Big Government

Democratic Party of Oak Park Grassroots Planning Session, Oak Park, IL; Tea Party/American Majority Grassroots/Activist Training, Oak Lawn, IL; 50th Wedding Anniversary Party, USA

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On June 11, 2011 I went to the Democratic Party of Oak Park Grassroots Planning Session at the Oak Park Public Library. It was run by OFA, Mr. Obama’s campaign organization. It was open to the public, so I walked in, to check it out. It was an interesting gathering. Many people from local government were there. There were also many people who were experienced activists who travelled recently to Wisconsin, and who were working for Mr. Obama in other states during the 2012 campaign. Oak Park’s activist community is to the Midwestern Democrat Party what India was to the Victorian Empire, a bottomless source of manpower that pays for itself and can be used for campaigns around the region. It was expressly stated at the meeting that Illinois is a source of manpower for other battleground states in the region. This is one more cost to Republicans of having declined so far in Illinois.

The speakers seemed to have trouble describing themselves. They never used the L word, so I guess they are not liberals anymore. Oddly, the word Progressive was not used as a regular thing, either. I thought Progressive was the new orthodox label. There were several awkward locutions, such as “people who want to bring about change” and “people committed to change.” I suppose the idea is to keep the idea of “change” in the forefront.

For these folks, the 2012 campaign is now on, full blast. It was impressive for an outsider to see the size and energy of the group gathered on a Saturday 17 months before the election.

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Nevil Shute Norway

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One of my favorite novelists is Nevil Shute. He was an engineer, as was I, plus he writes about people with an ability to show their humanity and their deeper motivations without a lot of explanation. He is the engineer’s novelist, the businessman’s novelist and should be on every list of conservative novelists. I have read all his post-war novels, most of his wartime novels and a selection of his pre-war novels. He died in 1960 and all his books are still in print.

I was a college student when “On the Beach,” possibly his most famous novel, came out. It scared me so badly that I have not been able to enjoy rereading it, as I have his other books. I was a college sophomore and familiar with his other work at the time. I had read his aviation novel, “No Highway,” and was aware that the plot device in that book, of metal fatigue causing a new airplane to crash without explanation, had been prophetic. Shortly after “No Highway” had come out, the British Comet jet airliners had begun to crash and, when finally identified, the cause was metal fatigue.

Shute had written another prophetic novel in the late 1930s, called “Ordeal,” which predicted the effects of the Blitz on London. Both of these books, with their predictions borne out by history, caused me to be very shaken by “On the Beach.” A rather successful movie was later made from this novel, which Shute hated because it had suggested that the two principle characters, played by Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, had slept together while he believed it important to establish their morality, even when doomed.

I very nearly dropped out of school after that book and spent a year or two getting over the idea that I would soon be fried in a nuclear war. My reaction was based as much on my regard for his novels as for the topic, itself. A quite good movie was made from “No Highway” with James Stewart, Glynnis Johns, and Marlena Dietrich.

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Live up to the Snake! (Name the Snake.)

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I have been going off about how we have to have a countervailing image to the Obama 2012 image in the zero, on a blue field, which I am already seeing all over the place.

The Gadsden snake in the zero, on a red field, is a good placeholder until the GOP has a candidate — and hopefully after.

We need a GOP candidate whose name can proudly be matched with the snake.

We need a GOP candidate who is serious about cleaning up the mess.

We need a GOP candidate who is not a squish.

We need a GOP candidate who will live up to the snake.

We all need to live up to the snake.

We need a name for the snake.

I don’t think the snake has ever had a name.

There’s a first time for everything.

I propose Ronald Gadsden Rattlesnake, a/k/a Ronnie Rattlesnake a/k/a Ronnie Rattler.

Ronnie for obvious reasons.

Your proposals are solicited. It will have to be really good to be better than Ronnie Rattler.

Snake 2012 stuff here.

Bleg for a Hack of the Obama 2012 Logo

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I was at a very interesting meeting today, of local Democrats getting organized to reelect Obama in 2012. I sat in and mostly listened. Bottom line, they are energized, but kinda bummed about the whole rotten economy and no jobs thing. They have an impressively large number of people already committed to working hard to reelect Obama, a year and a half before the election.

One thing I am noticing is that there are already lots of Obama 2012 bumper stickers, t-shirts, and posters all over the place, with this image. While I was at the meeting I got an Obama poster and I was thinking of a way to hack it to serve our own purposes.

I am hereby requesting that someone with awesome skilz make a version of the Obama logo but changed in the following ways. (1) take out the text; (2) make the blue background red; (3) take out the current zero with the Obama logo, and replace it with a yellow circle with the Gadsen Flag Rattlesnake. Keep the white border and the same typeface so it is clearly a satire of the Obama image.

Below the fold is my scissors version to get an idea of what I mean by (3), but the zero should be yellow with a black snake and a green branch underneath, like the typical Gadsden flag.

The idea here is to create an image that is in opposition to Obama’s reelection, that draws on Tea Party imagery, and the GOP “color” but is not associated with any candidate, since we don’t have one yet. Plus, the rattlesnake is directed against not just Obama, not just the Democrats, but against go-along-to-get-along Republicans as well. The total absence of text allows it to assume a range of meanings.

I think it is important to start getting countervailing images out so that Obama and his supporters do not have all the visual space for the next year before a GOP candidate is selected.

If anyone does make this, please send us a link or an email via the blog.

UPDATE: (Please note bleg to turn this into real stuff.)

UPDATE II: Gadsden 2012 Stuff Now Available!

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Why I like Coolidge and why we are not recovering.

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I spent the past six months reading about Calvin Coolidge. I was interested in why the 1920s were a period of great prosperity and why the severe recession/ depression of 1920-1921 was so short. At its peak, there was 25% unemployment. Gross domestic product dropped by 6.9% in one report.

The recession of 192021 was characterized by extreme deflation — the largest one-year percentage decline in around 140 years of data.[2] The Department of Commerce estimates 18% deflation, Balke and Gordon estimate 13% deflation, and Romer estimates 14.8% deflation. The drop in wholesale prices was even more severe, falling by 36.8%, the most severe drop since the American Revolutionary War. This is worse than any year during the Great Depression (adding all the years of the Great Depression together, however, yields more severe deflation). The deflation of 192021 was extreme in absolute terms, and also unusually extreme given the relatively small decline in gross domestic product.[2]

The Harding-Coolidge administration took office in March 1921 and the recession was over in months. Why ? Governments were smaller then and had less influence on the economy. The Wilson Administration has been widely described as the equivalent of a fascist regime with its war time controls and economic meddling. Again from the Wikipedia article:

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