The column inch and bits and byte generators are at work, furiously issuing eulogies and other guff about the life and times of Margaret Thatcher.
As somebody who lived in the UK during her period as Prime Minister, I am going to offer some thoughts of my own. (WARNING - I do not necessarily adhere to the maxim that one does not speak ill of the recently departed). This posting deals with the reasons why Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister in the first place.
Margaret Thatcher was initially elected to office as the result of a general perception that the UK was in crisis. The country had been staggering from one mini crisis to another since the 1960's. Growing up in the UK in the late 1960's, I read and heard the media obsessing over this weird thing called "the balance of payments". In an era of largely fixed exchange rates, it seemed that the UK's international standing was determined largely by whether we could balance the books. Failure to do so led to our having to be helped by the IMF, which included the (now infamous) devaluation of the Pound in an attempt to reduce budget deficits. These indications that all was not well with the economy were swept under the carpet, as blame was rapidly shifted to external agents such as "the Gnomes of Zurich". The UK was in decline, but, as is usual with countries in decline, most of the residents were happier living in Denial than trying to address the underlying issues.
Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, a lot of political power was wielded by trades unions, whose leaders, it seemed, were almost on a par with government ministers in their ability to impact the operation of the country. Some of the leaders seemed like honorable men with the interests of their members at heart, some of them, however, seemed to be venal and suffused with hubris. They all talked in cliches, especially their invocation of this weird construct of "the ordinary working man", an imaginary person who worked in a factory, voted Labour, and seemed to want to be paid more money for less work.
In the 1970's, as the country kept electing governments without a viable working majority, the malaise continued. During the second government of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher was the Minister for Education, and by all accounts, was the highest-spending minister in the government, constantly demanding more money for Education. This was ironic in view of her later reputation, of which more later. After the Conservative Party lost office, Thatcher stood for the leadership, as Edward Heath stood aside. She was elected, and set about developing a much more hard-edged version of UK conservatism. Her authoritarian tendencies were soon on display, as she moved aside or out of office any supporters of Heath and what she saw as his wishy-washy approach to governance.
By 1979, the UK was mired once more in a recession, and that winter saw rolling power blackouts as industrial disputes in the power generation industry impacted the national grid. The then Labour Party Prime Minister, James Callaghan, then proceeded to execute what, with hindsight, was an act of political suicide, by attending a Commonwealth Prime Ministers summit held in Mustique. The sight of Callaghan and the other leaders sitting around fine tables, drinking off fine china and chatting under palm trees, and smiling for photo-ops in tropical splendor did not play well in the UK, and then Callaghan compounded the PR blunder by responding "I see no crisis" when he returned to the UK, to be greeted by journalists asking him whether he should have gone to Mustique at all in view of the events occurring at home.
On one level, Callaghan was correct. Rolling blackouts were not a national crisis. He was answering the question from his own personal experience as a World War II combat veteran. To him, the events were a pinprick compared to World War II. However, his smooth and somewhat condescending answer was proof to many people that the country was in crisis and the current leaders were in denial about it. Within a few months, the electorate in the UK gave the keys to Margaret Thatcher and said (in as many words). "you sort this mess out".
I am including this background because it is important for a fuller understanding of why and how Margaret Thatcher came to be elected in the first place, and it also provides context for an understanding of why, by 1991, a lot of people were highly pleased to be rid of her. Thatcher was elected as a crisis leader. Such leaders tend to have a clearly defined shelf life. They will be regarded as useful until the perceived crisis is over, after which time they will become a pain in the arse.

And this week's winner, is this doozy anti-tax site http://www.livefreenow.org/.

This week's winner, after a short tour of the wackadoodle tendency, is...

Nesara News

This is Part 1 of a 2 part series. This part deals with my frustrations with the current positioning and approaches of the Libertarian Party.
During the 2012 electoral cycle I continued my life-long approach to politics of remaining skeptical of and divorced from mass-market political parties. I learned a long time ago back in the UK that the two major parties in a country tend to form a cozy duopoly, both benefitting from The System. This is no different in the modern USA. Accordingly, I voted Libertarian in several key electoral areas. I voted for Gary Johnson for President (and donated money to his campaign), and voted Libertarian in a number of state and local electoral races.
However, since the election, I have been forced to re-appraise my level of support for the Libertarian Party, mainly as a result of reading some of the comments of local LP members. I believe that the Libertarian Party, with its current approaches to governance, and its attitude to building membership, is doomed to remain a novelty on the fringes of American politics.

The underlying challenge with the LP is that they have an attitude that they will accept support from anybody, even if those people are authoritarians and wackadoodles, crackpots and wolves in sheep's clothing.
There are a lot of GOP partisans who think of themselves as libertarians. I have had discussions with them in the past. They always slowly unravel in front of you when you test their committment to libertarian principles by asking them whether they support the War On Some Drugs, massive military spending, equal rights for gay people. etc. etc.
I'm not generally in favour of strict ideological purity tests if you want to be a mass-market political party, since that tends to reduce your pool of possible members, but if you go to the opposite extreme and accept any wackadoodle as a member because you simply think in terms of needing more members, sooner or later you are going to have to engage in major damage limitation after those wackadoodles damage the party publicly with some incendiary collection of thoughts or actions.
Right now, the LP is toxic to many progressives because its economic liberty arguments are incoherent and read like an apologia for capitalist excess, and it's constitutional argument airtime is being dominated in many states (including my residence state of Texas) by a bunch of people most of whose instincts hover somewhere between secession and setting up a self-governing commune in the Middle Of Nowhere because they can't get their way. What seems to be absent from the LP is any significant outreach based on civil liberties, which seem to be regarded by many libertarians as something that will magically appear once Government Is Off Our Backs. The current libertarian airtime is dominated by an obsession with "rights", with little or no mention of the obvious corollary that with rights come responsibilities. The Constitional concept of inalienable rights appears to have been twisted into a view that any right written in the Constitution is absolute, and that any attempt to set boundaries on the right is automatically definable as "fascism", "communism", "government overreach" etc. etc. This is mixed together with some decidedly dystopian views and fantasies about the future of the USA, which, if I believe these people, appears to be in such a fragile state that it is a miracle to me how this country survived through World War I and World War II, amongst other adolescent growing pains. Co-morbid with the adoption of dystopian fears is a "closet revolutionary" mindset which manifests itself in a chest-beating tendency to dare "The Government" to come get their guns/money/freedoms etc. I sometimes feel I have just been parachuted into America circa 1800, to judge by some of the rhetoric on display.

I well remember my utter amazement when I stuck my toes into the water of college political groupings in the UK in the early 1970's. All of the various groupings seemed to me to be united by only two things - their total hatred and contempt for each other, and their contempt for "the sheeple" (i.e. any non-members) who were generally regarded as objects of pity for their inability to understand how effing brilliant their political philosophy was. The groupings were dominated by intellectuals who spoke in often-abstract terms about concepts that were barely explicable to non-members. It was the worst kind of intellectual navel-gazing.
Libertarianism has some of the same issues. Like many movements founded by intellectuals, a lot of Libertarians in websites and discussion forums tend to show poorly-disguised contempt for many people who might otherwise be interested in their ideasl. This is not good salesmanship. As a rule, people will tend to avoid associating with people who they believe think they are stupid or malevolent.
Right now, the LP seems to believe that progressives and people on "the Left" (whatever the hell that antiquated shibboleth might mean, I thought it ceased to have meaning 40 years ago, but it still seems to function as a cross between an empty slogan and a categorization panacea) are its natural enemies. It feels more attracted to authoritarians and GOP partisans. Bleeding Heart Libertarians does a good job of trying to demonstrate that this default worldview is not necessary, but I don't believe that it has either critical mass or positioning with the broader libertarian movement at this time.
Ignoring a large section of the population is not smart politics. If you were a business trying to sell to the general public, you probably wouldn't knowingly try to alienate 40+% of your potential customers. (Ask Mitt Romney how his "47%" comment worked out for him last November.)
As long as groups like the Libertarian Party continue to believe that their natural allies are currently in the GOP, and that democrats and progressives are "statists", "socialists" or "fascists", the LP is halving its chance to ever gain critical mass. The Libertarian party has never polled more than 1.1% in a Presidential election in the last 40 years, which gives you some idea of how big the hill is that it has to climb. Now, there are regional pockets of LP strength, which is good, but the national picture has not improved in decades.
I have tried to point this out to members of the LP in Texas, but based on what I have been seeing on my Facebook feed, my perception is that currently they are too busy plotting and imagining their imminent glorious revolution against the Federal Government to listen.

NEXT PART - Some thoughts on what the Libertarian Party can do to improve its chances of gaining critical mass or airtime for its ideas.

When Marsha and I visited Big Bend in 2004, we spent several excellent evenings dining out in Fort Davis, with our dinners supplemented by excellent wines from Blue Mountain vineyard. We brought a bunch of bottles back, long since drunk with friends.
I was discussing Texas red wines with a lady friend online this evening and she asked about recommendations. I started to tell her about Blue Mountain, but then I decided to look it up again.
Sadly, what I discovered is that Blue Mountain vineyard ceased operations in 2006. The cause of its demise seems to have been Pierce's Disease, an affliction that slowly kills most vines derived from Vitis Vinifera stock. The vineyard is up for sale, and most of the vines are dead or growing badly and wild. A sad discovery. I shall have to look for alternative Texas red wines.

Link: http://divineprovince.org/

This week's winner, by a country mile, is...

Divine Province

After my usual inspection of the weird and wonderful internet, here is this week's winner:

GodLike Productions

WARNING - Large pile of conspiracy theory wackadoodleness to be found here.

After brief consideration of several closely-matched entries this week's winner is:

The JagHunter

A few words of explanation are in order. The owner of the website is probably a member of the Sovereign Citizen movement. As you can see however, the Word Of the Year is "treason"...

I am starting a new weekly feature - my nomination for the Whisky Tango Foxtrot? Site Of The Week.
The criteria are many and varied, including utterly ludicrous content, appalling layout and design, diabolical writing...the main criterion being that after no more than 90 seconds of inspecting the site, I find my lips forming the three letters "WTF".
So, without further ado, here is the WTF? Site Of the Week:

Ascension With Earth

WARNING - Extreme wackadoodleness on display

Following the Cowboys 8-8 season, Jerry Jones went on the warpath, promising to "make things uncomfortable" around Valley Ranch.
No kidding.
So far, the defensive co-ordinator Rob Ryan has been fired, and replaced by Monte Kiffin, who, it is rumored, is going to install the Tampa 2 defensive scheme.
The special teams coach Joe De Camillis has just left for another team.
Now, it seems that Jerry wants a dedicated offensive co-ordinator, and, not surprisingly, Jason Garrett does not, or if one is installed, he wants one without head coaching experience.
This is not going to end well. At this point in time, Jason Garrett has been converted to a lame duck, a hand-picked proxy for Jerry Jones. Whoever is installed as offensive co-ordinator, everybody in the club will know that Jerry is really the head coach, and, if push comes to shove, they will call Jerry to ask what is happening. This is a replay of the period of time when Dave Campo and Chan Gailey were the head coaches.
Not all of this is Jerry's fault. Jason Garrett has been stashing family members on the coaching staff, which is not a good idea. Nepotism is never attractive in action. By doing so, he has left himself vulnerable to criticism and unrest within the coaching staff. Of course, he could argue that he is merely following the example of his owner, whose son is also working with the Cowboys as the de facto head of player personnel...but then his owner is the one paying the bills, so he gets to make the rules.
One role that also needs to be filled is that of a game management specialist. The Cowboys, to use Gregg Easterbrook's words, have low football IQ. They consistently get confused in game situations, waste time, burn timeouts, and lose opportunities to advance. This has to be fixed.
UPDATE - With the departure of John Garrett to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jason Garrett's position becomes more tenuous. I am starting to wonder if Jerry Jones already has an option deal with another Head Coach, and he is simply trying to force Jason Garrett to resign, in order to avoid paying off his contract. Logically, either John Garrett has decided that his brother is on thin ice, and is getting out ahead, or has been told by his brother to go somewhere else for his own good.
UPDATE 2 - This article from Rick Gosselin does a good job of explaining why these changes have occurred. The money quote is this one from the Q&A:

Q. It didn't seem like coaching was as big an issue this season as a lack of talent. Why then are we seeing wholesale changes to the coaching staff but not changes in the scounting department and front office?
A. Jerry Jones is fond of both his general manager (Jerry Jones) and his director of player personnel (Stephen Jones). So any changes need to come from the other side of the building from the coaches and players.

Troy Aikman is also unimpressed by the changes.
Hell, I am unimpressed by the changes. They destroy continuity on all three areas of the team. History shows that the most successful NFL teams are those with continuity in coaching. The Cowboys are on a road to nowhere in terms of results with this level and frequency of change. I just hope that the Cowboys are as aggressive on players as they have been on coaches. At least that would confirm that the changes will impact everybody, not just the coaching staff.