and the fascistic nature of recent Federal actions, such as nationalization of the banks and the automobile manufactureres.

Many signs had historical references:

This sign refers to King George III's plan to make the American Colonies into Crown plantations, in which the residents were to be essentially indentured servants to the British Crown.

Now, the same stark choice confronts us. Do we live free or do we become tax slaves?

My favorite! If we are radicals, we are in good company.

George Washington (picture blew off in the wind) said:



“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”



This is probably enough to get our First President on the DHS list as an extremist, too!

There is a three minute video that features a drive along the road with commentary by the radio station that was broadcasting live. It can be found here.

Ready for Tomorrow!

I went with the big signs and lots of red, white and blue!

The Engineering Geek went for smaller signs. He may be wiser as we will be holding them up for approximately three hours!

The Boychick is the only one of the three of us who got his picture making signs on the Albuquerque Tea Party website. (He's in one of pictures sitting at the head of the table wearing a white jacket. In another, you see his face as he is standing). He did not bring any signs home, he is going to pick one up there. Or he will wave the flag.

Now, as we put the signs on the pickets, we are rocking out to the Tea Party Song by Lloyd Marcus. Enjoy!

Party Like It's 1773!

On Wednesday, Tax Day Tea Parties will take place in approximately 3000 cities from sea to shining sea . . .



These Tea Parties are grassroots movements of Americans from all walks of life who are fed up with our government spending us into oblivion.

This movement is neither right nor left, neither liberal nor conservative.
Most of us are equally angry at the people who sit on both sides of aisle,
and who, for the past 12 years have told us the beguiling lie that we can spend ourselves into prosperity.

Our anger is not aimed at a particular administration; it is at our representatives in Congress who have not listened to us, and are so arrogant that they do not even bother to read and understand the bills they vote on. It is about bills so full of pork spending, that like TARP, they grow from 4 pages to over 900 pages.

It is about Senator Chuck Schumer, who does not think that We the People "care about pork."
It is about Senator John McCain, who thinks that a cap-and-trade tax on emissions is a good idea in the middle of a recession. It is about former President George W. Bush, who pushed for and signed the TARP spending bill. And it is about current President Barack Obama, who pushed for and signed the so-called Stimulus Bill.

New Mexico Tax Day Tea Parties:

Albuquerque: 4/15/09 4 - 7 PM, The Indepedence Grill, Louisiana and Montgomery,

Alamagordo: 4/14/09 6 - 7 PM, Corner of Florida and 1st

Carlsbad: 4/15/09 5 - 6:30 PM, Courthouse Lawn

Farmington: 4/15/09 12 - 1:30 PM, Farmington Museum and Visitor Center, east side parking lot

Hobbs: 4/15/09 4 - 6 PM, Lea County Event Center, south side parking lot

Las Cruces : 4/15/09 4:30 - 8 PM, March from Loretto Town Center to Johnson Park

Moriarity: 4/15/09 12 - 2 PM, Crossley Park

Roswell: 4/15/09 5:30 - 7 PM, March from Pioneer Plaza to Chavez County Courthouse

Ruidoso: 4/15/09 4 - 7 PM, Wingfield Park (corner of Center and Wingfield)

Santa Fe: 4/15/09 5 - 6:30, The Plaza

Silver City: 4/15/09 12 - 6 PM, Gough Park

Taos: 4/15/09 11:30 AM - 1 PM, Taos Plaza

Oops, I almost moved Clovis out of the post:

Clovis: 4/15/09 12 - 1 PM, Curry County Courthouse

Information about Albuquerque, the other Tea Parties in New Mexico, and the Tea Parties in surrounding states, can be found at Albuqerque Tea Party.

Let's party like it's 1773!

Here's to You, Mr. Jefferson . . .

This is too good not to share . . .




And don't forget Mr. Santelli, who hit a nerve and started the Tea Parties.

This seems right in line with the Festival of Freedom! Now I am getting my enthusiasm back.

What Must a Free People Do?

Yesterday, the Engineering Geek and I attended a public meeting about the We the People Organization's 2009 Continental Congress.

At the meeting, we met Bob Schulz, the founder of the We the People Organization, who is traveling to cities in every state of the union in order to develop a mass movement to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Bob Schulz is a man with a gift and a passion. An engineer by training and trade, he is thorough in his analysis of problems, and he has a passion for Liberty, and thus for the Constitution, which was written to restrain our government and protect our unalienable rights.

The road to the We the People Continental Congress began when Bob went to a municipal public meeting at a firehouse in upstate New York. The public meeting was about an upcoming public works project, and Bob rose to ask a few questions, since the project concerned a discipline he knew well. Evidently, his questions were a little too incisive, because the pols involved refused to answer them publically, and instead wanted to discuss the matter privately. But Bob wanted his questions aired and answered before the town meeting. The incident eventually led to a lawsuit, because the project was not beneficial to the town, but was intended to line the pockets of a few of the pols in charge. Bob won. And the town retaliated against him when he went to subdivide his property to fund his nascent government watchdog group, We the People. He accepted a gig as an afternoon drive talkshow host on his local radio station, and from talking to callers, Bob began to realize the extent of corruption in state and national politics as well. When he realized that the Federal government is in violation of nearly every article of the United States Constitution, Bob began to study that document.

The moral of the story: Politicians! Beware an engineer who develops a passion for a problem. Bob consulted Constitutional scholars, and his organization went national. Bob developed a particular passion for what he calls "the capstone right of the First Amendment": the right of the people to petition their government for redress of grievances. In his presentation to the concerned citizens of New Mexico yesterday, Bob traced the history of this right from the Magna Carta to the Constitution and beyond.

The Magna Carta, which was signed by King John at Runnymeade, England, in 1290 (at the point of a sword), was the document that forced the king to share power and recognize the rights of Englishmen as understood by English Common Law. The English were not about to accept an absolute monarchy which was a violation of their customs and traditions. In the Magna Carta, the redress of grievances is guaranteed thus:

“If we, our chief justice, our officials, or any of our servants offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence is made known to four of the said twenty-five barons, they shall come to us - or in our absence from the kingdom to the chief justice - to declare it and claim immediate redress.
If we, or in our absence abroad the chief justice, make no redress within forty days, reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or to him, the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children, until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon. Having secured the redress, they may then resume their normal obedience to us.” Magna Carta, 1290

(The Royal "WE" is employed here to mean the monarch).

Thus, the great tradition of Court Days, upon which the monarch sat outside in the courtyard and heard the petitions of even the most humble of subjects was born. The American colonists brought that tradition across the Atlantic, and continued to insist upon their right to petition for redress and be answered. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders justified their separation from England and their right to form a new government upon the fact that King George III and Parliament answered repeated petitions for redress only with repeated injury:

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by with repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is thus unfit to be the ruler of a free people….” Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

(The capitalizations here are not just quaint colonial fashion, the mark specific concepts coming from the English Common Law).

In the Constitution, the right for Redress of Grievances is the capstone of the First Amendment, a right from which the other First Amendment rights are derived:

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, freedom of the press; or the Right of the People peaceably to assemble, and to Petition the government for a Redress of Grievances.” First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, 1791.

This right was cherished by the People of the United States up until 1830. Every Monday, petitioners came before the relevant committees of the United States Congress to air their grievances and receive an answer or the promise of a written response. In 1830, the southern states forced a "gag rule" to shut down the abolitionists, and the use of this right faded. . .

. . . Until 1995. In that year, Bob Schulz and his We the People Congress began a series of Petitions for the Redress of Grievances to all three branches of the Federal Government. These petitions all addressed grievances caused by the violation of the United States Constitution. Such petitions included:

• the violation of the monetary clause by bailing out the Mexican Peso (1995)
• the violation of the Constitutional ban on the direct unapportioned tax on labor (the income tax) (1999, 2000, 2001)
• the violation of Article 4 by use of the USA Patriot Act (2002)

There were many more, and a complete list can be found here.

Although the topics of the peoples petitions are interesting documentation of percieved injury, the content of the answers are not at issue; what is most important is that the government is required to respond, just as the King of England was. And none of the petitions thus far have received a response. No. Response. At. All.

What is a free people to do? As Bob says, "The Constitution does not defend itself." The Federal system of government is not Sovereign; As Alexander Hamilton put it, "Here, Sir, the People govern." It is the people who are Sovereign. And our rights are individual. Every individual has the right to petition and must be answered.

According to the Declaration of Independence, if the government instituted by the people at the consent of governed becomes tyrannical, the people have the right, derived from the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to dissovle that government and institute a new one that will protect their rights. The rights belong to the individual. They are inherent in the nature of human beings; they are not a gift of government. The government exists only to protect those rights.

What must a free people do? This is the question that the 2009 Continental Congress is intended to answer. It will be a gathering of three delegates from every state in the United States. It is not a Constitutional Convention; it is a Congress at which the delegates, will consider the violations to the constitution by our government, ennumerate them, take note of the efforts of the People to Petition for the Redress of Grievances, and then consider and determine what the next step must be.

At this point, the People must take action to secure their Liberty once again. Taking a page from Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, Bob Schulz and the We the People Organization believes that three things are needed for successful action: it must be proactive, non-violent, and come from a mass movement. Thus the Mission of the 2009 Continental Congress is:

"The Mission of the Continental Congress is to end and reverse violations of the Constitution of the United States of America by educating Americans on the issue of petitions for redress. We will do this by acting in a proactive, non-violent, constitutionally based course of action to restore the original intent of our Founding Fathers for the free people of our Constitutional Republic." (WTPCC Powerpoint, e-mailed from Bob Schulz on March 21, 2009).

Although there will only be three delegates from each state, this movement will need local and state support, because the acts of civil disobedience that will be required as the course of action, can only be successful if a sizeable minority of citizens engage in them.

At our meeting, there came a moment when those who are willing to act to protect and defend the Constitution were asked to stand. The Engineering Geek and I, along with a sizeable majority in the room, did stand. We were mindful of the words of Thomas Paine:

"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 by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." (The Crisis, December 23, 1776).

Our founders pledged to one another "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" in the cause of Liberty. If we want our children to receive their inheritance of Liberty, the time has come to act. For otherwise, in our old age, we will watch them toiling as indentured servants to the National Debt. It will take generations to pay for the pork and the earmarks, the acts of an irresponsible government at war with reality.

Banding Together: The ABQ Tea Party and the East Mountain 9-12ers

Yesterday, I blogged about the problem.


But as we used to say in Chemistry 101 Lab: If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate. (You know, that stuff at the bottom of the test tube).


Not wanting to be precipitated out, some of us have been moved to do something to take our country back.

Albuquerque, New Mexico is at the heart of Manana-land, a place where it's too nice outside to bother getting grumpy, and where the patron system is alive and well.

But even we have gotten excited by the unprecedented speed at which the past few federal administrations have sold us down the river.

It may not be Boston, but Albuquerque is going to have its very own Tea Party on Taxx* Day.





*Yes, I know what Webster says, but if any word deserves to be a four-letter word, that one does!

______________________________________

Last week, a group of us here in the East Mountains got together to watch the Glenn Beck "We Surround Them" special, which was a response to the sense that there is no common sense, and that those of us who uphold the Constitution are quite alone. This has become the 9-12 Project. (No, Glenn is not putting together an army for revolution, this is about us raising our own voices).


We decided to keep meeting, to plan to participate in the Tea Parties, and to support one another, as many of us work in places where speaking our truths leads to being shut down. Thus, we have begun the East Mountain 9-12ers. I am planning to begin the book club next month.





The patriots of the American Revolution gathered in churches and taverns to discuss the issues of the day and, as Samuel Adams said, "Hatch much treason," in their quest for liberty. They did everything they could to petition their government in England for redress of grievances, before they gave the reasons for their Declaration of Independence to a candid world. In his book Democracy in America, written a generation later, Alexis de Toqueville was impressed at how passionately Americans gathered and read and studied their principles and applied them to the issues of their day.


We mean to do the same,except that we do not intent to hatch any treason; the treason is being hatched by our government in its ongoing violation of our liberties. By our Constitution, the government is answerable to us and exists to protect our rights. In order to take our country back, We the People must know our history and live the principles upon which this nation was founded. That is our purpose. I believe the tax revolt, in the form of the Tea Parties now brewing, is the first shot in the across the bow in the Second American Revolution.


We mean it to be a peaceful and principled stand for the liberties and rights so secured to us by the Founders.

Common Sense Round-Up and Thomas Paine Reincarnated

Our fearless leaders over at Congress think we are incredibly low I.Q. or else infinitely distractible. They want us to believe that they are now suddenly upset by the bonuses they knew about months ago. They are asking us not to pay attention to that man behind the curtain in order to begin ex post facto taxing of specific groups of people as punishment. For more on why the AIG Bonus Scandal is a distraction:

• See Hey, Look AtThat Shiny Thing over at Consent of the Governed
• Check out Glenn Beck's rant, Let Them Eat Cake!
• And Cafe Hayek is serving up bonus wisdom with Quote of the Day and The Rule of Men

Of course, once Congress begins excise taxing as a weapon in the class war, the Rule of Law will be history. They can then tax any group anytime they want as much as they want for whatever reason they want. It brings a whole new meaning to the idea of taxation without representation.

Make your blood boil? Well, there's more!

Congress recently went on a crusade to make the world safe for Chinese imported toys with lead in them by wiping out the American competition with the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which among other things, means a ban on buying, selling or lending out children's books published before 1985. And now, there's a new law proposed that will make those home grown tomatoes illegal.

For more on CPSIA:

• Check out Lavender Blue, Dilly, Dilly from the Common Room, and while you're there check out all their CPSIA stories. The Headmistress has been following this one for a long while!

For information on the proposed new food bill:

• See Total Governmental Regulation of Food Production at Consent of the Governed
• Farmer Ernie's post On HR 875 over at Deliberate Wanderer
• HR 875 Would Essentially Outlaw Family Farms over at Shepard on Politics
• The Food Police at Campaign for Liberty

Sigh. As Will Rogers said, "No one's life, liberty or property is safe as long as Congress is in session."
We are clearly at the mercy of a federal government that is out of control.

We are being spent, taxed and regulated into oblivion. This is tyranny. Consider Edward Cline's blog entry on The New Intolerable Acts at the Rule of Reason. The patriots of 1773 did band together to oppose what they also called the coervice acts. They understood that they were being prepared to become a nation of indentured servants.They acted with reason and on principle to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their children. We are being molded into tax slaves. The debt that is being racked up now to secure the power and privilege of our legislators will drive our country into ruin and enslave our children and grandchildren. In the end, it will not work. The United States will be both bankrupt and a tyranny.

We've got to take our country back. There's a guy on You Tube who dresses like Thomas Paine, and sounds like him, too. I agree with his outline of the problem in his video, as he talks about our "unrepresentative representatives."

DISCLAIMER: There are several of TP2's solutions that I vehemently oppose, such as the violation of liberty that is compulsory service. Nevertheless, his statement of the problem is right on!

Of Comments, Congress and Tea Parties

Although I moderate comments, I generally post most of them unless they are spam or unless the commenter continues to refuse to read plain English. This latter characteristic is the one that caused me to decide to moderate my comments in the first place. I wrote some blog entries last spring (Don't Call It Science, The Annointed and the Benighted, All Those Wasted Years, Feeding the Trolls) that received comments from several people who 1) refused to comprehend what I wrote and 2) continued to make assertions based on what they wanted to think I wrote. It was all quite entertaining for a few go-rounds, but quickly became wearisome to the point of . . . well, moderation.

Sometimes, a commenter has something to say that I believe warrants a more thoughtful discussion, and sometimes one will say something that needs a wider refutation. And sometimes, I just want to be snarky.

The other day, in the middle of my mourning for Zoey (she was such a good dog), I got a comment that fulfills (at least) the last two aforementioned criteria. It was in response to this post about the disgraceful machinations used to pass the so-called stimulus bill. Anonymous wrote:

'If you guys knew anything about politics you would know that the bill was read by congress and many committees, and the presidents administration was present when the bill was made."

First, the snark. Notice how this person did not want to put his name or link on the comment? It's a sort of drive-by insult, as evidenced by the the snotty "if you guys knew anything about politics . . ." Of course we have no way of knowing whether or not Anonymous knows anything about politics, but we do know that he knows nothing about the limitations on human reading speed.

FYI, the upper reading speed limit in humans is approximately 900 words per minute. Speeds higher than that would require super-human eye-tracking speeds. Then there are limitations on comprehension speed that are set by the speed at which electrical signals travel along axons, and are transduced into chemical signals at the synapses. All of these things take time. Although in the normal course of events, these processes are speedy enough that we do not even notice them, microseconds and milliseconds do add up over the course of a long document.

And then there's the attention factor. According to Levin's Law, the ability to pay attention to a text is directly proportional to the number of words in plain English and inversely proportional to the number of terms presented in legalese. This text was therefore likely to be in the red zone for sleep-inducing boredom.

Anonymous has clearly not done his homework about the neuropsychology of reading. Nor has he taken into account the fact that the attention factor was enhanced by the time of day (after midnight) that the Congress was supposed to read the final form of the bill.

The fact is that no person was likely to be able to read the final form of the bill, including wording changes hand-written in the margins, between the time it was accessible and the time Nancy Pelosi's plane for Rome took off that evening. And that is assuming that the person is simply decoding English and Legalese (these are two different languages); real comprehension--which includes establishing an internal dialogue with the text--of a bill this fat would have taken days.

So Anonymous, you should do your homework. It is likely that those "many committees" contributed more words and more pork to an already wordy bill. But I doubt that they read the whole and complete bill. Of course, this begs the question: Can a committee read? Especially one made up of pols? If Chicago pols can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and since at least one member of Congress is a Chicago pol, as are several members of the Executive Branch (including POTUS), one could convincingly argue that such committees do not have the physical coordination necessary to read.

That the presidents administration (sic) was present when the bill was written is also likely an unfounded assertion. Perhaps certain members of the adminstration were present during the writing of certain portions of the bill, but again, a bill this fat is likely an unredacted hodge-podge from different authors. The time factor alone would be good evidence that this is the likely case.

So much for Anonymous' argument.

Going beyond the argument, however, I can't help but wonder about Anonymous' purpose in making this comment. If he knows more about politics than we "guys" do, then why would he defend such a shoddy and ineffective process? Why would he want Congress to pass bills that are so large that they cannot even be read before a vote, let alone actually (gasp!) debated?

From my perspective, the machinations of the party-in-power were made precisely to prevent anyone from knowing what was in the bill and to prevent any reasonable debate.

By way of contrast, let us consider The Declaration of Independence. When placed in a word program with 12 point font, it covers ~3.25 pages; it is comprised of 1,328 words, including the title, but excluding signatures. It took the Continental Congress from June 28th to July 4, 1776 to discuss and debate the document and to make text revisions. (Although Congress declared American independence on July 2, 1776, as the British fleet under Admiral Howe was sailing into New York Harbor, it did not adopt the Declaration of Independence until July 4). The discussion and debate was substantive and dealt with important implications of what was stated in the document. The debate was heated and partisan (the southern colonies actually walked out at one point), and no attempt was made to stifle opposition. This is a real-world example of how Congress ought to proceed in doing the work of our Republic.

However, this Congress did no such thing. This bill was nearly a thousand pages long, and was seven inches thick. No one person or even one committee could have possibly known all that was in the Bill. When the final form came before the house, they were given 90 minutes for debate on it. The opposition, though not stifled, was accused of being partisan (as if this were a bad thing) when some members protested about the way in which the bill was brought to the floor, and the lack of time for substantive debate. This is a real-world example of how not to do the work of our Republic.

I do not know if Anonymous is trying to make my protest into a partisan issue, however, I am not a member of either major party. I made the same kinds of arguments against the Patriot Act as I have against this bill. Although I do not like the provisions in either of these two bills, my protest is directed against the way that Congress works. No bill needs to be that long. And no bill should be passed without substantive debate.

The hurry to get the bill passed was irresponsible, even if the bill itself had been about "stimulating the economy." This phrase begs another question: Can government stimulate an economy? When considered empirically, by testing what happens to the stock market whenever an administration official makes an economic pronouncement, it is likely that the answer is yes. The government can stimulate the economy by keeping the pie-hole shut. What we need is "mouth shut" economics. Hmmm. How does one say that in French?

But this bill was not really about stimulating the economy. It was about spending money the government doesn't have on the agendas of politicians at the taxpayer's expense. And that is why it was passed in the way it was. Why debate the issues and possibly lose, when you can just hide them in an emergency spending bill? That this is taxation without effective representation doesn't appear to bother the pols of either party.

Which is why we need a party of our own. America's Tea Party.