Yes, that’s me.

I stumped for Bush, rallied during the recounts, and some of my actions during that time became the subject of a few pages in a book about politics.

I’ve been a member of more political forums that I can recall. Been kicked out of most of them for being belligerent in a sub-culture that’s centered around belligerence, for being too liberal for Conservative sites, and too conservative for Liberal ones.

I’ve owned a few forums that I don’t want to admit to and I’ve hosted Internet radio stations from the comfort of my home office, passing  myself off as “real” talk radio long enough to interview a few prominent politicos, authors, and people whose main claim to fame was that they had a claim to fame.

I am an intense guy when it comes to politics.

I was once so caught up in an election campaign, that I forgot my wedding anniversary.

I managed to secure last-minute dinner reservations at a swanky restaurant in Las Olas, and would have possibly been forgiven by my long-suffering wife, had I not gotten into an argument with the guy at the next table.

His transgression? The unforgivable sin of disagreeing with me on the legitimacy of chads, and the constitutionality of the Supreme Court’s decision on Bush v. Gore.

I slept on the couch a lot while the Florida vote was settled in late 2000.

I am the deadly enemy of good, because I know no politician is perfect and I know how to Google, so every fact is checked and every claim made substantiated…I don’t let much get by.

I have my principles. If you don’t like them, then you obviously don’t know what the Hell you’re talking about.

Yep that’s me. Bad Groucho.

That’s why I am somewhat baffled at my apparent disconnect with this year’s GOP primaries.

Mind you, it isn’t that I am disinterested in the upcoming Presidential election, in fact, if anything, it is my tunnel vision-like focus on that contest that is driving my attitude toward the primaries.

In the past, my actions during this portion of our political process, have always been driven by a steadfast conviction that my vote should be cast for that individual whose values, style, and character most closely resemble mine own. In my mind, the quality of the candidate was no more or no less than a measurement of how his politics fit my ideological structure; to pick that candidate, my ego and my superego held several meetings, arrived at a decision, pushed my id asides, stepped into the voting booth, and pulled all the levers.

Simple, economical, and rather tidy.

I have a problem.

This year, my id is out of control.

I think that it already has the ego bound, gagged, and duct tapped to a wall in some deep, dark corner of my psychic apparatus’s wood shed, and I swear I heard the superego scream like a girl and run for cover.

This year is about instinct.

Survival instinct.

I’m watching the primaries like a man who after crawling through the Mojave, spots six glasses of muddy water on a table; some murkier than others, but all of them water. I don’t really give a damn which glass I get…I’m going to drink it down like it’s a glass of my Sainted Grandma’s hand-squeezed limeade.

I’m going to lick my lips when I’m done.

The way I see it, when you’re thirsty, REALLY thirsty, the quality of that muddy water becomes less of a concern than the need to abate your thirst, so in relation to one’s needs at that specific point in time, quality becomes defined as that which best suits the occasion. Muddy water, ANY muddy water that you have, is water of better quality than no water at all, or that water that you wish you had.

The quality of the water is now deduced according to what best fits your current situation.

That’s why I’m so damned Zen about the GOP primaries. I know exactly what I am doing, and there’s no strife in my life.

As a good friend put it a couple of weeks ago, I am voting for the Republican Party nominee, no matter who that is.

Let me illustrate that point.

If that ballot reads:

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS (VOTE FOR ONE)

(DEMOCRATIC)

BARACK OBAMA/JOSEPH BIDEN – president/vice-president

(REPUBLICAN)

TUNA SANDWICH/SIDE OF CUCUMBER SALAD – president/vice-president

I am voting for the tuna sandwich/cucumber salad ticket, and doing it with an absolutely clear conscience; just as it was the case with that muddy water, I will act with little more than my basic drives engaged.

Let the id rule and instincts act.

There are others out there who are still caught up in that world where analytic discussions of the qualifications of a candidate go on. I still read the columns and the commentaries on the weakness of this candidate, or the electability factor of this one over the other one. I am even able to somewhat enjoy the internecine conflicts between the factions on my side of the political fence, but I am Zen.

The time calls for being in the moment, it demands reaction.

I am Zen.

Any water is my water.

I am Zen.

Good is good enough.

I am Zen.

Any horse in the race is my horse.

I am Zen.

Anybody but Obama.

I am Zen.

I am in the moment.

I am Zen.

With very few exceptions — Mariano Rivera comes to mind, as well as Curt Schilling, and post-“Prime Time” Deion Sanders — athletes’ professions of faith strike most believers, nonbelievers, and agnostics alike as empty ritual, an extended solipsism in which big men with bigger egos congratulate themselves for having God on their side.

Somehow that doesn’t seem to be the case with Tebow, and to be fair, I’ve made plenty of cracks about him over the years, all while he continued to win games, emblazoning his name on the NCAA record books with amazing ease and humbleness.

Foster’s article does justice to Tim Tebow, and manages to make me more than a little ashamed of myself for joining the choir shouting down from the maenianum secundum; it makes me inspect my own values.

By contrast, Tebow is the last Boy Scout. A leader on the field and off who spent his college years not indulging in any of the worldly pleasures afforded to Heisman Trophy winners, but doing missionary work in Thailand; helping overworked doctors perform circumcisions in the Philippines (you read that right); and preaching at schools, churches, and even prisons.

Perhaps that explains the reaction to Tebow’s religiosity…it slaps us all in the face with the fact that we should all be more like him, and less like ourselves. However being like Tim Tebow takes dedication and hard work, tearing him down to our level is far easier, and not as demanding an endeavor for those of us whose energies are otherwise directed at the more “meaningful” tasks of tweeting and facebook “poking”.

In these times we live in, when the leader of the free world finds common ground to stand in solidarity with entitlement syndrome-driven public defecators, it is little wonder that we shun those among us who remind us of our vast imperfections.

I fervently hope that Foster is incorrect however, I hope that there are more Boy Scouts out there, and that soon they’ll take Tebow’s lead.

We could sure use a little more Scout’s Honor, and a whole lot less OWS entitlement syndrome in this world we live in.

Great quote:

“Compared to the people in politics, the baseball fans are geniuses. When you look at income data and compare it with baseball data, baseball data follows a specific person throughout a career. Income data followed lots of people and they are not the same people in these income brackets.”

The problem with the whole “the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer” thing is that in America, both those sets of people are in constant flux, and all who are rich, do not necessarily all remain rich, while all who are poor do not always remain poor.

In fact, “income mobility has been large and upward in the past ten years for those starting with below-average incomes; 80 percent of taxpayers had incomes in quintiles (statistical value representing 20% of a given population, in this case, taxpayers) as high or higher in 2005 than they did in 1996, and 45 percent of taxpayers not in the highest income quintile moved up at least one quintile.”

The “few at the top” thing doesn’t represent unfairness, or inequality in any kind of a system. That “few” remains constant whether you discuss millionaires or Hall of Fame quarterbacks, as a percentage of their respective populations.

It isn’t everyone’s cup of café (with or without leche, depending in your taste), but that it is a beauty among cities in the Southeastern United States, is a fact that is hard to deny.

A place of palm trees and Tropical breezes, her beaches are the playground of the Caribbean, and she is home to the rich and famous, the beautiful and the brash, royalty and the mega-rich, Miami could make an argument that it deserves the title of city that never sleeps.

Miami is the Cruise Capital of the World, and with its multi-billion dollar per year trade industry, she is the Gateway to the Americas. Brickell Avenue, near Downtown, is home to the largest concentration of international banks in the US, and with AIG, American Airlines, Cisco, Disney, Exxon, FedEx, HP, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Oracle, SBC Communications, Sony, and Visa locating their Latin American Operations Headquarters in Miami, right alongside the corporate headquarters for Univision, Telemundo, Bacardi, Ryder, Arquitectonica, Burger King, Benihana, Pollo Tropical, AutoNation, Citrix, DHL, Spirit Airlines, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean, and Carnival Corporation, Miami is an economic giant.

In fact, in 2009, the Swiss global financing company UBS ranked Miami as the 4th richest city in the world, and both the richest city (in terms of purchasing power), AND the third poorest city (according to incidence of family incomes below the poverty line) in the United States.

One would THINK that Miami would attract the undivided attention of the Occupy (fill in the blank) Movement.

That’s what I thought anyway, so I decided to go check this thing out for myself, maybe even engage some of the group’s activists in a healthy debate.

I Googled “occupy Miami” to find them, and off I went.

Mind you, I know that the myriad of available activities in South Florida, not the least of which being simply finding a spot by the surf to stretch out your beach towel, tends to overwhelm the native population with options on how to spend their free time, which made me wonder just exactly WHO would have the time (and inclination) to protest in our city. This is something that impacts the local professional teams to such a degree, that it caught that sharp eye (and wit) of none other than The Onion’s writing staff.

The Marlin’s “third-from-the-bottom” performance is only challenged by the Miami Dolphins, who appear to be standing on the shoulders of the boys of Miami’s summer, in order to rise to 29th out of 32 NFL teams in attendance. Dolfans are a strident, resilient lot however, and they manage to still hold on to that undefeated season, back when Shula was King, and Nixon was President.

They also have Marino’s records.

No rings, just records.

These days Dan appears in TV ads for both Hooters and Nutri-System. Maybe, he should figure out that Hooters + wings = a need for Nutri-System.

But I digress…

Oh!

Did I mention our hockey team?

We have one you know.

Anyway, my Google search produced some newspaper articles about the Occupy Miami Movement, and things seemed odd.

Occupy Miami movement tries to get organized

Dozens of protesters remained camped outside the Miami-Dade Government Center on a rainy Sunday, trying to further organize their movement.

Outside the Miami-Dade Government Center, where county commissioners regularly pass laws, more than 50 people — from college students to middle-aged parents — sat in a circle Sunday, trying to establish their own set of rules.
How would they respond if confronted by police? Should they accept monetary donations, or would it compromise their case against big business? Would they recycle?
They gathered in downtown Miami for the second day of the Occupy Miami movement. Fourteen canvas tents on a grassy plaza at the rear of the center now house “occupiers” who hope to copy the month-old Occupy Wall Street movement . The New York City protest started on Sept. 17.

That article was dated October 10, nearly a month after the start of the occupation of Wall Street, and these guys are still trying to get started?

Is there such a concept as anarchoapathy!

Fifty people?

You can get more than fifty people staring at the ceiling in any Mall in Miami if you just stand there and stare at it yourself for longer than five minutes.

More than fifty people show up at any empty Miami parking lot where Latin Burger and Taco announces that their food truck will be serving Macho Burgers and Chicken Tomatillo Tacos for lunch on any given day of the week!

Fifty people is the normal lunch line at La Camaronera, and not even a decent crowd at the Versailles’ coffee window in Little Havana!

John McCain finds out that not even the GOP nominee can get away with jumping the cafecito line at Versailles.

So off I went to find this, the core of the New American Revolution, the brain thrust of the Populist Democracy Movement in action in Downtown Miami, and I am here now to report my findings.

That’s it.

Twenty tents and three dozen people being gawked at by another three dozen curiosity hounds, and just like that, the revolution finds out what the Marlins and the Fins already know…South Floridians don’t waste their time on losers, and with a large population of refugees from places where wealth redistribution went from slogan to practice, they sure as HELL don’t have time for a bunch of soaking wet Socialist malcontents blathering about what they ain’t got, and trying to sell envy and entitlement as something other than…well, envy and entitlement.

So, my guess is that Occupy Miami will eventually figure out that Miami is otherwise occupied, and it will slither away quietly into the warm Tropical night without so much as a parting whimper.

If these guys were really serious about attracting some attention, they should pay closer attention to Latin Burger, Burger Beast, and The Gourmet Food Truck Association, and get some Gourmet Food Trucks to roll up to their “camp”.

Let the Pincho Factory, gastroPod, Big Kahuna, Ms. Cheezious (Oh man! Their grilled Swiss and Gruyere on Country White Bread is out of this world!), El Rey de las Fritas, The Fish Box, Nacho Bizness, Sugar Rush (You have GOT to be adventurous to try their Maple and Bacon cupcake, but you won’t regret doing it) and a few others set up shop near your protest, with Latin Burger holding center court, pumping out Macho Burgers (that’s a chorizo, chuck and sirloin burger topped with oaxaca cheese, caramelized onions and jalapenos with your choice of their secret avocadolicious sauce or some red pepper mayo) faster than you can say “Che Guevara is dead” and watch Miami respond.

They’ll learn a few things too.

They’ll learn about Miami, about how to get people talking to one another, and most importantly, about economics in a free market system.

If they pay close attention, they’ll figure out that the culmination of a good idea combined with hard work is success, and that the best way to profit from the success of others isn’t to demand to share in their rewards, or to whine about not being successful, but rather to imitate their work habits and try to become successful yourself.

There was a time, not very long ago, when there was only Latin Burger and Taco working the streets of Miami.

Now THAT’s how you run a revolution!

I get it.

I get the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and I am signing on.

Who cares if we don’t all have exactly the same message, the point is that we get out there and voice our opinion, that we rage against the machine, that we empower those of us who have been left behind by that elite who control all that is pure, all that is real, all that is at the core of everything that IS America.

I get it.

I am ready to embrace the movement.

I am going to put up a tent.

I am going to hoist up a sign.

I‘m gonna let my freak flag fly!

Won’t you join me?

Join me in standing up for the 2.6 million kids who leave their hearts out on hundreds of thousands of Little League fields across the nation, NO…across the WORLD, every year. Kids whose names are NOT enshrined in that Country Club of Baseball Elitism known as the Baseball Hall of Fame, because it is reserved for that top .001% of players; only the elite need apply.

Occupy Cooperstown!

Why should one thousandth of one percent of all baseball players control 100% of the space in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Reject the Politics of Glory.

Let everyone who has contributed to the game share equal recognition. Promote contribution equality and reject the obscene glory greed in display in Cooperstown.

Take little Timmy Ofterdworfl.

Timmy was a member of the Prineville Dodgers.

Timmy only played three games before he got his uniform dirty and was forced to leave the game he loved so much by his mother. The important thing isn’t that he never got on base, or that he would swing two and three times at one pitch. It isn’t even that he got his uniform dirty when he tripped over a sprinkler on his way out to his right fielder’s position and left the game crying.

What’s important is that Timmy tried, and that the possible damage to his self esteem and to the self esteem of millions of kids just like him brought about by the unequal distribution of space in the Halls of Glory Greed at Cooperstown is downright unfair.

I sent out a Twitter, and am excited at the responses from other activists in the iCloud Revolution. I can feel the anger building up in parents’ basements and unfurnished efficiencies across America where kindred spirits rage against the establishment.

I want to thank the members of “Occupy American Idol” and the “W.U.A.T.F” (Women’s Urinal Assault Task Force) for their support, and send out a big, organic, solidarity (non-aggressive) fist bump to the “Boomerang Kids for Free Xbox Live” movement out in Hillcrest.

Occupy Cooperstown!

We are the 99.99%!

Announcement: Our next organizational meeting has been moved to the Starbucks on Melindre Ave, so please do not show up at the Dunkin Donuts on 5Th and Callaway, as they will probably call the authorities if you do. And once again PLEASE refrain from bathing in Starbuck’s restrooms, as we are running low on meeting places and don’t want to lose another one.

A town so small, so insignificant that it was absorbed by a slightly larger town, so that they together could form a small city…if Melbourne, FL (current population @78,000) could be called a city even today, 40+ years after the merger.

I attended High School in that town; a High School named after a town that didn’t exist, and had not existed for a few years before I walked its hallowed halls.

In that High School, named for that non-existent town, I played in the Marching Band. I cheered one season after another for teams that won few games and brought little glory to that town that wasn’t there anymore.

Eau Gallie, Florida, my home town.

Even the Microsoft spellchecker software questions its existence.

That’s where I grew up; the sort of town that everyone wants to BE from, but not live in.

I recall talking about leaving, in fact, I remember most of my friends talking about leaving, and our tickets out of that town that didn’t exist were as diverse as dreams of young people have ever been.

Some held tickets to Universities, some to military service, others just thought that they would buy a ticket to ride, and go wherever life took them, so long as the town had a name.

My ticket was my music. A ticket out of that horse-with-no-name one-horse town, my music would set me free from the drudgery of its mundane mediocrity, so I threw myself at it with ferocity bordering on desperation.

I studies and practiced, and WORKED at the music…and I listened.

I was going to DO things with my life.

I immersed myself in the music of the times, the music of those of us who make up the last hurrah of the Baby Boomer generation, the generation that would give birth to Gen Xr’s, Millennials, punk and grunge, WE MADE serious music…

“Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming…”

Music with a message…

“You know we’ve got to find a way, to bring some lovin’ here today…”

Important music…

“Imagine…”

It was in the midst of dreaming all those important and significant dreams, dreamt in that insignificant town that wasn’t, that an unusual song hit the airwaves. An absurd ditty that didn’t address the issues of the day, or the need for change, or even the cosmic reality of a world gone mad, this thing sounded like a children’s nursery rhyme set to basic chords.

This silly little tune spoke of “bows and flows of angel hair”, of “ice cream castles in the air.”

I was flabbergasted, couldn’t turn the dial fast enough when it came on. In fact, it angered me when the limited range of choices of radio stations available to me in that nowhere/somewhere town that I was trying to escape from, were diminished by this “song” receiving airplay.

I didn’t want to hear about “feather canyons”, I wanted to see canyons, travel West to California, or North to the Big Apple, a city so big that it had to be named twice…New York, New York was the logical place for me to be, so that I could then say “I am from a little town…nowhere really” when asked.

So I dreamt in that town that wasn’t, played songs for High School teams that bore the name of a city that was not one and cheered them to few victories, while spending my idle time doing whatever was available to do in this “zip code, nothing follows” place where I grew up

“We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do…”

So, I got out.

Life is a funny thing. The conscience of our generation would say in one of his last messages to us, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”, and he couldn’t have been more right.

So life happened, and here I am.

I’ll spare you the sordid details of the years and decades that have gone by, we all have our stories.

I’ll not talk about the times that my heart was broken, or my spirits uplifted.

I’ll not talk about the losses and the gains and the times when dreams I’d never dared to dream came to be.

We all have our stories.

I’ll tell you instead about a subtle paradigm shift of earth-shattering proportions, and how life happens when you’re busy making other plans.

I was planning just to “check my status updates”, maybe see if anyone had sent me a PM…facebook jargon unique to this day where socializing more often than not includes no true interpersonal contact, and I saw a seemingly innocuous post:

“If you grew up in Melbourne, Florida, then you remember…”

…and something inside me stirred.

It just so happened that just a few weeks prior, in a weird sort of coincidence, I had spent the night on that town with no name.

Returning to South Florida from a family vacation in Georgia, I opted to take my parents for a quick trip through our past; they are aging and I thought that they would enjoy seeing some old friends.

We drove Mom and Dad through that little town, pointing out every nook and cranny that contained a memory to my wife and kids, and there were so many nooks and crannies.

So many…

The houses, the schools, the parks, the exact spots where we would jump fences and cut through yards as we walked home from school; we named them all; I remembered them all.

I remembered the place where I learned to drive, the place where I broke my nose, the place where we went swimming with Pete…gone too soon.

I must have seemed crazy to my kids when as I excitedly pointed to an empty spot on the side of the road and told them that I used to work there.

There was no “there” there, the building having long been razed to the ground.

So many memories…

The park where we played ball during summer vacation; my oldest son was incredulous “you played ball?”

We showed the kids the distance between our house and the Junior High, and just as my dearest friends and I were amazed just months earlier, so were my kids: ”you didn’t have busses back then?”

The Hospital where their uncle was born and the field where I dreamt dreams of being somebody, I remembered those places as well.

Some memories came to my heart and my mind and remained unspoken, but they were there nevertheless.

So many significant places in that insignificant little town where I grew up.

So many…

We took pictures of places we hadn’t seen in decades, places that in spite the passage of time felt strangely familiar, and…warm.

That’s an odd thing to say, isn’t it?

But yet, there was warmth to these streets, to these parks, to these old houses badly in need of my father’s tender care, they felt like…

…home.

Home.

I was home.

How in the world had I missed this all these years?

How badly broken had my internal compass been that I had forgotten what it felt like to be home?

This nameless, insignificant little town held every significant memory of my youth; held my concept of home.

Tenderly, carefully, quietly, held them there for me all these years, and I swear to you that when I walked in those fields, I heard the impossible echoes of our youthful voices, ringing through the crisp, summer morning air, rising up to the clouds above.

“If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts.”

It was days after returning home, after spending hours laughing and crying over the collective memories of the members of that facebook group that I ran across a video, and the final ZING of that paradigm shift set in.

I was trying to capture the essence of the old songs, the serious music, the music with a message, the important music, and an old song popped up in my screen.

“Bows and flows of angel hair…”

My hand went to the mouse, to click on the next selection, but something stayed its course.

“…and ice cream castles in the air…”

Had I missed something here as well?

“…and feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way.”

Maybe, I should listen a bit.

And I did.

And as the words flowed from the speakers, I got it.

I finally got it.

It’s all right there, it’s all about the ever-changing, ever-shifting clouds that makes your life, YOUR life.

It’s life’s illusions, it’s the dreams and the schemes, the circus crowds, the tears and the fears, and the times you can say “I love you” right out loud that make up your memories, these are the things that make you unequivocally you.

And sometimes, it’s only after you’ve looked at life from both sides, that you can truly understand this.

Then, and only then, is when you can begin understanding clouds.

Or understand what home is. What home means.

Everything is perspective, and what you see when you look at a cloud, depends on where you’re standing as you gaze at it.

The same applies to life.

So, if you could, if I may, if you would be so kind as to indulge me, I would like to start this story all over again.

I spent my formative years in the most amazing town…

In Hardball last week, host Chris Matthews suggested that Newt Gingrich was making a racist statement when he said the following in a speech in Georgia, earlier that same week:

“You want to be a country that creates food stamps, in which case frankly Obama is an enormous success – the most successful food stamp president in American history, or do you want to be a country that creates paychecks?”

This, according to Mathews and David Gregory, amounts to racism.

So, mentioning food stamps is racist in nature.

My question is…how so Chris?

Simple: the true racism at play in the video above is being exhibited by Matthews and Gregory.

THEY are the ones making the association between blacks and food stamps, THEY are making the statement that food stamps = blacks, then THEY assign their racism to Gingrich.

Fact…Forty seven million Americans are currently receiving food stamps.

Fact…According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are roughly 40 million blacks in America today.

Fact…Blacks in America represent a third of food stamp recipients, and a quarter of America’s black population receives food stamps.

So how exactly, is mentioning food stamp usage a racial issue associated with the first black President, unless the individual making the accusation is in fact engaging in racism by perpetuating the notion that blacks = food stamps, and believing that the connecting actually exists?

Then, they set upon Gingrich on another, similar remark:

Once again, Mathews projects his racist beliefs. He makes the connection between the collapse of Detroit and the city’s black population, not Newt. Gingrich simply pointed out the more obvious theme: the collapse of a liberal economic model, versus the success of the economic model of a Conservative State.

Gregory and Matthews assigned their racism to Gingrich, attacked him for something he never said, and made him defend their own racist beliefs.

In the next election cycle, Progressives will frame the Presidential election as a black vs. white contest, with anyone who claims Conservative beliefs being painted as a racist. It’s actually a rather sad state of affairs.

Howard Smith put it in perspective way back in 2009, during the Health Care Reform debate:

“In our great country there simply is no behavior more outrageous, no statement more contemptible and no crime more dastardly than those dealing with racial hatred. When the accusation of racisms is casually leveled at every Tom, Jane and Harry for no better reason than to cause mass hysteria and to keep opponents quiet, not only would it not work but it diminishes the impact of the word itself. If becomes nothing more than an euphemism for someone who disagrees with Obama. This may actually be the greatest harm these fools are doing to America.”

Here we are, and these are the fools.

Welcome to Progressive Neoracism…plenty more to come in this next election cycle.

Hat tip: Ed Lopez

Follow me…

The Constitution reads “”No person except a natural born Citizen, OR A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE TIME OF THE ADOPTION OF THIS CONSTITUTION, shall be eligible to the office of President.”

The carve out for the first generation is interesting; if the only requirement for the office was being born here, and understanding that all the Founders were born here, then no carve out would have been needed…yet, there it is.

Then comes the XIV Amendment and eliminates all distinctions between persons born citizens, and naturalized:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

Now, the XIV Amendment enjoins any State from making any law which would create an inequity between people born citizens, and people who came about their citizen status via act of Congress (naturalization) YET, WE KNOW AND WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT NOT TO BE TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO RUNNING FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

I can prove this easily…we accept that being born here is not sufficient to qualify for the office of President, yet we don’t actually know that.

Reason with me.

If simply being born here and a citizen qualifies one for the office of President, AND considering that the XIV Amendment erases all legal differences between people who acquired their American citizenship by being born in the US, and people who acquired it via naturalization, then Arnold Schwarzenegger qualifies for the office…right?

Of course not, and no legal expert would argue to the contrary.

How is that possible, when the XIV Amendment erased all legal distinctions between persons born citizens, and persons who became citizens via naturalization?

The only possible answer to that question is that a natural born citizen acquired their citizenship status via something other than simply location at the time of their birth, and that carve out in Article II section 1 of the US Constitution, tells us that you either had to be here and alive at the time the Constitution was ratified, or you had to be that mystical natural born citizen.

At birth, Barack Obama was a British subject, in accordance to British law…his father was a British subject.

We may argue about the exact definition of “natural born citizen”, but to argue that the Founders would include in their definition an individual who was born AFTER the ratification of the Constitution, holding dual British/American citizenship as a “natural born” American citizen makes absolutely no sense.

The birth certificate is a red herring, always has been.

Speaking in Nevada, the President told the audience that the task force would “root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that nobody’s taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gains.”

One might argue that the most significant thing impacting oil prices right now is the massive devaluation of the US dollar, brought about as a result of massive amount of money we have printed in the last two years.

Still, gasoline is nearing that $4 a gallon mark, and I am interested in who is making the most money from all those gallons of gas, so I decided to see what the folks over at FactCheck.org had to say on the subject:

Q: Does the government really make more in taxes from the sale of a gallon of gasoline than the oil companies do?
A: Possibly. Both taxes and profits account for a large share, but which is larger depends on too many unknown factors to allow for a clear answer.

OK…it’s complicated. That’s what they’re saying, right?

Here is their conclusion:

A publication from the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s principal lobbying arm, displays a graphic stating that “taxes” made up 15 percent of the price of gasoline at the pump in 2007 (that figure comes from EIA) and showing a figure for “earnings” (a measurement API prefers to straight “profit”) of 8.3 percent. This figure is the average earnings for the industry per dollar of sales.

On closer examination, however, that 8.3 percent earnings figure turns out to be after-tax income. The pre-tax profit margin would be considerably higher.

Wait a minute.

The government makes @15% on a gallon, and the oil companies make about 8% AFTER taxes.

Should we not then add that the taxes collected by the government from the oil companies to that 15% the government gets form us at the pump, in order to calculate how much the government makes from the sale of a gallon of gas?

Isn’t THAT what the government makes?

So, if they get 15% at the pump, and they get a significant amount of money from the oil companies (it must be significant, after all, FactCheck.org says that the oil company’s “pre-tax profit margins would be considerably higher”) then it is feasible that the government’s take on the sales of one gallon of gas may be as high as three times what the oil companies make on the same gallon.

Let’s speculate that the tax at the pump is 15%, and that corporate taxes are 10%. That means that the government gets $1 for every $4 gallon of gas each one of us buys.

Mr. Obama…save yourself the cost of that task force.

I think I found the problem.