Shelia Harsdorf A "Health Nazi"?

Leave to our local anti-community bloggers at www.ontheborderline.net to keep throwing open their trench coat and exposing their flaccid stupidity. "Citizen Joe" has a current post at OTBL titled: Our local health Nazi, Harsdofr…

Here's what Joe has to say...

State Senator Sheila Harsdorf (R -River Falls) and grassroots supporters of the American Cancer Society will join together in support of a statewide smoke free workplace law.

Yes Jack, she is a RINO!

Comments to the post include these by "spiritofpublicus" (aka Dr. Bill Damuson):

"Harsdorf, like all other socialists, does not believe in the sanctity of private property. She is clueless when it comes to the connection between private property, economic freedom, and personal liberties. This fall I will be voting for anyone but Shelia!"

This second comments is by "choosing life:"

"It’s time to clean house of those who claim to be Republican but who are actually fronts for the Democrats. Every time a Republican betrays their constituents, I think of the scene in Animal House where the the guy is getting whacked by a someone who likes to inflict pain. After receiving a painful whack on the backside, he says, Thank you, sir, may I have another? I’m finished with getting whacked on the backside by the traitorous Republicans."

It's interesting to see how tolerant the great debaters are at OTBL. Lots of room for intellectual discussion of the options available to those of us living in the "public square" called the United States.

I've just finished reading an interesting autobiography by Thomas Sowell titled "A Personal Odyssey." Sowell is an economist and social thinker who happens to be a black man. The OTBL bloggers quote him regularly and mention him in only glowing terms on their blog. I found at least 13 posts on OTBL the pay homage to the thoughts of Sowell.

I wonder what Sowell -- one of the foremost Marxist scholars writing today -- would think of the cheap shot, character assassinations that mark the commentary at www.ontheborderline.net. I'm sure he would be sadden to be linked to the single-mind, anti-intellectual lynch mobster with the trench coat exposing all that is wrong with today's political discourse.

What follows is an interesting quote from Sowell's book from a letter to his radical friend Al:

"Obviously you and I have differing visions of the way the economic and social system functions. This in turn means that when we want to accomplish the same objective, we often advocate opposite means. This is not very surprising, and I think the same general principle applies to the differences between the liberals and the radicals, on one side, and Kristol, Banfield,et. al., on the other. Adolescence self-righteousness has become so fashionable in the past decade that common sense and common decency have suffered a kind of environmental pollution that hurts everybody and makes all social problems more difficult to understand and deal with rationally. As an historian of ideas, I am especially struck by how far we have gone down the road to mindless labelling and almost bogey-man talk. In the 19th century, for example, in Karl Marx's numerous references to Adam Smith there was not the slightest suggestion that Smith had done anything other than call them as he aw them, just as Marx was calling them as he saw them. Smith's arguments were answered by other arguments, not by calling him "anti-worker," which would simply have been a lie...One thing I like about Marx was his utter condemnation to this kind of parlor revolutionism, for just these kinds of reasons."

Thomas Sowell
"A Personal Adessy"
(pp. 254-255)

My guess is that losing the five or six votes from the OTBL bloggers isn't going to have any noticeably impact on Harsdorf's chances for re-election. My guess is that 2006 was the start of it and 2008 will open the flood gates to the exodus of the cowboy conservatives that road into Washington with Ronald Reagan. They will shrink back to the size of the fruitcake conservatism that Barry Goldwater represented in the 1964 presidential election.

Freedom Of Screech!!!!

Slumlord defender v. Wal-Mart board of director


"I do think that for example the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

Barack Obama


"Hillary and I will always remember President Ronald Reagan for the way he personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere...We will always remember his tremendous capacity to inspire and comfort us in times of tragedy, ...and we can rest assured that, as joyous a place as Heaven is, his wit and sunny disposition are making it an even brighter place to be."

President Bill Clinton

"I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

Barack Obama

“When he (Reagan) had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.”

Hillary Clinton

“What I said was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to.”

Barack Obama

Gee Yogi, It's Deja Vu All Over...

"The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes-tramps and millionaires. . ."

Populist Party Platform, 1892
Read more...

The RINO & I Know: Thompson Bails

PREDICTION: Giuliani will be the next to go...

Former senator Fred Thompson (Tenn.) dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination today, following months of lackluster campaigning and chaos within his campaign organization.

"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States," Thompson said in a terse statement. "I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."

Go take your nap Fred...

Booker T. Washington: Slavery v. Freedom

Rereading Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, I found an interesting passage the compares slavery and freedom. Up From Slavery is one of the more powerful biographies I've ever read.



"For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of bitterness. In fact, there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. The wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people lasted but for a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them. It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world to provide for himself. In a few hours the great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. These were the questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education, citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches. Was it any wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters? To some it seemed that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it. Some of the slaves were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. They had no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among strange people, even if they had been sure where to find a new place of abode. To this class the problem seemed especially hard. Besides, deep down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to "old Marster" and "old Missus," and to their children, which they found it hard to think of breaking off. With these they had spent in some cases nearly a half-century, and it was no light thing to think of parting. Gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began to wander from the slave quarters back to the "big house" to have a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future."

Booker T. Washington
Up From Slavery

Smokin' With Clarence, Bill & Ron Paul

"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again."
Bill Clinton

"Watkins asked whether I'd ever used illegal drugs, the same question that had ostensibly short-circuited Doug Ginsburg's confirmation in 1987. I said that I didn't recall ever having done so. It was an uncharacteristically cautious reply, but I'd been a heavy drinker in college and had often been around people smoked marijuana and hashish. I was telling the truth: I didn't remember using such drugs. I'd been afraid of them. For me illegal drugs were yet another problem I didn't need to add to my already long list. On the other hand, it occurred to me that I might possibly have tried them once or twice while I was drunk, and I knew that a flat denial might put me at risk of being contradicted, so in the end, in order to put the issue to rest, I said that I had experimented with marijuana."
Clarence Thomas
My Grandfather's Son (pp 220-221)

"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is."
Bill Clinton

"And marijuana - I think it's tragic what's happening today in the drug war. Since the early '70s we've spent maybe $200 to $300 billion on the drug war. That's not been any good. This whole effort on the drug war doesn't make any sense at all to me."
Ron Paul

Red Alert: Beware

From The Office of Liberty Dr. Bill- POS Author

Red Alert.

Agents from the secret death squads of ontheborerline.net have been made aware of that a sinister Socialist plot has been concocted by the Hudson branch of the Communist Party to infiltrate GOP headquarters. You may be approached by a seemingly innoquouse question like.."Are you a real Republican or are you a RINO?"
If you see this man, do not approach him. Do not be deceived. Flee immediately. He is armed
with altruism and considered extremely dangerous. Contact the ontheborderline.net authorities
immediately in order to bring this heinous criminal to justice.

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.