Editorial Director’s Note:

Hoo boy, here we go. Last week’s piece from contributing editor Jim Amrhein led to a huge outpouring of mail – a bigger response than anything we’ve seen since the “Should GM be saved” debate.

One reader asked (rather peevishly), “Is [Jim’s view] the political view of Taipan?” To which the answer is an emphatic “NO” – not because we repudiate Jim, but because there are no “official” views here. Some within our ranks may agree, and some will deeply disagree. It’s a free country. We’d rather make you think than keep you comfortable.

Of those who wrote in response to part one, half of you thought Jim was spot-on... and the other half? Well, let’s just say you were more than a little upset. For those among you who wrote Jim off as a stark raving liberal, you’re about to get quite the surprise.

You weren’t shy last time, so once again let it rip: Still disagree with the Al Gore call? Still have the same opinion of our lovable editor at large? What say ye on global warming? Hit me with your thoughts and I’ll pass ‘em along to Jimbo: justice@taipandaily.com

Warm Regards,

JL

To George W. Bush, With Love (part two)

By Jim Amrhein, Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

Buckle your seat belt, because Jim Amrhein is back and ready to rumble. Many readers found Jim out of line in slamming Bush and pining for an Al Gore presidency... today he sets the record straight.

“There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”

– George A. Custer, sometime before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, 6/25/1876

“I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my hanging.”

– George W. Bush, at a portrait-hanging in his honor, 1/4/2002

To those of you who called me the standard tripe like “idiot,” “a**hole” and “moron” after part one of this series — or who remarked that I’m brainless, heartless, head-in-the-sand or full of fecal matter — I say:

Puhleeze. Sticks and stones, people.

However, after years of being lambasted by those who liken me to Limbaugh and O’Reilly, it’s nice to now be able to round out my collection of publishing kudos with “liberal,” “socialist” and my personal favorite: “left-wing loon.”

And all of this for daring to point out the truth — in a tongue-in-cheek manner, by the way — that former president George W. Bush did most of the heavy lifting in his own downward spiral from history’s best-loved American president to its most hated.

To those of you who “got it,” and wrote in to commend me for the chuckle or to commiserate as frustrated Republicans, I extend a hearty “thanks.”

But judging by your feedback, I’m shocked at how many right-wingers refuse to accept the irrefutable truth that George W. Bush shot his own presidency in the foot — and set his own party back decades in the process. My repeated shots at Obama in my first essay notwithstanding, your zeal in crucifying me for ostensibly having gulped the Democrat Kool-Aid for exposing this fact in print is vivid proof that denial trumps objectivity…

I found this vitriol especially amusing, since I’m a lifelong card-carrying Republican who voted for Ron Paul in the primary and lesser-of-evils McCain in the presidential election. And as a Harley-cruising, gun-using, bourbon-swilling, bambi-killing, pickup-trucking, pinup-loving, speak-English-and-build-the-damn-fence NRA member, I’ll stack my right-of-center street cred up against most anyone, thank you very much…

Which is exactly why I’m disillusioned at having been more or less disenfranchised from true small-government, conservative-libertarian, Reagan-esque Republicanism by George W. Bush’s presidency — because I’m a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and he’s not. The Decider’s 800lb.-gorilla-who-shoots-from-the-hip foreign policy, spend-like-a-drunken-sailor budgetary antics, and surveillance-happy, guest-worker-friendly, strip-search-at-the-airport domestic agenda have got me asking myself: “Dude, where’s my party?”

And if you’re a true Republican — a member of the “conservative” party — you should be asking yourself this same question instead of vilifying a brother who has the guts to speak out…

George Armstrong Bush

Lest ye think me only a fair-weather Republican, I’d like to remind longtime readers of mine (and inform new ones) that I’ve suffered far worse derision for defending George W. Bush in the past than I did at your hands over the last week for skewering him. Back in late 2006, at the Iraq War’s nadir of popularity, I had the unmitigated gall to write a two-part series of essays speculating about possible justifications for the Iraq War that the mainstream media weren’t talking about…

Think I didn’t get a coast-to-coast ass-chewing for that — from liberals and true conservatives alike? I still have the teeth marks.

And one final comment on the Iraq War, since so many of you wrote in to bitch at me about how I don’t understand anything about it. Well, I understand this much:

In a world where the way things actually are is meaningless compared to how they appear, even Forrest Gump should have been able to see that invading and occupying Iraq without an overwhelmingly obvious-to-all-the-world justification was a stupid move, from a purely political standpoint. In my opinion, it was the biggest political blunder in U.S. history thus far — except perhaps when that other famously arrogant George, Mr. Custer, spoiled a solid chance at the presidency with that little mishap at the Little Bighorn.

Even if there ARE top-secret, vital-to-American-security strategic justifications for the Iraq action (and there may well be, as I’ve said before), anyone with half a brain could tell you that — lacking the ability to disclose the justifying intelligence — the obvious appearances are that the Iraq War is about oil, or about W’s unresolved daddy issues.

Neither of these appearances is flattering to a sitting president or his party.

I, for one, find it incredible that a so-called “genius” like Karl Rove didn’t foresee the long-term drubbing his own party was going to take over this obvious truth. I can only hope that history somehow reveals a justification for the Iraq War that will have been worth the GOP’s hari-kari over it...

Seriously, for the Republican party to recover from its own political ham-fistedness, U.S. forces would have to miraculously unearth a nuclear missile with “Shalom, Israel – Love, Saddam” scrawled on its nosecone in Arabic — or some other smoking gun of similar threat-magnitude — from under the tennis courts of one of Hussein’s tucked-away palaces.

What are the odds of that happening? Slim and none.

Besides, the damage to our nation is already done — and it’s sitting in the White House and on Capitol Hill right now, wrecking our economy by doling out hundreds of billions of your tax dollars to people and entities that universally do not deserve them...

But this would never have happened if Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000.

Warming Up to Al Gore

Like all true liberty-loving conservatives, I can’t stomach Al Gore...

But I still wish I’d have voted for him, along with a few thousand more septuagenarians in the Sunshine State in 2000. That’s because if Al Gore had beaten George W. Bush at the turn of the century, I’m convinced that he’d have been far LESS effective at advancing his militant environmental agenda than he has been as a movie star and junk science profiteer...

And I truly believe that this one issue — “global warming,” “climate change,” “green energy,” or whatever else you want to call it — will end up costing the U.S. more money over time than any other thing except Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, and will compromise more of our liberties than anything since the yoke of British tyranny.

But more on all that in a minute. Right now, let me explain why occupying the Oval Office would have hobbled Gore’s green agenda, not facilitated it. As President:

• He’d have had to fight a Republican Congress (at least until 2003) tooth and nail for any regulatory burden on taxpayers or American industry.

• He would not have been able to proselytize his gree-ligion too heavy-handedly without being accused of abusing his office’s bully pulpit.

• He would not have been able to write and publish his book, produce his TV shows, or star in his, er, documentary as a sitting President.

• He’d never have been able to form the horribly conflict-ridden business entities that now make him rich without risking impeachment for misuse of power.

Conversely, in losing the election in the martyr-like manner portrayed (ensured) by the mainstream media, Gore was freed from the scrutiny, restrictions and responsibilities of presidential office — while still enjoying a level of exposure and name recognition that would rival a sitting president.

Warm-monger Gore then shrewdly parlayed this free time and lack of duty and oversight into celebrity and wealth beyond any realistic expectation he could have ever harbored before the 2000 election. Most recent estimates peg Gore’s booty chest at well north of $100 million, and I’d bet anything that his name recognition rivals W’s...

The reason this matters is that public opinion drives policy.

And the American public, for a variety of reasons both sound and mystifying, are swayed to a much more profound degree by celebrity than by the words of politicians. That’s why Barack Obama was such a stellar candidate, despite being far less qualified than other Democrat front-runners — he was already a quasi-celebrity. Some argue that he was elected because of it.

But Al Gore doesn’t have this “rock star” quality innately. As president, his militant environmental agenda would have had to survive his historically clumsy defense of his own bloated policy decisions and double-talk — delivered, as always, in his own wooden mannerisms and tone-deaf rhetoric.

Of course, as president, Gore might have had some degree of success at furthering his pet agenda while in office (like tougher CAFE standards or maybe keeping the U.S. involved in Kyoto Protocol regulation) — but he’d have had nowhere near the unilateral victory on this issue that Barack Obama and a Democrat Congress will enjoy, now that Hollywood has transformed Gore into the Bono of tree-hugging...

But as I mentioned above, because he wasn’t elected, Gore was liberated from public duty and the scrutiny and skepticism that comes with it — which allowed him to leverage the power of movies and celebrity to hoodwink the American public into favoring the “green” measures that will ultimately bankrupt them...

And in no small part handing the election to the one man who WILL carry this agenda to the farthest reaches of Gore’s wildest fantasies: The Big O himself, Barack Obama.

How W = O

In a nutshell, here’s why a staunch Republican like me would love to get into a time machine and go back to 2000 to not only vote for Al Gore, but go to Florida and campaign for him...

I truly believe that instead of getting ready to kick off into mega-buck, bankrupt-us-all policy high gear (Obama mentioned his green agenda twice in his inaugural address), America would have been over the global warming hysteria years ago, had Al Gore been elected President.

But instead, Gore became a New York Times bestselling author (again) and a Nobel Prize, Oscar and Emmy award-winning “documentary filmmaker.” Gore’s newfound status as a tier-one celebrity and credible scientific voice of note — however unlikely, absurd, or surreal this seems — is one of the primary driving factors that has shifted the Democrat party line hard-core green in recent years.

I also believe that under four or eight years of Gore’s antics, the country’s political pendulum would have swung so far to the right this past election that we would not have elected a president — no matter how big a rock star — who’s very likely about to:

• Destroy the U.S. dollar
• Take away our guns and Second Amendment rights
• Legitimize terrorist states with one-on-one talks
• Fling even wider the doors to illegal immigration
• Bankrupt us with bailouts of undeserving companies
• Capital-gains, consumption, and income-tax us into oblivion
• Enact Socialist healthcare policies his party’s been salivating about for years
• Drive energy costs up by crippling the heart of the U.S. electricity industry: coal
• Reduce our transportation options to those that resemble electric roller skates — or are hydrogen-fueled and driven by government employees (woohoo, jobs!)...

And God knows what else. Seriously, I have no clue the depths of what the Big O, Pelosi, Reed, Biden, Kennedy, and company are going to come up with. Whatever it is, though, it’s going to cost us all a bundle.

Further, I believe that if Al Gore had been elected president, his response to 9/11 would have been similar to W’s — except for perhaps that questionably constitutional Patriot Act thing. Oh, and that little bit about invading Iraq. Gore probably would not have done that. The appearance of going to war for oil might not have been consistent with a “green” message...

Tough to say, though. Gore’s not the most consistently principled fellow, either — if his own energy usage and willingness to profit off pseudo-science is any indication.

Needless to say, a Gore presidency would have saved the Republicans from the ignominy of spearheading the invasion of Iraq (again, from a political and appearances standpoint). Of course, I still hold out hope that history somehow justifies this play and restores the GOP to a place of forward-thinking rightness, based on hard intelligence in hand...

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that history is written by the winners. And the Iraq War in large part handed Obama and the Democrats the win they’ll need to spin history their own way.

Bottom line: A Gore presidency in 2000 would have pre-empted the presidency of the poorest excuse for a conservative Republican ever to come down the American political pike, erased the disastrous Iraq War, and very likely brought the entire domestic “green” movement to a screeching halt — or at least caused it to crest years earlier and with far less effect than what we’re in for now...

It also would no doubt have primed America’s pump for a return to the true conservative ideals that made it great, in either 2004 or 2008. Or both. Had that happened, we might now be hailing President Ron Paul — or perhaps even President Michael Steele.

Now those would be candidates I’d believe when they said: Yes, we can!

Conservatively Yours,

Jim Amrhein
Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

Note From Our Publisher: Congratulations are due to editor Zachary Scheidt of Death Cross Trader, who just handed readers a 70% return on their money.

On Tuesday, Zach sent readers a note to buy puts on Immucor, a company that provides hospitals and labs with blood testing equipment. Zach noticed what he called "red flags" in the company's profitability and knew it was just a matter of time before the share price slipped. He was right.

But here's the thing. You could still make money from this trade, as he thinks there's still more room for gains. To get in on the trade, you have to be a Death Cross Trader member. You can sign up right here.

Other Related Topics: Government Issues , Jim Amrhein , Taipan Daily

Article brought to you by Taipan Publishing Group. Additional valuable content can be found at www.taipanpublishinggroup.com. Republish without charge. Required: Author attribution and links back to original content.

Comments (2)