Read John's Show Preview 5PM Show Open John Andrews, Karen Kataline, and Matt Stark
5:30PM Guest: Dan Gainor
6PM Guest: Chuck King and Troy Nissen
6:30PM Guests: Scott Walter
7PM Guest: Dr. Doug Groothuis
Your waistline: the latest global warming culprit
In case you were wondering what's next on the global warming/climate change agenda -- which is the same as the Obama agenda -- you may not have to look further than your (growing) waistline. A new study in the UK as reported by the BBC has found that getting back to the "slim trim days of the 1970s" would help to tackle climate change: "The rising numbers of people who are overweight and obese in the UK means the nation uses 19% more food than 40 years ago, a study suggests.
That could equate to an extra 60 mega tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, the team calculated.
Transport costs of a fatter population were also included in the International Journal of Epidemiology study".
Apparently, then, that spare tire that you are more likely sporting today is not only less attractive to look at, but takes more fossil fuels and carbon to carry around town. In addition to calculating the increased food costs of the heavier population, the research also addressed how much additional fuel would be needed for transportation of modern-day UK compared with the 1970s version:
"Greenhouse gas emissions from food production and car travel in the fatter population would be between 0.4 to 1 giga tonnes higher per 1bn people, they estimated."
But lest you think this might lead to a campaign against obesity, the self-esteem police are making sure that everyone's "fatness" is to blame:
"This is not really just about obese people, the distribution of the whole population is what's important," said Dr Edwards.
"Everybody is getting a bit fatter. Staying slim is good for health and for the environment.
"We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change."
So, we're all at fault for not being able to fit into those 70s era hip-hugger jeans and tight knit tops with the wide stripes (not to mention the platform shoes). One wonders whether the fashion of the 1970s followed our collective level of slenderness, or whether those tight-fitting fashions and non-breathable poly-blends forced us into a perpetual state of starvation. Whatever the cause-and-effect, the eco-fanatics are now targeting our food consumption as the latest attack on mother earth. It's quite in line with the other prohibitions of personal enjoyment that are now on the chopping block, like taking that family vacation in your fuel-guzzling motor home or driving that V8 Dodge Charger you've always wanted. Nope, from now on you'll squeeze your tight little bum into a Prius and enjoy the rev of that high-performance electric motor -- that sweet hum only a committed tree-hugger could truly enjoy.
In any event, stay tuned. You can bet that this is the next agenda on the Obama mission to remake America. Last year I wrote a piece entitled "The Left's Nanny Aspirations", where I detailed attempts to ban smoking, fast-food and other sins. Left alone, these efforts -- linked to public health considerations -- pose a significant threat to our freedoms. But being able to link our eating habits to climate change will flow nicely with the EPA's recent ruling that CO2 is a pollutant that threatens our health -- even if it is the most common element in the earth's atmosphere. Finding a causal link to global warming should put us on notice that further regulation of our food consumption is coming. You can bet that second helping of potatoes on it!
Useful idiots & how not to be one
The term “useful idiots” was attributed to Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin describing intellectual idealists persuaded to adopt communism. Later after a fait accompli, with their idealism supremely disappointed and dangerously reactive, they would of course have to be eliminated. Wikipedia explains how Lenin’s, “‘useful idiots of the West,’ described Western reporters and travelers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West.”
From www.usefulidiots.com , the question, “Why This Web Site?”: "Useful idiots is a name no group of people would like to be called. It is however, what most Americans are relied upon to be by the powers that be. When the voting segment ... allows itself to fall for the same old word games and mind manipulation, it sadly earns the title of useful idiots ... too many Americans are naive about their political ‘system’ and its politicians ... America is a land of plenty. Plenty of food, plenty of money, plenty of gods, plenty of corrupt politicians and alas, plenty of useful idiots that repetitively vote for them.”
From five million Coloradans, 65 House and 35 Senate members emerge to serve public office in the Legislature. They take an oath to support the Colorado and U. S. Constitutions. This is their only required oath -- not to their constituents, the government, their political party, nor the citizens, voters and taxpayers of Colorado, not even to their families or themselves. Just to the rich heritage, words, meaning, expression, majesty and magnificence of those documents.
Question: How many elected officials have read both documents, before or after entering office? The oath presumes familiarity with, understanding of, and a full, recent read and determination to honor them. Otherwise it’s easier to create, cultivate and control “useful idiots.”
Officeholders are prote cted in this ignorance. Those who voted them into office too are “useful idiots.” They have little familiarity, interest or knowledge of those documents whose power is to contain and control only the government, not the people.
Once public officials, they are in intimate contact with “the system” – elected colleagues, special interests, partisan political parties, government bureaucracy and employees, bond dealers, lobbyists and friends of same, and far removed from those who sent them there. The Legislature meets for 120 days creating legislation presumably to make Colorado a better place. However, officeholders’ limited political, economic, business, financial, constitutional and governmental acumen put them at the mercy of the true, long-term professionals, well-paid, who know how to manipulate people, opinions, legislative bills and votes.
With accompanying “spotlight and applause,” many of these “useful idiots” can be persuaded to perform in ways anathema to what they otherwise would want done, or perhaps more importantly, not done. They sponsor, sign on to, or support bills that on their face violate their oath of office and the Constitution.
Examples of the Useful Idiot Dodge (UID) are abundant. Colorado’s executive, legislative and judicial branches too often misapply, misinterpret or ignore the Constitution when it threatens their agenda or very existence. Good job, “useful idiots,” on the following:
** “FASTER” legislation politically morphed an in-fact tax increase into an automobile fee increase, to obtain more revenue, and avoid submitting it to the electorate, in compliance with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution.
** The General Assembly could have put on the ballot a gasoline tax increase, but no. Instead, this UID was an intentional end-run around TABOR, depriving taxpayers of their power to accept or reject this tax increase.
** The general assembly enacted a mill levy freeze to increase tax revenue to the schools, to provide the general fund more money to spend, again without a vote of the people, a UID for a billion dollars over the next ten years.
** Boisterous assault on TABOR, with a power-hungry and derelict Democratic Majority in the House, Senate, Supreme Court and Governorship. The next TABOR-forbidden UID target, is the 1 992 Bird-Arveschoug six percent growth limit to the General Fund, conservatively interpreted and highly respected for 17 years, is now being plundered to allow for easier, less confined state spending.
** The current target is to throw Colorado’s nine electoral votes into a consensus pool of other states, making null and void the Founder’s concepts. The 222-years-old Electoral College was crafted to protect the small versus big states. Requiring a consortium of states to support one national candidate/party is a UID that shrinks the power of Colorado voters. Is there no limit?
William Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” That’s the tragic tale of today’s “useful idiots.” While in office they are conned into legislative actions that are long-term anathema to what their Founders and Freedom Documents, their children, grandchildren, even themselves; and unborn, unrepresented generations in the future would want. But once in, laws stay. Good job, “useful idiots.”
Conversely, realization is how legislators can get beyond being “useful idiots.” They first realize the Founders created a system of limited government and self-governing people, that government is to protect the people's rights and property, that its financial impact was not to overspend, overtax or over borrow, that its Founding document, the Constitution, was meant to control the government, not the people. When the people put in place an amendment to the Constitution, it is not up to the legislators to flail it to oblivion, but to respect and abide by it. Inconvenient, frustrating or difficult? Deal with it.
How can one avoid becoming or being an elected official or citizen “useful idiot?” Six steps:
1. Read, understand, know, preserve and protect America’s and Colorado’s Freedom Documents--Declaration of Independence, Constitutions and their incredibly important Bills of Rights. Lesson: Master the basics, the fundamentals of a successful society.
2. Build your knowledge and understanding of history’s fundamentals -- its ideas, philosophies, ideals, events and actors, heroes and villains. “Who knows only his own generation remains always a child,” is chiseled on a building at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Lesson: Grow up.
3: Read. Watch. Listen. Think. Understand. Lesson: Get and stay informed.
4. Quit being a civics dropout, constitutional illiterate or citizen slug. America’s Republic (not “Democracy”) is not a spectator sport. Lesson: Become aware, interested, informed, concerned, involved and active in what is going on.
5. Share your information, knowledge and concern. America’s educational system leaves too much out. On many talk shows I told listeners too many Americans are “dumbed down, numbed up, tuned out and turned off.” We need to turn them back on, to a country and future of Freedom and destiny. Lesson: Share true personal Freedom and political Liberty.
Sixth: Seeing a “useful idiot” committing a UID, pounce on it. Lesson: It’s up to you.
President George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Louis D. Brandeis said, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men (and women) of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Nobel Laureate Economist Dr. Milton Friedman, “Our problem is not ignorance. It’s what we know that’s not so.”
Note: The term “useful idiot” is not meant in any way to disparage, deprecate, defame, denigrate or demean the word “idiot.”
Let's keep teapot hot
Slated on Backbone Radio, Apr. 19 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver... 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.
Americans, lots of us anyway, are jealous of our liberty and alarmed by the threat to it in 2009 from what I call the "five bigs" -- big government, big business, big labor, big education, and big media. That's the message from this week's remarkable grassroots upsurge of Tea Parties across the country. Was the whole thing somehow staged, as Gibbs, Pelosi, and CNN have suggested? Absurd. Its genuineness was obvious to all who took part.
But was this a one-off spring fling with no sustained impact? That's an open question, and the answer is up to us. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 fueled a growing citizens movement that led America to nationhood. Whether the current protest becomes a movement or remains a mere gesture, depends on you and me.
Backbone Radio will do its part to keep the teapot aboil. Please join us this Sunday.
** I'll talk with Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center about MSM coverage of the Tea Parties. It wasn't their finest hour.
** Plus Chuck King, dean of the business school at Colorado Christian University, who is chairing a free-enterprise summit next week... and Scott Walter of the Becket Fund, who has diagnosed the civics deficit on our campuses.
** Plus an hour with Douglas Groothuis from Denver Seminary, exploring the moral and spiritual foundations of limited government and individual freedom.
"Give me liberty or give me health care; liberty or stimulus; liberty or bailouts," was not the view of the patriots who founded this Republic. Nor should it be ours.
Let's keep the left in hot water, JOHN ANDREWS
How relevant are Tea Parties to GOP?
What next? The Tea Party movement is simply not going to be co-opted by the Republican Party. It's not a creation thereof, and it'ssimply not made for the kind of team politics required by any political party.
In order to benefit from the movement, the Republicans will have to earn their trust, and prove that they mean to live by what we say are our foundational principles - smaller government, lower taxes, more personal liberty. The Republicans can benefit from the movement, but they can neither control nor direct it.
In any event, the next elections are over 18 months away, the next nomination assemblies almost a year out. What can the movement accomplish in the meantime?
This is a movement tailor-made for the initiative process. To push initiatives that clarify for an intentionally myopic State Supreme Court that TABOR means what it says; that retain our control over an initiative process whose purpose is to rein in the legislature; that reassert our state's prerogatives as a sovereign entity, not merely an administrative district for the federal government.
This answer will make Republicans uncomfortable, since by definition, it doesn't involve getting them elected. But it does involve teaching these newly-created activists how to organize for action, getting them savvy about the political process, and creating results that will get them taken seriously by those who matter right now. It's a valuable tool in the maturation process of a movement that should be the party's natural allies in showing - again - that our ideas, when present free of personal political ambition,win.
It's one reason why the Democrats - even now - are plotting to make the initiative process, the one process in state government they don't control - subject to as much rule-bound litigation as possible. They are co-opting Republican goodwill in cleaning up potential fraud, spinning it as a mutual belief that the citizenry needs to be brought under control.
At the end of the day, Republicans have enough institutional staying-power to be there when the movement has matured. Libertarians are simply not going to get elected to anything, although libertarian-leaning Republicans can. The party may have to wait to reap the benefits of this movement, and certain team members may find themselves uncomfortable with certain agenda items they have to sign onto. News flash: not all Democrats are socialists, although that's the agenda of the party.
Too many Republican office-holders and office-seekers will be unhappy with this answer. But if the party tries and fails to control the movement, it will be seen as irrelevant and meddling. If it tries and succeeds, it will only strangle the baby in the cradle. Colorado has one of the most open and welcoming citizen initiative processes in the country, for the time being. Let's make the best use of it for our ideas, and if we deserve it, the elected offices and day-to-day governance will come our way.