As President Obama’s approval ratings drop, it is important to remember an important fact. This poignant fact was repeated this week in recent speeches made by the president including the momentous speech in Norway this week. The problems we face in this country are actually George Bush’s fault. In a speech to the UN in 2006, Hugo Chavez told us the reason why Bush is so ominous; he is the devil. Chavez’s nose, which is extraordinarily large and sensitive, could even smell the sulfur as Bush left the chamber. It is natural that Bush, being the devil, would sabotage the most historic presidency in history, that of the great American messiah, the great Barack Obama. The evidence of this sabotage is clear if you just look for it.
First, there is the war. Bush used torture to get information that ended the fight in Iraq. The fighters have gone to Afghanistan to embarrass Obama who said this was the necessary war. Now Obama has to send more troops even as he received his well-deserved Peace Prize. How embarrassing is that?
And just look at the horrible economy Bush left. While Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were in Congress trying to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lend money for homes to poor minorities, the evil George Bush was out there touting that home ownership was at its highest, as if he were responsible for it. He knew these mortgage companies were on the verge of collapse and even convinced them to give copious amounts of money to Dodd and Obama (the highest two recipients of cash, in fact) just so these great individuals would be tainted when the scandal broke. At the end of Bush’s term, he abandoned the free market, not because he believed it would save the economy, but because he wanted Obama to be branded a socialist. In fact, Bush started months earlier to send evil brain waves to Obama to force him to vote so liberal in the senate that he would be rated the most liberal of all senators. Then during the campaign, Obama broke away from his liberal sins by telling us moderate things like “a government takeover of health care is over-kill.” Just when Obama had come to his senses, Bush tricked him into approving a multi-billion dollar stimulus package. Obama recently pointed out how flawed that package was but everyone knows it was passed during the Bush administration without any input whatsoever from Obama and any enthusiastic support Obama may have expressed at the time were just more of Bush’s evil brain waves. Even the press knows that, which is why they never play clips of Obama talking as if the stimulus package had been his idea.
Furthermore, there are these outrageous deficits. Obama keeps reminding us that we need to do something about the spending. But Bush’s evil brain waves have overrun the Congress which keeps passing more spending and they keep tricking the President into signing them. Recently the banks paid back the TARP money and now the Devil Bush has got Congress talking about spending it instead of paying back the deficit. Money meant for stimulus has been spent on projects no sane person would invest in. An example is an airport in rural Pennsylvania servicing fewer than 10,000 people per year but it got $800,000 in stimulus money. But does Bush get blamed for whispering evil seductions in lawmakers’ ears? No, he convinces people to name it after Congressman John Murtha, as if Murtha had anything to do with it. How evil is that?!
And what about the fight over health care. When Bush was president, the Republicans went along with expanding Medicare. Now that Obama needs them, they all stand together in stern opposition. Some of them claimed they learned a lesson from 2008 but we all know it is Bush whispering in their ear to oppose Obama. Even some Democrats are succumbing to Bush’s evil whisperings and are opposing things such as publicly funded abortions. Since when did Democrats start opposing free abortions? You know evil forces are at work when that starts happening. Some fearless souls, such as Harry Reed, know that the American people demand health care reform. But when pollsters go out to measure the support, Bush causes them to misprint the result, showing the opposite of the truth. People have attempted to turn out in droves in support of health care reform but Bush has been so powerful in keeping them from turning out at the rallies that network news teams have had to do close-ups on all ten demonstrators who managed to escape Bush’s grasp so that people think millions showed up, which was what would have happened if Bush’s evil brain waves had not gotten in the way. Meanwhile fringe movements, such as the tea-party movement, have otherwise peace-loving people filled with Nazi hate and showing up to oppose the benevolence of the great Obama. Only evil forces, like that mustered by Bush, could behind all this.
Now 2010 approaches, an election year. Things will go badly for the Democrats if unemployment does not come down and the economy does not start growing again. Obama has done everything he can to spend our way back to prosperity, and in spite of huge employment gains in government, Bush’s hold on greedy corporations and business owners has them hoarding their money instead of hiring. This has caused unemployment to rise above even Joe Biden’s highest estimate and we know he is always right otherwise. And just when Bush’s evil friends, the Rich, have been brought to their knees, evil brain waves have penetrated Congressmen who suggest we cut taxes to stimulate the economy. These good soldiers, who were expected to lay down their congressional seats for Pelosi and Reed’s agenda, are now trying to save themselves from the unemployment lines. Even Obama has suggested tax cuts for small business owners. (Et tu, Obama?)
So as we move into the new year, try to focus on important things like global warming and the terrorist trials in New York exposing the evil plots of the Bush administration. Be patient as we sacrifice jobs, wealth and even the Constitution as the Democrats try to save us from Bush and his evil wealth-creating brain waves. And if Obama cracks once in a while and suggests tax cuts or fighting terrorist abroad, cut him some slack. After all, the Bush made him do it!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
In God We Trust
As the debate on climate change took an interesting turn this week, I have been fascinated how quickly science has been left behind and the adherents to the Church of Man-made Global Warming have marched undauntedly forward, preparing to issue several edicts from the Council of Copenhagen. How they could do that gives us insight into human nature. Since Liberalism is a result of human nature and not actual logic, a dissection of recent events gives us a deeper understanding of the how we get not just “Cap and Tax” but why Liberals still pursue insane policies such as Obamacare and deficit spending in the face of high unemployment.
First we need to delineate between science and religion and figure out what their roles in society are. Both seek to get at the truth but both have entirely different approaches. Our founding fathers fostered science but were also men of deep religious convictions.
Science gets at the truth incrementally through human experience and is bound only by our intellect, curiosity and physical boundaries. Science exists in four tiers, each built upon the one below in a pyramid structure. At its base is the Science of Reason, mathematics. Next are the Empirical Sciences, physics and chemistry. They use observation to explain the world. The third tier has the Sciences of Extrapolation. Here, you cannot observe actual phenomena but you can observe the results and make conclusions base on that. Here you find such things as biology, archeology and geology. The last level contains the Derived Sciences, based on the previous three. Here are the “Is-too-a-science” disciplines such as psychology and sociology. Two fundamental rules exist here. First your theories cannot contradict theories of a science on the lower tier. Doing so incurs the responsibility of reworking the theory of the lower tier as well. Second, all data is forever subject to review, reinterpretation, reproduction but not refutation.
Religion gets at the truth from using another approach. It relies on the Deity (God) revealing itself. It can take you beyond the realm of human understanding but comes in so many stripes that we are, at present, unable to share it as a common experience. Religious organizations set their own rules of how you reach the truth. Sometimes certain truths are beyond reproach and questioning them can set you outside the group. If, for example, you do not belief that Jesus was the son of God, this may place you outside Christianity, at least as far as self-identified Christians are concerned. Although religion is not science, it can provide a rich, rewarding aspect to the lives of those choosing to pursue it.
Because religion and science aim for the same goal, you think they might complement each other. History, however, is replete with clashes. In medieval Europe, the church wielded direct political power and Copernicus found himself in 16th-century Italy under threat of excommunication until he recanted his theory that the earth went around with the sun. American colonists fled the motherland to escape imprisonment when they found their conscience at odds with the monarch who was also the head of the church. While religion can be life enriching, theocracies are not. Our founding fathers enshrined religious freedom in the First Amendment but placed religious organization outside direct government control and out of direct political power.
Now along comes Global Warming. It may have started as a scientific approach to explain the data but at some point the data was refuted, refitted and ultimately refused. This violates the second law of science as stated above. Since the data cannot be reviewed, all conclusions based on it pass out of the realm of science. So the question of whether there is man-made global warming goes back to being unanswered. If the belief in it persists, it must live on as a religion, not as a science. And live it has. It has placed its doctrines beyond reproach, distained its non-believers as Global-Warming deniers, and persecuted its heretical detractors as if they were Copernicus himself. While data comes showing the earth has cooled precipitously over the last decade, one true believer decried the data as a travesty. Another declares this is just a temporary break from global warming. Did God reveal to him that we will begin warming again in the future, because science has not.
So why do they march to Copenhagen as if nothing happened? Humans do not give up deeply held beliefs easily. Although religion has found a way to exist on a planet that orbits the sun, Copernicus was not formally exonerated by his church until the 1980s. It is not unprecedented that science has morphed into religion while claiming it is still a science. Darwin built his Religion of Evolution based on the doctrine that there is no god. It started as a science but now violates the Second Law of Thermodynamic (from chemistry and physics, second tier) and would need trillion, not merely billions of years to occur according to statics (from mathematics, first tier). Its predecessor theory, the Disuse Theory, said that animals changed because appendages that were not used discontinued in subsequent generations. In a famous experiment, after cutting off the tails of several generations of mice, subsequent generations of mice were still being born with tails. This led to a rejection of the theory. But wait, they were also still giving birth to mice. Would this not also refute evolution? No, because evolution is in keeping with the fundamental anti-deistic doctrine (You don’t need a higher being manipulating the biosphere, like chopping of tails). Intelligent design, however, is heretical at its core to the atheists of Darwin’s church, even if it also explains the data. I do not necessarily endorse intelligent design because it is too often placed within Christian dogma and placed outside scientific review but when the failings of Evolution are pointed out, adherents still cling to it, fearing a replacement theory may invoke an antithetical belief in God. And the punishment of Evolution heretics rivals that of the Spanish Inquisition.
The human ability for fervor surrounding deeply-held beliefs, religious or otherwise, is undeniable. People can continue on in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. For example, the Senate worked this weekend to pass a healthcare bill. Harkin of Iowa declared that we have to do this because that is what the American people demand even though all polls show the opposite to be true. Tax cuts and decreased regulation have been shown to spur job growth but Obama acts like wild government borrowing, increased taxes and legislative chaos are the keys even as unemployment has rocketed past 10 percent. This because the Keynesian pinhead of liberal academia told him it was a good idea. Human fervor can be enhanced when, what Covey called the bread bowl, is threatened. Entire businesses and careers are in invested in Global Warming, Evolution, and Keynesian dogma. People make their living based on the supposition that these theories are true and you would have better luck getting the Pope to give up Catholicism than getting these people to reexamine their beliefs. Liberals in Congress are threatened with job losses by next year’s election and want to extend their power over us by controlling our health care. That way they can also make up stuff about what Republicans want to do it like they make up stuff about Medicare.
Now I do not mind that people have their beliefs but when they find their way into public policy, it is fair game to challenge them. And when they unilaterally declare that the debate is over, I get very suspicious that a religion, not a science, is being crammed down my throat. Furthermore, if you are not going to provide government funding for my religion to send out missionaries, why should I pay for Obama to go to Copenhagen? If the government is not going to pay to build churches, why should we pay for Cap and Trade?
So if I do not believe in Global Warming, Evolution or Keynesian Economics, you can call me a Global Warming denier, a religious zealot and a racist; I don’t care. But stop pretending you are scientists, ok? Remember, “In God we trust”, everyone else must bring data.
First we need to delineate between science and religion and figure out what their roles in society are. Both seek to get at the truth but both have entirely different approaches. Our founding fathers fostered science but were also men of deep religious convictions.
Science gets at the truth incrementally through human experience and is bound only by our intellect, curiosity and physical boundaries. Science exists in four tiers, each built upon the one below in a pyramid structure. At its base is the Science of Reason, mathematics. Next are the Empirical Sciences, physics and chemistry. They use observation to explain the world. The third tier has the Sciences of Extrapolation. Here, you cannot observe actual phenomena but you can observe the results and make conclusions base on that. Here you find such things as biology, archeology and geology. The last level contains the Derived Sciences, based on the previous three. Here are the “Is-too-a-science” disciplines such as psychology and sociology. Two fundamental rules exist here. First your theories cannot contradict theories of a science on the lower tier. Doing so incurs the responsibility of reworking the theory of the lower tier as well. Second, all data is forever subject to review, reinterpretation, reproduction but not refutation.
Religion gets at the truth from using another approach. It relies on the Deity (God) revealing itself. It can take you beyond the realm of human understanding but comes in so many stripes that we are, at present, unable to share it as a common experience. Religious organizations set their own rules of how you reach the truth. Sometimes certain truths are beyond reproach and questioning them can set you outside the group. If, for example, you do not belief that Jesus was the son of God, this may place you outside Christianity, at least as far as self-identified Christians are concerned. Although religion is not science, it can provide a rich, rewarding aspect to the lives of those choosing to pursue it.
Because religion and science aim for the same goal, you think they might complement each other. History, however, is replete with clashes. In medieval Europe, the church wielded direct political power and Copernicus found himself in 16th-century Italy under threat of excommunication until he recanted his theory that the earth went around with the sun. American colonists fled the motherland to escape imprisonment when they found their conscience at odds with the monarch who was also the head of the church. While religion can be life enriching, theocracies are not. Our founding fathers enshrined religious freedom in the First Amendment but placed religious organization outside direct government control and out of direct political power.
Now along comes Global Warming. It may have started as a scientific approach to explain the data but at some point the data was refuted, refitted and ultimately refused. This violates the second law of science as stated above. Since the data cannot be reviewed, all conclusions based on it pass out of the realm of science. So the question of whether there is man-made global warming goes back to being unanswered. If the belief in it persists, it must live on as a religion, not as a science. And live it has. It has placed its doctrines beyond reproach, distained its non-believers as Global-Warming deniers, and persecuted its heretical detractors as if they were Copernicus himself. While data comes showing the earth has cooled precipitously over the last decade, one true believer decried the data as a travesty. Another declares this is just a temporary break from global warming. Did God reveal to him that we will begin warming again in the future, because science has not.
So why do they march to Copenhagen as if nothing happened? Humans do not give up deeply held beliefs easily. Although religion has found a way to exist on a planet that orbits the sun, Copernicus was not formally exonerated by his church until the 1980s. It is not unprecedented that science has morphed into religion while claiming it is still a science. Darwin built his Religion of Evolution based on the doctrine that there is no god. It started as a science but now violates the Second Law of Thermodynamic (from chemistry and physics, second tier) and would need trillion, not merely billions of years to occur according to statics (from mathematics, first tier). Its predecessor theory, the Disuse Theory, said that animals changed because appendages that were not used discontinued in subsequent generations. In a famous experiment, after cutting off the tails of several generations of mice, subsequent generations of mice were still being born with tails. This led to a rejection of the theory. But wait, they were also still giving birth to mice. Would this not also refute evolution? No, because evolution is in keeping with the fundamental anti-deistic doctrine (You don’t need a higher being manipulating the biosphere, like chopping of tails). Intelligent design, however, is heretical at its core to the atheists of Darwin’s church, even if it also explains the data. I do not necessarily endorse intelligent design because it is too often placed within Christian dogma and placed outside scientific review but when the failings of Evolution are pointed out, adherents still cling to it, fearing a replacement theory may invoke an antithetical belief in God. And the punishment of Evolution heretics rivals that of the Spanish Inquisition.
The human ability for fervor surrounding deeply-held beliefs, religious or otherwise, is undeniable. People can continue on in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. For example, the Senate worked this weekend to pass a healthcare bill. Harkin of Iowa declared that we have to do this because that is what the American people demand even though all polls show the opposite to be true. Tax cuts and decreased regulation have been shown to spur job growth but Obama acts like wild government borrowing, increased taxes and legislative chaos are the keys even as unemployment has rocketed past 10 percent. This because the Keynesian pinhead of liberal academia told him it was a good idea. Human fervor can be enhanced when, what Covey called the bread bowl, is threatened. Entire businesses and careers are in invested in Global Warming, Evolution, and Keynesian dogma. People make their living based on the supposition that these theories are true and you would have better luck getting the Pope to give up Catholicism than getting these people to reexamine their beliefs. Liberals in Congress are threatened with job losses by next year’s election and want to extend their power over us by controlling our health care. That way they can also make up stuff about what Republicans want to do it like they make up stuff about Medicare.
Now I do not mind that people have their beliefs but when they find their way into public policy, it is fair game to challenge them. And when they unilaterally declare that the debate is over, I get very suspicious that a religion, not a science, is being crammed down my throat. Furthermore, if you are not going to provide government funding for my religion to send out missionaries, why should I pay for Obama to go to Copenhagen? If the government is not going to pay to build churches, why should we pay for Cap and Trade?
So if I do not believe in Global Warming, Evolution or Keynesian Economics, you can call me a Global Warming denier, a religious zealot and a racist; I don’t care. But stop pretending you are scientists, ok? Remember, “In God we trust”, everyone else must bring data.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Big Barack is Watching!
When the Obama Administration was trying to establish its identity, it compared itself to other administrations. Obama followed the route into Washington proposed for Lincoln without mentioning that Lincoln sneaked into Washington to avoid assassination and the train was, like Obama, an elaborate ruse. After ten months we now have a track record to figure out what model an inexperienced, Marxist-loving President such as Obama might be using. Some have compared him to the Liberal icon, Kennedy. Kennedy was a tax-cutting, anticommunist that cheated on his wife. The first two are definite strikes and if Obama is stepping out in his wife, we may have the first presidential assassination of the century on our hands when Michelle finds out. Some compare him to FDR. He does have that whole welfare-state thing going on but if he cannot even stand up to Pelosi, how would he confront the likes of Hitler. Besides, BHO does not have the same pizzazz and since we are not allowed to use the middle name anyway, BO is not much better. I think the best model for understanding Obama and the Left in general comes from George Orwell in his novel, 1984. Although Orwell was not a President, his satirical story of a totalitarian state gave us the phrase “Big Brother is Watching” and it’s sad that a classical book making fun of communism has come to epitomize the governing party of our country. But here are the parallels:
In the novel, Oceana is just one of three super states in the world. Our world has more than three states but Liberals think it is too bad we are the only superpower. No other nation has been able to come to our level so Obama debases the country every chance he gets with his Apology-Abroad tours. Iran is building the bomb and North Korea is developing missiles with nukes so maybe we will have our three super states before Obama is finished.
The book describes a section of the government that revises history and historical records to match whatever Big Brother says. Oceana called this department Minitrue but today we know it as CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and sometimes CNN. Minitrue incinerated the original documents in what they called a “memory hole”. I think MSNBC has one of those but Sandy Burger’s socks work great too, in a pinch. Whenever the Administration is called out on an inconvenient truth, they simply deny the charge with “No it’s not” and the Media dutifully twist history to match the party line. Whether it’s Carter's saying that most Obama opposition is racist or Barney Frank’s giving Fannie Mae a pass, a simple denial makes it all go away.
One of the obsessions of Big Brother was to revise the English language in what they called Newspeak. Bad was replaced with “ungood”, and criticism of Big Brother was banned. Today political correctness has attempted to limit public discourse. A man in the DC government got in trouble for admonishing his department heads to be niggardly. They claimed the word was too close to a racial slur and people in government often have small vocabularies, are incapable of looking up words and are too quick to jump to conclusions if the alleged offender is a white, Christian male. I am not sure government officials are capable of being frugal anyway, which is the actual meaning of niggardly. Racial politics also explains why the word “honk” is still allowed. By the way, I hope our modern Newspeak lets us keep the word “spade” because I am running out of words for that particular garden tool but I hear it may be changed to “unshovel” as spade (which is too closely associated to something black in cards) joins such forbidden words and phrases as “illegal alien”, “islamofacist”, “war on terror”, “In God We Trust”, “parental consent” and “Merry Christmas”.
Big Brother allows no dissent, admonishes its citizens to the glory of the state with slogans, encourages tattling on each other and punishes offenders with the status of “unperson” where you disappear from history. Today children are forced to sing songs in school, praises to the greatness of Obama. The White House asks children to write essays on how they can help Obama and be good comrades for the state while asking that “Fishy Emails” be reported. Offenders are given the dreaded status of “Racist” and Fox News is made into an “un-news organization”.
At times Big Brothers actions make no sense but the threat of becoming an “unperson” keeps Oceana in line. Today, due to fear of being called a racist, we allow an Islamic extremist to stay in the military even though he has publicly stated that nonbelievers should have their heads cut off and have hot oil poured down their throats. If a white Christian had said that about abortion doctors, how many seconds would have it taken for discharge papers to be delivered? Meanwhile, we continue to frisk old, white ladies at the airport. Heaven forbid one of them smuggles a crochet hook aboard the airplane and brandishes it at a flight attendant.
Paranoid of even subversive thoughts, Big Brother anoints the Thought Police. Today we call it Hate Crimes where the act alone is not worthy of punishment. Your thoughts and attitudes about the victim have to be punished as well. And the press happily reports racist statements from Rush Limbaugh that were never said. When the truth is revealed, Limbaugh still has to be punished because we all know he thought it even if he did not say it.
Oceana has no need of elections because Big Brother knows more than anyone else and is watching over all. Obama has ACORN to go around fixing the mistakes made by voters so people like Al Franken can be in the Senate. Activist judges thwart the will of the people and repeatedly force gay marriage on the country. Obama, like Big Brother, is in constant campaign mode with great speeches and slogans (and in the words of the great Joe Jonas: “Does a great speech always have to have a point?”) Obama knows more than us so our opposition to Obamacare is moot. His benevolence warrants our trust as we surrender our freedoms to his will.
Although Winston Smith, the hero of our story, ends back where he started, a little worse for the wear, I hope our experiment in American Democracy does not end so “ungoodly”. But next time you are tempted to recite the “Pledge of Allegiance” (with your hand over our groin, of course), wear a flag on your person, or pick up a gun to go hunting, just remember Big Barack is Watching!
In the novel, Oceana is just one of three super states in the world. Our world has more than three states but Liberals think it is too bad we are the only superpower. No other nation has been able to come to our level so Obama debases the country every chance he gets with his Apology-Abroad tours. Iran is building the bomb and North Korea is developing missiles with nukes so maybe we will have our three super states before Obama is finished.
The book describes a section of the government that revises history and historical records to match whatever Big Brother says. Oceana called this department Minitrue but today we know it as CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and sometimes CNN. Minitrue incinerated the original documents in what they called a “memory hole”. I think MSNBC has one of those but Sandy Burger’s socks work great too, in a pinch. Whenever the Administration is called out on an inconvenient truth, they simply deny the charge with “No it’s not” and the Media dutifully twist history to match the party line. Whether it’s Carter's saying that most Obama opposition is racist or Barney Frank’s giving Fannie Mae a pass, a simple denial makes it all go away.
One of the obsessions of Big Brother was to revise the English language in what they called Newspeak. Bad was replaced with “ungood”, and criticism of Big Brother was banned. Today political correctness has attempted to limit public discourse. A man in the DC government got in trouble for admonishing his department heads to be niggardly. They claimed the word was too close to a racial slur and people in government often have small vocabularies, are incapable of looking up words and are too quick to jump to conclusions if the alleged offender is a white, Christian male. I am not sure government officials are capable of being frugal anyway, which is the actual meaning of niggardly. Racial politics also explains why the word “honk” is still allowed. By the way, I hope our modern Newspeak lets us keep the word “spade” because I am running out of words for that particular garden tool but I hear it may be changed to “unshovel” as spade (which is too closely associated to something black in cards) joins such forbidden words and phrases as “illegal alien”, “islamofacist”, “war on terror”, “In God We Trust”, “parental consent” and “Merry Christmas”.
Big Brother allows no dissent, admonishes its citizens to the glory of the state with slogans, encourages tattling on each other and punishes offenders with the status of “unperson” where you disappear from history. Today children are forced to sing songs in school, praises to the greatness of Obama. The White House asks children to write essays on how they can help Obama and be good comrades for the state while asking that “Fishy Emails” be reported. Offenders are given the dreaded status of “Racist” and Fox News is made into an “un-news organization”.
At times Big Brothers actions make no sense but the threat of becoming an “unperson” keeps Oceana in line. Today, due to fear of being called a racist, we allow an Islamic extremist to stay in the military even though he has publicly stated that nonbelievers should have their heads cut off and have hot oil poured down their throats. If a white Christian had said that about abortion doctors, how many seconds would have it taken for discharge papers to be delivered? Meanwhile, we continue to frisk old, white ladies at the airport. Heaven forbid one of them smuggles a crochet hook aboard the airplane and brandishes it at a flight attendant.
Paranoid of even subversive thoughts, Big Brother anoints the Thought Police. Today we call it Hate Crimes where the act alone is not worthy of punishment. Your thoughts and attitudes about the victim have to be punished as well. And the press happily reports racist statements from Rush Limbaugh that were never said. When the truth is revealed, Limbaugh still has to be punished because we all know he thought it even if he did not say it.
Oceana has no need of elections because Big Brother knows more than anyone else and is watching over all. Obama has ACORN to go around fixing the mistakes made by voters so people like Al Franken can be in the Senate. Activist judges thwart the will of the people and repeatedly force gay marriage on the country. Obama, like Big Brother, is in constant campaign mode with great speeches and slogans (and in the words of the great Joe Jonas: “Does a great speech always have to have a point?”) Obama knows more than us so our opposition to Obamacare is moot. His benevolence warrants our trust as we surrender our freedoms to his will.
Although Winston Smith, the hero of our story, ends back where he started, a little worse for the wear, I hope our experiment in American Democracy does not end so “ungoodly”. But next time you are tempted to recite the “Pledge of Allegiance” (with your hand over our groin, of course), wear a flag on your person, or pick up a gun to go hunting, just remember Big Barack is Watching!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Go Right, Young Man, Go Right!
During WWII, servicemen across the Pacific would tune to a radio program that featured the seductive voice of Tokyo Rose. Rose was a Japanese American who had turned loyalties back to Japan and presented a radio program urging Americans to give up the fight and go home. The propaganda was mixed with music to entertain, which allured the servicemen to listen, along with that sexy voice. Fortunately for America (and for Japan) her message was for naught. Today, Republicans are plagued with a slew of “Liberal Roses”. Colin Powell talks about the Big Tent while endorsing Obama. Lindsey Graham backs Global Warming Legislation that would wreck the US Economy. The revolt of conservatives in the recent New-York Congressional election nearly elected a third-party candidate while the former Republican nominee endorsed the Democrat on dropping out.
Conventional wisdom says that we need to be open-minded enough to allow anybody in the party so that we can win elections. This wisdom has caused the Republican Party to drift left, blurring the lines between Republican and Democrat. This has not won more elections but stuck us with the most left-wing President in history and a Democratic Congress.
First, a party that stands for everything stands for nothing. President Bush (41) abandoned his no-tax pledge and lost big time to Clinton. Clinton adopted many of the Right’s ideas (NAFTA, lowering capital gains tax, and welfare reform) and got reelected. Bush (43) coined the bizarre phrase “compassionate conservatism”. Conservatism is compassionate by its very nature but what Bush used it for was a cover to raise Federal spending to unreal levels. The Republican Congress went along for the ride, splitting from Conservatives who wanted a smaller government. If the Liberals had not been so wacko on the war, Bush may have well lost the election, hovering around 50 percent approval most of the time. In the last election, Republicans put up the darling of the Liberal Media, McCain, the most liberal candidate ever offered by Republicans. Many conservatives stayed home and many independents decided to give Democrats a try thinking that they couldn’t be any worse. Surprise! The only bright spot in the fiasco was Palin and the only reason this anonymous politician from Alaska curried any appeal was because of her conservative credentials.
Like the seductive voice of Tokyo Rose, the Liberal Roses can seem to make sense. Slipping left may seem easy but is no more the rode to victory than that advocated by Tokyo. To you Liberal Roses who think we need to outflank the Democrats on the Left, tell me what is to be gained when you look at the issues of the day:
Abortion: American opinion is drifting against abortion. Even Liberals talk about how they hate abortion but think it is a private matter. Curious that wearing a seat belt or buying health insurance is not.
Global Warming: The overwhelming majority of the American people do not think that man is causing global warming. They are suspicious of this whole movement that is full of anti-capitalist Marxists and Lobbyists that want to deprive America of its wealth. Although you can see why the Obama administration loves them so much, Americans think giving up beef and leather is a bit much. And not to confuse the issue with facts, global temperatures over the last decade have been falling, cancelling out the warming from the previous century.
Health Care Reform: Americans do not want this monstrosity. It is being crammed down our throats by a party that knows no bounds to hubris. Greater expansion of the government is not popular no matter what Pelosi calls it or no matter how much lipstick is on it. And while Democrats have scared seniors every year into thinking that Republicans will cut their benefits, only Democrats have proposed cuts to Medicare and threaten death panels through rationed care.
Taxes: Obama campaigned on higher taxes for the wealthy but still had to offer lower taxes for anyone else. The tax cuts he enacted at the beginning of his term are probably what broke the fall in the economy but there are a myriad of new taxes that are being proposed to cancel out the effect. The damage done to the economies of Virginia and New Jersey have caused them to run from Liberal rule. Even California is talking about tax cuts to repair the damage done by Liberals.
Illegal Immigration: Ok, what part of illegal do you not understand? America is a country of immigrants, but we need legal, controlled immigration. Aside from the drugs many of them bring with them, the poor souls coming to flee oppression and corruption come here to eek out a living as a landscaper or maid only to fall victim to the corruption of the American system, fostered by the Democrats. They are rounded up in ACORN buses, told in Spanish how to vote, and whisked off to the poles with the promises of a few bucks for “doing the right thing.” To the ire of the American people, Democrats talk about undocumented immigrants and liken it to speeding. I wonder if they would be so forgiving if I engaged in undocumented bank withdrawals.
War on Terrorism: The war in Iraq has turned and the beleaguered enemy has retreated to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Americans are not so supportive of the war in Afghanistan because the goals have not been delineated by this Administration. While the President dithers about troop levels, soldiers are dying. I know the President recoils when accused of dithering but the UN approved General McChrystal’s plan weeks ago. When take longer than the UN to make up your mind, you are, by definition, dithering. Supporting the troops and winning this war is a winning strategy for the American electorate. It’s also another reason to seal the borders to illegal immigration. How many Americans and undocumented immigrants are going to be dead when a nuclear dirty bomb is brought across the Mexican border and detonated in Los Angeles?
Education Vouchers: This is extremely popular with impoverished minorities who are traditionally in the tank for Democrats. Educating minorities, really educating them (not just giving them an affirmative-action pat on the head as you pass them to the next grade) is key to truly ending poverty. Unfortunately, the poor and the uneducated (high school drop-outs) vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Liberals have no interest in allowing captive voters to escape. One of Obama’s first acts was to abolish such a program in D.C. that was causing people to become self-reliant and may have led to a rise in Republican voters. Breaking the backs of teachers’ unions will cause few Americans to shed many tears and all Americans would be better for it.
I believe that an articulate American (black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male or female) who believes in Conservatism and can explain it could capture the electorate and do great things for this country. With all due respect to you Liberal Roses out there, my advice to the Republican party is from a phrase adapted from John Wayne: “Go Right, young man, go Right!”
Conventional wisdom says that we need to be open-minded enough to allow anybody in the party so that we can win elections. This wisdom has caused the Republican Party to drift left, blurring the lines between Republican and Democrat. This has not won more elections but stuck us with the most left-wing President in history and a Democratic Congress.
First, a party that stands for everything stands for nothing. President Bush (41) abandoned his no-tax pledge and lost big time to Clinton. Clinton adopted many of the Right’s ideas (NAFTA, lowering capital gains tax, and welfare reform) and got reelected. Bush (43) coined the bizarre phrase “compassionate conservatism”. Conservatism is compassionate by its very nature but what Bush used it for was a cover to raise Federal spending to unreal levels. The Republican Congress went along for the ride, splitting from Conservatives who wanted a smaller government. If the Liberals had not been so wacko on the war, Bush may have well lost the election, hovering around 50 percent approval most of the time. In the last election, Republicans put up the darling of the Liberal Media, McCain, the most liberal candidate ever offered by Republicans. Many conservatives stayed home and many independents decided to give Democrats a try thinking that they couldn’t be any worse. Surprise! The only bright spot in the fiasco was Palin and the only reason this anonymous politician from Alaska curried any appeal was because of her conservative credentials.
Like the seductive voice of Tokyo Rose, the Liberal Roses can seem to make sense. Slipping left may seem easy but is no more the rode to victory than that advocated by Tokyo. To you Liberal Roses who think we need to outflank the Democrats on the Left, tell me what is to be gained when you look at the issues of the day:
Abortion: American opinion is drifting against abortion. Even Liberals talk about how they hate abortion but think it is a private matter. Curious that wearing a seat belt or buying health insurance is not.
Global Warming: The overwhelming majority of the American people do not think that man is causing global warming. They are suspicious of this whole movement that is full of anti-capitalist Marxists and Lobbyists that want to deprive America of its wealth. Although you can see why the Obama administration loves them so much, Americans think giving up beef and leather is a bit much. And not to confuse the issue with facts, global temperatures over the last decade have been falling, cancelling out the warming from the previous century.
Health Care Reform: Americans do not want this monstrosity. It is being crammed down our throats by a party that knows no bounds to hubris. Greater expansion of the government is not popular no matter what Pelosi calls it or no matter how much lipstick is on it. And while Democrats have scared seniors every year into thinking that Republicans will cut their benefits, only Democrats have proposed cuts to Medicare and threaten death panels through rationed care.
Taxes: Obama campaigned on higher taxes for the wealthy but still had to offer lower taxes for anyone else. The tax cuts he enacted at the beginning of his term are probably what broke the fall in the economy but there are a myriad of new taxes that are being proposed to cancel out the effect. The damage done to the economies of Virginia and New Jersey have caused them to run from Liberal rule. Even California is talking about tax cuts to repair the damage done by Liberals.
Illegal Immigration: Ok, what part of illegal do you not understand? America is a country of immigrants, but we need legal, controlled immigration. Aside from the drugs many of them bring with them, the poor souls coming to flee oppression and corruption come here to eek out a living as a landscaper or maid only to fall victim to the corruption of the American system, fostered by the Democrats. They are rounded up in ACORN buses, told in Spanish how to vote, and whisked off to the poles with the promises of a few bucks for “doing the right thing.” To the ire of the American people, Democrats talk about undocumented immigrants and liken it to speeding. I wonder if they would be so forgiving if I engaged in undocumented bank withdrawals.
War on Terrorism: The war in Iraq has turned and the beleaguered enemy has retreated to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Americans are not so supportive of the war in Afghanistan because the goals have not been delineated by this Administration. While the President dithers about troop levels, soldiers are dying. I know the President recoils when accused of dithering but the UN approved General McChrystal’s plan weeks ago. When take longer than the UN to make up your mind, you are, by definition, dithering. Supporting the troops and winning this war is a winning strategy for the American electorate. It’s also another reason to seal the borders to illegal immigration. How many Americans and undocumented immigrants are going to be dead when a nuclear dirty bomb is brought across the Mexican border and detonated in Los Angeles?
Education Vouchers: This is extremely popular with impoverished minorities who are traditionally in the tank for Democrats. Educating minorities, really educating them (not just giving them an affirmative-action pat on the head as you pass them to the next grade) is key to truly ending poverty. Unfortunately, the poor and the uneducated (high school drop-outs) vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Liberals have no interest in allowing captive voters to escape. One of Obama’s first acts was to abolish such a program in D.C. that was causing people to become self-reliant and may have led to a rise in Republican voters. Breaking the backs of teachers’ unions will cause few Americans to shed many tears and all Americans would be better for it.
I believe that an articulate American (black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male or female) who believes in Conservatism and can explain it could capture the electorate and do great things for this country. With all due respect to you Liberal Roses out there, my advice to the Republican party is from a phrase adapted from John Wayne: “Go Right, young man, go Right!”
Sunday, October 25, 2009
White Guilt: The Path to Incompetence
The last president to fail this miserably spoke candidly of the malaise that had descended upon the American people. While the Iranians jerked us around, President Carter put on a smile and a sweater and gave pep talks in a dimly lit White House as the energy crisis choked the economy. We all learned there was a reason he was known as “Jimmy Who?” before the election and we realized anew that the president ought to have some experience and know-how before coming to office. But then comes 2008 and an “articulate black guy” (as Biden put it) pops on the stage. A combination of liberal white guilt and Obama’s ability to say nothing eloquently enough to mean anything gripped enough of the left and mushy middle to sweep him into office. Now people complain that he is doing nothing. Government’s doing nothing is usually a good thing. Not having enough laws does not usually rate in polls asking what Americans are concerned about. Obama in his short ten months not only has no accomplishments but has done the following damage:
· Assaulted the First Amendment—This crazy war the White House has launched against Fox News has people remembering Nixon’s enemy’s list a feud with NBC. Being compared to Nixon is never a good thing. Not even Carter was this thin skinned.
· Wrecked the economy – Passing the stimulus bill was heralded as one of his accomplishments. They claimed they saved jobs as unemployment surged passed their direst predictions. Even a key White-House advisor admitted that the stimulus package “will have no further simulative effect passed the second quarter of 2010.” I guess a trillion bucks doesn’t buy what is used to. Meanwhile the world’s economists warn the dollar may collapse due to the reckless debt Obama has mounted (more than all his predecessors combined).
· Offended our allies—The liberals whined that Bush was not nice enough to the international community. Obama has offended the British by grabbing their Queen with both hands as if she were an eager campaign donor and gave the British Prime Minister a CD player that does not work in Europe. The Poles and Czechs are furious because he canceled a missile defense program there because Russia wanted us out. And while the Russians gave us squat in return, did he ever wonder why Russia does not want Poland to be able to defend itself? And while we heard no end of Bush’s snubbing the snobby French, their prime mister said this week of Obama’s Iranian policy, “I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing. More enriched uranium, more centrifuges, and on top of that, a statement by Iranian leaders proposing to wipe a UN member State off the map.”
· Emboldened our enemies—Afghanistan, a war of necessity in Obama’s words, is being lost while he dithers, waiting for the elections in November to pass before inevitably alienating is left-wing base by sending troops to the war zone. Close elections, like the governor’s race in New Jersey, will go to the Republicans if Obama’s base is offended. Meanwhile soldiers die. Do you think the media will calculate the number of Democrat votes that were bought by each soldier’s death?
Obama learned from Carter’s failures not to stand by and take it. Having the media in their lap like a pretty poodle, the only vicious lap dog out there is Fox News. Obama is lousy at governing but great at campaigning, especially when it has an enemy, be it Fox New, Humana, or the Chamber of Commerce; it takes the attention away from their abysmal failings. But the liberal white guilt exerted during the campaign meant that no tough questions were asked during the campaign and a very thin-skinned, unseasoned Politian has been elevated to the presidency because of it. People who voted for the president primarily because he is black call the current opposition racist. After all, how could anyone be against this president; he is still black.
Wrecking the economy is a natural result of implementing liberal policies. Liberals whine that Bush started it. The economic melt-down was the result of forcing banks to loan to people who could not pay them back. These people fit the liberal definitions of down-trodden. True, Bush did not stop it and he did acquiesce to Obama’s plans during the transition, but it is still a bad idea. If Bush spent too much, how is it better that Obama spend more, astronomically more? But Obama lacks any experience that would tell him this is a bad idea. His overconfidence in liberalism may very well bring on the depression he claims to have avoided.
His offense of our allies is because his overblown sense of self convinced him that they would love him just for being himself. Although this is true of the Nobel Committee, much of Europe is addicted to American defense welfare and will not step up to do anything. His asking for help from the Europeans has not only yielded nothing, France (of all countries) lectures him for not doing enough in Iran. Hey, Mr. President, don’t you know that not listening to France is what got Bush in trouble? Although Sorkarzy is right, how about France does something to earn its seat on the UN permanent counsel.
Our enemies scoff at the liberal belief that we are all people who just want to get along. While liberals bristle at the racism that caused slavery, they fail to realize that this same force is at work through Islamofacists who would make slaves of us all. You think tea-baggers are racists? What do call a maniacal dictator that wants to kill all the Jews? You weren’t planning on making him your race-relations Czar, were you?
Hey Liberals out there, next time you decide to relieve your white guilt by doing this much damage to the rest of us, could I get you to ask one question first: “Would I vote for someone this inexperienced who has told us virtually nothing about himself with ties to radical left-wing groups if he were white?”
· Assaulted the First Amendment—This crazy war the White House has launched against Fox News has people remembering Nixon’s enemy’s list a feud with NBC. Being compared to Nixon is never a good thing. Not even Carter was this thin skinned.
· Wrecked the economy – Passing the stimulus bill was heralded as one of his accomplishments. They claimed they saved jobs as unemployment surged passed their direst predictions. Even a key White-House advisor admitted that the stimulus package “will have no further simulative effect passed the second quarter of 2010.” I guess a trillion bucks doesn’t buy what is used to. Meanwhile the world’s economists warn the dollar may collapse due to the reckless debt Obama has mounted (more than all his predecessors combined).
· Offended our allies—The liberals whined that Bush was not nice enough to the international community. Obama has offended the British by grabbing their Queen with both hands as if she were an eager campaign donor and gave the British Prime Minister a CD player that does not work in Europe. The Poles and Czechs are furious because he canceled a missile defense program there because Russia wanted us out. And while the Russians gave us squat in return, did he ever wonder why Russia does not want Poland to be able to defend itself? And while we heard no end of Bush’s snubbing the snobby French, their prime mister said this week of Obama’s Iranian policy, “I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing. More enriched uranium, more centrifuges, and on top of that, a statement by Iranian leaders proposing to wipe a UN member State off the map.”
· Emboldened our enemies—Afghanistan, a war of necessity in Obama’s words, is being lost while he dithers, waiting for the elections in November to pass before inevitably alienating is left-wing base by sending troops to the war zone. Close elections, like the governor’s race in New Jersey, will go to the Republicans if Obama’s base is offended. Meanwhile soldiers die. Do you think the media will calculate the number of Democrat votes that were bought by each soldier’s death?
Obama learned from Carter’s failures not to stand by and take it. Having the media in their lap like a pretty poodle, the only vicious lap dog out there is Fox News. Obama is lousy at governing but great at campaigning, especially when it has an enemy, be it Fox New, Humana, or the Chamber of Commerce; it takes the attention away from their abysmal failings. But the liberal white guilt exerted during the campaign meant that no tough questions were asked during the campaign and a very thin-skinned, unseasoned Politian has been elevated to the presidency because of it. People who voted for the president primarily because he is black call the current opposition racist. After all, how could anyone be against this president; he is still black.
Wrecking the economy is a natural result of implementing liberal policies. Liberals whine that Bush started it. The economic melt-down was the result of forcing banks to loan to people who could not pay them back. These people fit the liberal definitions of down-trodden. True, Bush did not stop it and he did acquiesce to Obama’s plans during the transition, but it is still a bad idea. If Bush spent too much, how is it better that Obama spend more, astronomically more? But Obama lacks any experience that would tell him this is a bad idea. His overconfidence in liberalism may very well bring on the depression he claims to have avoided.
His offense of our allies is because his overblown sense of self convinced him that they would love him just for being himself. Although this is true of the Nobel Committee, much of Europe is addicted to American defense welfare and will not step up to do anything. His asking for help from the Europeans has not only yielded nothing, France (of all countries) lectures him for not doing enough in Iran. Hey, Mr. President, don’t you know that not listening to France is what got Bush in trouble? Although Sorkarzy is right, how about France does something to earn its seat on the UN permanent counsel.
Our enemies scoff at the liberal belief that we are all people who just want to get along. While liberals bristle at the racism that caused slavery, they fail to realize that this same force is at work through Islamofacists who would make slaves of us all. You think tea-baggers are racists? What do call a maniacal dictator that wants to kill all the Jews? You weren’t planning on making him your race-relations Czar, were you?
Hey Liberals out there, next time you decide to relieve your white guilt by doing this much damage to the rest of us, could I get you to ask one question first: “Would I vote for someone this inexperienced who has told us virtually nothing about himself with ties to radical left-wing groups if he were white?”
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Nature of Government: What Michael Moore Does Not Understand
While watching Sean Hannity was interviewing his pal Michael Moore, Moore asked "Why do you hate this government so much?" The context was Hannity's reluctance to allow the government to take care of Americans with endless entitlement programs. I have pondered the question and have decided the question shows a grave ignorance over the nature of government and the precarious situation we find ourselves in vis-a-vis this government. Attitudes toward government form the basis of political philosophies and underscore the fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals.
Governments wield power. In fact, power is the core of government. Governments throughout the centuries have wielded their power in various ways. When government power is wielded by a king, dictator, or oligarchy, the result has eventually been upheaval from the governed. These governments have either yielded to democratic reforms or suffered revolution and/or collapse. Our nation's founders experienced the latter and established a replacement government that reflected their extreme suspicion of government. They set the Constitution, a written document, as the supreme law above all the government rulers. Rulers can be fickle but a written law is immutable. Then lest the nation's rulers just ignore the constitution, they made the rulers accountable to the people, drew lines between federal and state powers, divided the government in three parts (executive, legislative, and judicial) and set them at odds with each other through and ingenious check-and-balance system. Then they wrote a bill of rights listing what the government could not do. Hey, Mr. Moore, if you think Hannity was suspicious of government, you should have met George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
Government, therefore, is a magnate of people who crave power. We should be suspicious of those who wish to wield power over us because wielding power always means curbing our freedom. As a conservative, I believe government should exercise its power to balance my freedom against yours. You have the right to swing your fist anywhere you want but your freedom must end where my nose begins. Government must stop you from hitting my nose or punish you if you do. Making laws against murder, robbery and such is a legitimate role of the government. With power comes virtually endless resources through its ability to tax. Government then also becomes a magnate for those desiring wealth. Liberals believe that power and wealth should be used to better society beyond just preventing you from hitting my nose. For lack of a better term, I call this social engineering. Our experience with social engineering has been largely detrimental. There are three basic reasons why social engineering is doomed to failure.
First, politicians are just not smart enough. Virtually no one is. We rely on free markets to do what no person or small group of persons can do. Social programs are engineered by people who do not know what they are doing, make assumptions that bear no resemblance to reality or work at cross purposes to the governed for their own benefit. The war on poverty has spent trillions without eliminating poverty. Medicaid and Medicare cost seven times their projected estimates. Congressmen are still being caught in bribery and tax evasion scandals.
Second, your social engineering interferes with my right to swing my fist. You may argue that I do not need to swing my fist but what the heck gives you the right to decide? If I want to make a billion dollars in a year, why do you get to decide you need half? Forcing me to work for the benefit of others is slavery. Is is alright to enslave people based on their fitting in a certain category? If I decide you should be my slave because you have blond hair, would that be OK? Our nation's founders believed in maximizing the freedom of white males which we have now expanded to mean the freedom of all people. Singling out a category of people for tax punishment (rich people), economic punishment (not allowing Rush Limbaugh to buy a NFL team based on political speech), or opportunity denial (preferring minorities over whites in college admission) are all social engineering endeavors that run counter to the premise that everyone is created equally and are equal under the law.
Third, expanding the role of government amplifies the negative aspects of its nature, usually without great benefit. The more government does, the more lobbyist flood into the government tempting the power holders with worldly goods. Companies that could use their capital to produce more goods and services are, instead, paying campaign donations to stave off threatened regulations and with good reason. Government power does not stand idle. Bureaucracies grow through endless hiring and justify their existence with never-ending regulation, most of which is costly and nugatory. How much of our national productivity is lost to lawyers and lobbyists dealing with this asinine nonsense? Some regulation is necessary. You should not be able to steal my money via a Ponzi scheme (like Bernie Madoff did to thousands) but even when regulation is in place the government often fails to do its job (or do we blame this on the extreme incompetence of Tim Geithner who was the head regulator in New York at the time?) Experience has shown that he governs best who governs least.
Things are especially precarious now because the liberal have developed an us-versus-them mentality. Conservatives are heavily scrutinized while Liberals get a pass. Hypocrisy is at record levels with Democrats who now run the entire government. While Tom Delay had to be run out of Congress for, as I understand it, being mean to Democrats, Charles Rangel keeps his chairmanship while committing tax fraud. Nancy Pelosi breaks out in tears and demands Wilson apologize to everyone multiple times for calling the President a liar (which turns out to be true) while Grayson can use defamatory lies to demean Republicans with near impunity.
With Congress and the White House in the same party the power check between the two has broken down. With the appointment of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, we break down the check of the judicial branch because she does not believe the constitution to be what the founders intended, an immutable law. The courts already pretend the ninth and tenth amendments do not exist, while the Federal Government leaves its heavy footprint on the backsides of the states. The first amendment grants the press special powers to be the watch dogs over the government but they have abdicated their role, all tilting left as well. While the corruption of ACORN, a recipient of billions in tax dollars, was being exposed by undercover novices, the New York Times did not cover the story saying that too many of its reporters were on vacation at the time. Yet the "Naked Politician" was covered (sorry for the pun) during that week. The liberals in Maryland do not seem to be as concerned with ACORN helping set up brothels with underage, illegal aliens as much as they are that the undercover agents used clandestine recording devices. Unchecked, the White House has stocked their ranks with tax cheats, lobbyists and Marxists. The environment for corruption and abuse of power by the the White House is rife. Mr. Moore is naive if he does not think that Obama and the Chicago thugachracy he brought with him do not have the ability or inclination to abuse government power. Besides, the last president who misused his power (in that case he fixed the outcome of a law suit against himself for sexual harassment) was let off and still held in high esteem by many people.
This leaves the American people to protest and threaten the House of Representatives with reprisal in the next election. This may be the only way left to correct this mess. The White House has reacted to this by slandering the people who oppose his initiatives. And in a bizarre turn they have declared war on Fox News because it covers the protests, does not faun over the president, and has commentators that actually criticize the President's polices. Liberals have tried to brunt opposition, not with reasoned arguments, but by labeling opponents as racists.
Mr. Moore, I do not hate this government but I do not trust it or any government. Government must earn my trust each day and I will always be suspicious of anyone wishing to wield power over me regardless of their political stripes. However, never before has so much of the safeguards put in place by the founders been breached because of the wide-spread power of liberalism and the inability of most of the press to do their jobs! Let's at least put the Congress back in the hands of some conservatives, then we'll talk. I bet the press will start doing its job then!
Governments wield power. In fact, power is the core of government. Governments throughout the centuries have wielded their power in various ways. When government power is wielded by a king, dictator, or oligarchy, the result has eventually been upheaval from the governed. These governments have either yielded to democratic reforms or suffered revolution and/or collapse. Our nation's founders experienced the latter and established a replacement government that reflected their extreme suspicion of government. They set the Constitution, a written document, as the supreme law above all the government rulers. Rulers can be fickle but a written law is immutable. Then lest the nation's rulers just ignore the constitution, they made the rulers accountable to the people, drew lines between federal and state powers, divided the government in three parts (executive, legislative, and judicial) and set them at odds with each other through and ingenious check-and-balance system. Then they wrote a bill of rights listing what the government could not do. Hey, Mr. Moore, if you think Hannity was suspicious of government, you should have met George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
Government, therefore, is a magnate of people who crave power. We should be suspicious of those who wish to wield power over us because wielding power always means curbing our freedom. As a conservative, I believe government should exercise its power to balance my freedom against yours. You have the right to swing your fist anywhere you want but your freedom must end where my nose begins. Government must stop you from hitting my nose or punish you if you do. Making laws against murder, robbery and such is a legitimate role of the government. With power comes virtually endless resources through its ability to tax. Government then also becomes a magnate for those desiring wealth. Liberals believe that power and wealth should be used to better society beyond just preventing you from hitting my nose. For lack of a better term, I call this social engineering. Our experience with social engineering has been largely detrimental. There are three basic reasons why social engineering is doomed to failure.
First, politicians are just not smart enough. Virtually no one is. We rely on free markets to do what no person or small group of persons can do. Social programs are engineered by people who do not know what they are doing, make assumptions that bear no resemblance to reality or work at cross purposes to the governed for their own benefit. The war on poverty has spent trillions without eliminating poverty. Medicaid and Medicare cost seven times their projected estimates. Congressmen are still being caught in bribery and tax evasion scandals.
Second, your social engineering interferes with my right to swing my fist. You may argue that I do not need to swing my fist but what the heck gives you the right to decide? If I want to make a billion dollars in a year, why do you get to decide you need half? Forcing me to work for the benefit of others is slavery. Is is alright to enslave people based on their fitting in a certain category? If I decide you should be my slave because you have blond hair, would that be OK? Our nation's founders believed in maximizing the freedom of white males which we have now expanded to mean the freedom of all people. Singling out a category of people for tax punishment (rich people), economic punishment (not allowing Rush Limbaugh to buy a NFL team based on political speech), or opportunity denial (preferring minorities over whites in college admission) are all social engineering endeavors that run counter to the premise that everyone is created equally and are equal under the law.
Third, expanding the role of government amplifies the negative aspects of its nature, usually without great benefit. The more government does, the more lobbyist flood into the government tempting the power holders with worldly goods. Companies that could use their capital to produce more goods and services are, instead, paying campaign donations to stave off threatened regulations and with good reason. Government power does not stand idle. Bureaucracies grow through endless hiring and justify their existence with never-ending regulation, most of which is costly and nugatory. How much of our national productivity is lost to lawyers and lobbyists dealing with this asinine nonsense? Some regulation is necessary. You should not be able to steal my money via a Ponzi scheme (like Bernie Madoff did to thousands) but even when regulation is in place the government often fails to do its job (or do we blame this on the extreme incompetence of Tim Geithner who was the head regulator in New York at the time?) Experience has shown that he governs best who governs least.
Things are especially precarious now because the liberal have developed an us-versus-them mentality. Conservatives are heavily scrutinized while Liberals get a pass. Hypocrisy is at record levels with Democrats who now run the entire government. While Tom Delay had to be run out of Congress for, as I understand it, being mean to Democrats, Charles Rangel keeps his chairmanship while committing tax fraud. Nancy Pelosi breaks out in tears and demands Wilson apologize to everyone multiple times for calling the President a liar (which turns out to be true) while Grayson can use defamatory lies to demean Republicans with near impunity.
With Congress and the White House in the same party the power check between the two has broken down. With the appointment of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, we break down the check of the judicial branch because she does not believe the constitution to be what the founders intended, an immutable law. The courts already pretend the ninth and tenth amendments do not exist, while the Federal Government leaves its heavy footprint on the backsides of the states. The first amendment grants the press special powers to be the watch dogs over the government but they have abdicated their role, all tilting left as well. While the corruption of ACORN, a recipient of billions in tax dollars, was being exposed by undercover novices, the New York Times did not cover the story saying that too many of its reporters were on vacation at the time. Yet the "Naked Politician" was covered (sorry for the pun) during that week. The liberals in Maryland do not seem to be as concerned with ACORN helping set up brothels with underage, illegal aliens as much as they are that the undercover agents used clandestine recording devices. Unchecked, the White House has stocked their ranks with tax cheats, lobbyists and Marxists. The environment for corruption and abuse of power by the the White House is rife. Mr. Moore is naive if he does not think that Obama and the Chicago thugachracy he brought with him do not have the ability or inclination to abuse government power. Besides, the last president who misused his power (in that case he fixed the outcome of a law suit against himself for sexual harassment) was let off and still held in high esteem by many people.
This leaves the American people to protest and threaten the House of Representatives with reprisal in the next election. This may be the only way left to correct this mess. The White House has reacted to this by slandering the people who oppose his initiatives. And in a bizarre turn they have declared war on Fox News because it covers the protests, does not faun over the president, and has commentators that actually criticize the President's polices. Liberals have tried to brunt opposition, not with reasoned arguments, but by labeling opponents as racists.
Mr. Moore, I do not hate this government but I do not trust it or any government. Government must earn my trust each day and I will always be suspicious of anyone wishing to wield power over me regardless of their political stripes. However, never before has so much of the safeguards put in place by the founders been breached because of the wide-spread power of liberalism and the inability of most of the press to do their jobs! Let's at least put the Congress back in the hands of some conservatives, then we'll talk. I bet the press will start doing its job then!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Obama Finally Wins Something
I was totally thrilled this weekend when President Obama got the Nobel Peace prize. I personally have always wanted a Nobel Prize for science so I got right on it this weekend. I have heard there is a Theory of Everything in science and, although it was not my idea originally, I think it is a good one. I have spoken to people about much I feel it is a good idea. I am even putting together a committee of Czars and demanding they have the theory on my desk to sign by Thanksgiving break. I have also spent the weekend worrying about how the cool autumn air is a sign of global warming and am in total mourning of Evil White European day, today, on account of Columbus coming over here and all. I hope the Norwegians know I don’t mean them ‘cause they didn’t pillage anything like Columbus unless you count the Vikings plundering half of Northern Europe but we all know that plundering from rich white people is what you’re supposed to do anyway.
So all this thinking and feeling has got me too exhausted to write anymore and I am too tied up in knots trying to decide what to have for dinner (I know the deadline for deciding is tonight but I may just put it off until next week even though I have been warned that by doing so I may lose the opportunity to have dinner at all.) I know you expected me to write more but maybe the lack of words will inspire you to admire me for being pensive and deliberative. Say, maybe I could use this blog entry to win the Nobel Prize for Literature!
So all this thinking and feeling has got me too exhausted to write anymore and I am too tied up in knots trying to decide what to have for dinner (I know the deadline for deciding is tonight but I may just put it off until next week even though I have been warned that by doing so I may lose the opportunity to have dinner at all.) I know you expected me to write more but maybe the lack of words will inspire you to admire me for being pensive and deliberative. Say, maybe I could use this blog entry to win the Nobel Prize for Literature!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Obama: Incompetent, Delusional, or Liar
This week President Obama made a pitch to bring the Olympics to Chicago. He promised to use all his powers of persuasion to bring the Games home but it worked out just about as well as all his other attempts to persuade Congress to pass his radical agenda as the Olympic Committee voted to send the Games to Rio de Janeiro. The president was criticized for the colossal waste of money and time but at least he wasn't doing something stupid like his recent Air-Force-One flyby of Manhattan. What bothered me was his inability to take the failure like a, well, president (Remember "The buck stops here?"). Instead, he launched into another "I'm-sorry-for-America" speech and blamed previous administrations. Get off it already; Bush isn't there anymore! I have begun to wonder if he is incompetent, delusional, or just a liar. I can't decide. Here is the evidence I have pondered for each.
Of course, he can read a speech like no other since Lincoln and the Gettysburg address. But why did that not persuade the committee. Is he loosing his touch? Perhaps they are still mad at Bush or maybe they are all a bunch of racists! He has made Obamacare the hallmark of his administration and it is going nowhere. Racism? Clinton tried the same thing and failed. Is the nation so racist that we would not even listen to an honorary black president. Perhaps, the country does not like Southerners? Why doesn't Hilary get out there a stump for the reforms? She was the mastermind behind it last time. Is the president afraid we are prejudice against women? Listen, Mr. President, somewhere out there is a person or persons who can explain your wonderful policies so that we will all love them. Maybe one of your many Czars? We could play some perverse game of "Green Eggs and Ham". Maybe we'll like Health Care Reform in a box with a fox. And then he blames his failures on Bush and on the Republicans in Congress. News flash, the Democrats own Congress! The Republican are there to stop you but there would be too few of them if you could get your party together. Is he just too incompetent to get his proposals through and too incompetent to find someone who can?
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is deteriorating and Iran pursues nuclear weapons. He is not talking to his commander in the field. And although the stimulus bill had to be passed immediately before it could be read, he agonizes over sending more troops to a country that had attacked us and harbors terrorists. His only success this week was that his charisma extracted a new set of lies from the Iranians so they can buy time, leaving Israel in the lurch. And when they break this new set of agreements, will he send them another letter telling them how disappointed he is and that they must really shape up this time or else? They are already fueling a power plant with letters they get like that from the UN.
Perhaps he is delusional. He did derail the Clinton machine and successfully lock Hilary away in the Secretary tower, dooming her to mundane diplomacy trips Malawi and Honduras. Some likened him to Jesus Christ and even made caricatures of him as the Messiah. By the way, the National Endowment for the Arts funded an exhibition with a crucifix dipped in urine. I wonder if we could get one of those posters dipped in urine and put on display somewhere. But let's skip the naked, chocolate Obama; I think we have seen enough of his bareness in the tabloids already. He doesn't need any more exposure. But he surely craves it and all this adulation may have gone to his head. Children in schools are now singing songs to his praise to him. If Chairman Mao were still alive, he would be green with envy. Rumors are the Kim Jung Il of North Korea has offered to stop his weapons program if Obama will send teachers from New Jersey to teach his song writers how to compose such marvelous songs of praise.
When Bush was president, he asked the world to help but went forward in our national interests when some refused to help. Now Obama thinks that apologies, sweet words, and the force of his personality will get these nations to change? Have they? Are they helping more? NO! France is still a burned-out socialist society that will do nothing. Russia and China still hate us. North Korea and Iran are as dangerous as ever. Hey, Mister President, are you sure you said "Pretty please with sugar on top?" I think he needs to lay off MSNBC and get his head back into reality. Ever heard of Fox News?
Or maybe he realizes all this and is a just a compulsive liar. He lied about Bill Ayers and Reverent Wright. He ran as a centrist Democrat promising ethical governance and then stuffed is his administration with Marxists and tax cheats. He promised no more lobbyist in high office and then put lobbyists in high office. He promised we would get to see bills on line before they are passed and now pushes them through before anyone can read them. He touts how great his economic measures are doing as the unemployment rate climbs to ten percent, the highest in thirty years. He says he will cut the deficit and then spends more money than all his predecessors combined. He talks about what is in his health care proposal when he has never submitted any proposals to Congress and insists that spending a trillion dollars on health care will not add to the deficit. It does not help that the press does not call him out on any of this. If Bush said the sky was blue, the press would exclaim that the sky was red and the Bush knew it and the only reason he was saying this was to starve children and harm senior citizens. Obama could say the sky was green and the press would report how wonderful it was that Obama turned the sky green in spite of all the racists that claimed the sky to be blue. Maybe this is just feeding his delusions. Does he really think he can cut waste, fraud and abuse from the government? You mean like when he worked with ACORN? And when anyone does confront him on how his proposals are hurting the country (like cutting $500 billion from Medicare), we get the Orwellian "No they're not."
Ten months into this nightmare and we finally are getting a sense of how radically left this president is but now we are left to wonder if he is incompetent, delusional or just a liar. I think he might be a bit of all three. But for all his faults he has done something I didn't think anyone on earth could do. He has made me wish Hillary Clinton had become President.
Of course, he can read a speech like no other since Lincoln and the Gettysburg address. But why did that not persuade the committee. Is he loosing his touch? Perhaps they are still mad at Bush or maybe they are all a bunch of racists! He has made Obamacare the hallmark of his administration and it is going nowhere. Racism? Clinton tried the same thing and failed. Is the nation so racist that we would not even listen to an honorary black president. Perhaps, the country does not like Southerners? Why doesn't Hilary get out there a stump for the reforms? She was the mastermind behind it last time. Is the president afraid we are prejudice against women? Listen, Mr. President, somewhere out there is a person or persons who can explain your wonderful policies so that we will all love them. Maybe one of your many Czars? We could play some perverse game of "Green Eggs and Ham". Maybe we'll like Health Care Reform in a box with a fox. And then he blames his failures on Bush and on the Republicans in Congress. News flash, the Democrats own Congress! The Republican are there to stop you but there would be too few of them if you could get your party together. Is he just too incompetent to get his proposals through and too incompetent to find someone who can?
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is deteriorating and Iran pursues nuclear weapons. He is not talking to his commander in the field. And although the stimulus bill had to be passed immediately before it could be read, he agonizes over sending more troops to a country that had attacked us and harbors terrorists. His only success this week was that his charisma extracted a new set of lies from the Iranians so they can buy time, leaving Israel in the lurch. And when they break this new set of agreements, will he send them another letter telling them how disappointed he is and that they must really shape up this time or else? They are already fueling a power plant with letters they get like that from the UN.
Perhaps he is delusional. He did derail the Clinton machine and successfully lock Hilary away in the Secretary tower, dooming her to mundane diplomacy trips Malawi and Honduras. Some likened him to Jesus Christ and even made caricatures of him as the Messiah. By the way, the National Endowment for the Arts funded an exhibition with a crucifix dipped in urine. I wonder if we could get one of those posters dipped in urine and put on display somewhere. But let's skip the naked, chocolate Obama; I think we have seen enough of his bareness in the tabloids already. He doesn't need any more exposure. But he surely craves it and all this adulation may have gone to his head. Children in schools are now singing songs to his praise to him. If Chairman Mao were still alive, he would be green with envy. Rumors are the Kim Jung Il of North Korea has offered to stop his weapons program if Obama will send teachers from New Jersey to teach his song writers how to compose such marvelous songs of praise.
When Bush was president, he asked the world to help but went forward in our national interests when some refused to help. Now Obama thinks that apologies, sweet words, and the force of his personality will get these nations to change? Have they? Are they helping more? NO! France is still a burned-out socialist society that will do nothing. Russia and China still hate us. North Korea and Iran are as dangerous as ever. Hey, Mister President, are you sure you said "Pretty please with sugar on top?" I think he needs to lay off MSNBC and get his head back into reality. Ever heard of Fox News?
Or maybe he realizes all this and is a just a compulsive liar. He lied about Bill Ayers and Reverent Wright. He ran as a centrist Democrat promising ethical governance and then stuffed is his administration with Marxists and tax cheats. He promised no more lobbyist in high office and then put lobbyists in high office. He promised we would get to see bills on line before they are passed and now pushes them through before anyone can read them. He touts how great his economic measures are doing as the unemployment rate climbs to ten percent, the highest in thirty years. He says he will cut the deficit and then spends more money than all his predecessors combined. He talks about what is in his health care proposal when he has never submitted any proposals to Congress and insists that spending a trillion dollars on health care will not add to the deficit. It does not help that the press does not call him out on any of this. If Bush said the sky was blue, the press would exclaim that the sky was red and the Bush knew it and the only reason he was saying this was to starve children and harm senior citizens. Obama could say the sky was green and the press would report how wonderful it was that Obama turned the sky green in spite of all the racists that claimed the sky to be blue. Maybe this is just feeding his delusions. Does he really think he can cut waste, fraud and abuse from the government? You mean like when he worked with ACORN? And when anyone does confront him on how his proposals are hurting the country (like cutting $500 billion from Medicare), we get the Orwellian "No they're not."
Ten months into this nightmare and we finally are getting a sense of how radically left this president is but now we are left to wonder if he is incompetent, delusional or just a liar. I think he might be a bit of all three. But for all his faults he has done something I didn't think anyone on earth could do. He has made me wish Hillary Clinton had become President.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Environmentalism: How to Cause the Next Problem
When I was young, I had a puppy that chased his tail. He never actually caught it so I often wondered why he bothered. Maybe it entertained him. Maybe it made him feel better. Or maybe he never bothered to think about how pointless it was. Now I realize he might just have been an environmentalist. Like the puppy, environmentalists chase their tails in the sense that their solutions either accomplish nothing or create the next problem, requiring another trip around the circle. Their current actions are never analyzed for effectivity or impact. Paramount is how the action makes them currently feel and motion is preferable to doing nothing even if nothing would give a better result.
When I speak of environmentalists, I speak of the extremists, not people who want clean air and water or might enjoy an occasional visit to a national park. Rather I refer to puppy-tail touting liberals that impose solutions creating the next set of problems. Obama's Cap and Trade is the latest in this line of idiocy but I thought instructive to look at environmentalism historically.
Modern environmentalism begins with Theadore Roosevelt who gave birth to the national park system. It seemed like a benign stretch of federal power. Later his cousin, FDR, founded the Tennessee Valley Authority. Its mission was to build dams to create hydroelectric power. It provided jobs for many during the height of the depression, raised the standard of living for many Appalachian poor, and drove demand for new consumer goods. Pollution from burning wood and coal diminished as people turned to cheap, reliable electricity to heat and cook. But now the environmentalists have discovered that fish populations have declined because the fish cannot get to their spawning grounds. The call now is to remove the power plants. This, of course, would increase poverty and push people back to wood and coal. Then what? Can you say, "Here puppy, puppy!"?
The Nixon administration founded the Environmental Protection Agency. This brings the force of the government and the hidden government agendas to environmental policy. Sulfur being emitted by burning eastern coal brings acid rain. Burning western coal would solve the problem. But this would affect local employment conditions. The EPA mandates the use of scrubbers on smoke stacks to remove the sulfur. Plants that cannot afford the scrubbers go out of business, affecting local employment conditions. Plants that burn western coal must also have the scrubbers even though they do absolutely no good. The cost is past on to you.
To deal with auto emissions CAFE standards were enacted, calling for lighter cars. Death rates climbed as survivability in these flimsy cars plummeted. For some environmentalists this is a good thing because human life is an empediment to a good environment. Air bags have helped curb the death toll but I wonder when they will start whining about the chemicals involved in making the bags. To further reduce auto emissions catalytic converters were mandated so "harmless" carbon dioxide would be emitted. Now they are all nuts about greenhouse gases.
Today environmentalists sow the seeds of their future complaints. Low-watt light bulbs contain elements to toxic to place in land fills. Cash for Clunkers took useful cars and placed in them landfills so "environmentally friendly" cars could take their place. Let's review how much damage hybrids do the environment. Cadmium is a key component in the batteries for hybrid cars. It is toxic to all living things and nothing will grow within miles of such a mine. Mines can be found in environmental sensitive places such as Brazil and the Great-Lakes area of Canada. The stuff is sent to China to be made into batteries. The batteries are then shipped to Europe to be made into engine assemblies. The engines are then shipped to the USA to make into cars. The amount of extra fossil fuel burned to produce and transport components for these cars versus a normal car far exceeds what the hybrid will save in its lifetime.
Now Obama joins the idiocy with Cap and Trade. C&T is supposed to mean that you cap the amount of greenhouse gases emitted globally. When a company want to exceed its cap, it must trade with another so the overall levels do not increase. But like all Marxists theories, it sounds great on paper but has no practical implementation. In Europe there is a market to buy credits when you want to exceed your cap. The money is sent to China where they are paid to dismantle on old, coal burning plant. But what do the Chinese do with the site afterward? Of course, they build a new, modern coal-burning plant. While CO2 emissions have increased steadily in spite of C&T, it has recently declined during Obama's War on Prosperity. Indeed, shrinking economies are the best way to reduce CO2 levels but who would want that? No one except Carol Browner, Obama's Global Warming Czar who belongs to the Commission for a Sustainable World Society which calls for rich countries to shrink their economies. I guess it makes sense for Obama to increase the number of poor in this country so he can increase the number of people he can hook on government unemployment and welfare. That way he can threaten them with starvation, like he threatens the elderly, if they don't vote correctly next time.
This week Obama went to the UN and did his usual apologies for the existence of America but he also promised to work with them on environmental issues. Now it's true the UN just wants to abscond our national wealth under the guise of environmentalism or whatever Obama will go along with but they are generally more inept than Obama at getting anything done so if anyone can gum up the puppy tail-chasing machine, they can; they gum up everything else. And they might even do it cheaper than the administration alone (It's pretty sad when the UN becomes a better bargain than the Federal Government). At least this will buy us some time until the 2010 election when Republicans can come back and, in Biden's words, "end our agenda". How's that for hope and change. And nothing against you dog lovers out there, but from now on, I am sticking to cats.
When I speak of environmentalists, I speak of the extremists, not people who want clean air and water or might enjoy an occasional visit to a national park. Rather I refer to puppy-tail touting liberals that impose solutions creating the next set of problems. Obama's Cap and Trade is the latest in this line of idiocy but I thought instructive to look at environmentalism historically.
Modern environmentalism begins with Theadore Roosevelt who gave birth to the national park system. It seemed like a benign stretch of federal power. Later his cousin, FDR, founded the Tennessee Valley Authority. Its mission was to build dams to create hydroelectric power. It provided jobs for many during the height of the depression, raised the standard of living for many Appalachian poor, and drove demand for new consumer goods. Pollution from burning wood and coal diminished as people turned to cheap, reliable electricity to heat and cook. But now the environmentalists have discovered that fish populations have declined because the fish cannot get to their spawning grounds. The call now is to remove the power plants. This, of course, would increase poverty and push people back to wood and coal. Then what? Can you say, "Here puppy, puppy!"?
The Nixon administration founded the Environmental Protection Agency. This brings the force of the government and the hidden government agendas to environmental policy. Sulfur being emitted by burning eastern coal brings acid rain. Burning western coal would solve the problem. But this would affect local employment conditions. The EPA mandates the use of scrubbers on smoke stacks to remove the sulfur. Plants that cannot afford the scrubbers go out of business, affecting local employment conditions. Plants that burn western coal must also have the scrubbers even though they do absolutely no good. The cost is past on to you.
To deal with auto emissions CAFE standards were enacted, calling for lighter cars. Death rates climbed as survivability in these flimsy cars plummeted. For some environmentalists this is a good thing because human life is an empediment to a good environment. Air bags have helped curb the death toll but I wonder when they will start whining about the chemicals involved in making the bags. To further reduce auto emissions catalytic converters were mandated so "harmless" carbon dioxide would be emitted. Now they are all nuts about greenhouse gases.
Today environmentalists sow the seeds of their future complaints. Low-watt light bulbs contain elements to toxic to place in land fills. Cash for Clunkers took useful cars and placed in them landfills so "environmentally friendly" cars could take their place. Let's review how much damage hybrids do the environment. Cadmium is a key component in the batteries for hybrid cars. It is toxic to all living things and nothing will grow within miles of such a mine. Mines can be found in environmental sensitive places such as Brazil and the Great-Lakes area of Canada. The stuff is sent to China to be made into batteries. The batteries are then shipped to Europe to be made into engine assemblies. The engines are then shipped to the USA to make into cars. The amount of extra fossil fuel burned to produce and transport components for these cars versus a normal car far exceeds what the hybrid will save in its lifetime.
Now Obama joins the idiocy with Cap and Trade. C&T is supposed to mean that you cap the amount of greenhouse gases emitted globally. When a company want to exceed its cap, it must trade with another so the overall levels do not increase. But like all Marxists theories, it sounds great on paper but has no practical implementation. In Europe there is a market to buy credits when you want to exceed your cap. The money is sent to China where they are paid to dismantle on old, coal burning plant. But what do the Chinese do with the site afterward? Of course, they build a new, modern coal-burning plant. While CO2 emissions have increased steadily in spite of C&T, it has recently declined during Obama's War on Prosperity. Indeed, shrinking economies are the best way to reduce CO2 levels but who would want that? No one except Carol Browner, Obama's Global Warming Czar who belongs to the Commission for a Sustainable World Society which calls for rich countries to shrink their economies. I guess it makes sense for Obama to increase the number of poor in this country so he can increase the number of people he can hook on government unemployment and welfare. That way he can threaten them with starvation, like he threatens the elderly, if they don't vote correctly next time.
This week Obama went to the UN and did his usual apologies for the existence of America but he also promised to work with them on environmental issues. Now it's true the UN just wants to abscond our national wealth under the guise of environmentalism or whatever Obama will go along with but they are generally more inept than Obama at getting anything done so if anyone can gum up the puppy tail-chasing machine, they can; they gum up everything else. And they might even do it cheaper than the administration alone (It's pretty sad when the UN becomes a better bargain than the Federal Government). At least this will buy us some time until the 2010 election when Republicans can come back and, in Biden's words, "end our agenda". How's that for hope and change. And nothing against you dog lovers out there, but from now on, I am sticking to cats.
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Little Dutch Boys and the Pied Piper
Reader warning is advised. If you are a child, childish, overly liberal, pregnant or may become pregnant, this story may not be right for you. Some portion may depict death. Please consult your doctor if death is not right for you.
Once there was a village nestled below a dike in the Dutch countryside. The village was called De Usaloompadoompadeedoo. (For this story we will just call it The Usa. De means "the" in English as in The Hague where liberals want to try Bush officials all the time for crimes against trees, fish and Islamic Freedom Fighters. And Usa, because Usaloompa...whatever, like many Dutch words is just too long since Dutch is a Germanic language. English is a Germanic language too and that is why liberals want us to change to Spanish, which is much easier to pronounce and has nothing to do with what Joe Biden called "Undocumented Aliens" pouring across the borders, collecting welfare goodies and voting Democrat to keep the good times rolling. But let's get back to the story).
One day a crack appeared in the mighty dike built above The Usa to keep the the ocean out. Water poured into the town, undermining the foundation of the great clock tower that had been a long-time landmark. The tower came crashing down, much to the dismay of the villagers. It was soon determined that illegal immigrants from Iceland had stolen a bunch of carts and smashed them into the dike. An Icelandic terrorist group, I'llkillya, claimed responsibility. They objected to the way the Dutch interfered with the flow of water from across the world by blocking it with dikes. Dikes were, of course, a way of life in the Netherlands but Icelanders had no dikes and did not see why the Dutch should have them either. Mayor Van Busch dispatched his bravest boys to the dike to stop the flooding. The Little Dutch Boys, as they were called, quickly stuck their fingers in the crack too stop the flow while the mayor tried to formulate a permanent solution.
Now here is where it got a little sticky. The Usa was divided into two groups. One group liked trees, love songs and sweet rain. They frequently gathered to sing a song called "Let it Be" from which they got their name, the Let-It-Be party or the L.I.B.'s The other group believed in self reliance and taking care of your own nest (nest meant your own house in Dutch). The Care-Own-Nest or C.O.N.'s thought they should round up the Icelandofacists and put them in prison. The L.I.B.'s thought they should talk nicely to the Free-the-Water Fighters to find out why they hated the Dutch so much. In the midst of the debate there was a new election and the L.I.B candidate won, Mayor Barrack Van Damma. (The mayor had a middle name but I am not allowed to use it because it was Icelanic in origin on account of his father's family coming from Iceland).
Mayor Van Damma decided that is was the responsibility of the country dwellers that lived nearest the dike to repair it and announced he was going to withdraw the Little Dutch Boys in 16 months without a plan for the permanent repair of the dike. (Don't ask me where the 16-month time limit came from. It just gave the Icelanders an idea when they could attack again). Then the mayor announced he was going to focus on a problem that the rest of village had not thought about. Now, the village courthouse was where many people, especially the elderly, gathered for entertainment. It was, after all, very funny how child molesters got off with a few hours of community service while people convicted of yelling at cats, trees or children were sent to prison for years. Studies had shown that people lived longer when they indulged in regular attendance in the courthouse. But like many courthouses, it was infested with rats. The rats would chew through villager's wooden shoes. The affluent would wear steel-plate shoes lined with soft fur to avoid being bitten. But these shoes were very expensive and Mayor Van Damma did not think it fair that poor villagers could not afford them. But the village could not afford to buy steel shoes for everyone.
One day a piper from the far-away land of Montana named Maximus Backamus came to The Usa and promised to drive away the rats. When the mayor asked how much it would cost, the Pied Piper, as Max was called (I think pied refers to the shape of his face or something) assured the mayor that they need not worry about it since his piping will not only drive out the rats but cause sweet rain to fall endlessly on the village. Enthusiastically, the mayor reported to the L.I.B. dominated village counsel that signing the contract will cause sweet rain to fall and the poor will vote L.I.B forevermore. Many of the C.O.N.'s were concerned about the details of the contract and its huge cost. The L.I.B.'s accused them of being prejudice against the Mayor because he had big, floppy ears. Now the mayor was the first person with big, floppy ears to hold the office (although a previous L.I.B mayor, Wilhelm Van Grabanintern, claimed he was an honorary big-floppy earer) but the C.O.N.'s insisted their objections had nothing to do with ears.
Villagers protested the contract en masse but the counsel and the mayor approved the contract (without reading it; go figure) and the Pied Piper went to work. The rats left the courthouse (well a lot of them at least) but they did not leave The Usa. Instead, they infested the homes and businesses across the village, multiplying and tormenting everyone. When the baker complained that the rats were eating all the bread, the mayor simply took over the bakery and fired the baker. Somehow, that didn't fix anything and soon The Usa was broke from paying so much money to the Pied Piper. So the mayor decided to distract everybody by pointing out that while many of the Dutch boys holding up the dike were heroes, some of them were offending Icelandic Free-the-Water Fighters by pushing too hard against the water behind the dike. The C.O.N.'s insisted that the harsh finger-indention techniques were warranted to keep the ocean waters out and had been approved by Mayor Van Busch (After all, not a drop of water had come through the dike since the flood). But the L.I.B.s insisted that some boys had pushed so hard that they had contorted their face and contortion was illegal.
Unfortunately, the L.I.B.'s just said, "We are the ones in power." They threw half the Dutch boys in jail for what L.I.B.'s called their "dam crimes" and violations of "hydro-rights" while the other half was sent home with the Mayor's public thanks but told privately by the mayor's henchmen not to carry guns, display the Dutch flag in public or send emails about fish or they might be arrested. Meanwhile, I'llkillya had smuggled a giant bomb into the country and mounted it onto the dike. It exploded in a giant BOOM! The ocean poured into The Usa, wiping it from the map.
Now I you may not have heard this story before since Foxnews was the only outlet to cover it. But I am sure that if you had been made aware of the plight of The Usa before it happened, you would have done everything you could to prevent it. Well, maybe you still can.
Once there was a village nestled below a dike in the Dutch countryside. The village was called De Usaloompadoompadeedoo. (For this story we will just call it The Usa. De means "the" in English as in The Hague where liberals want to try Bush officials all the time for crimes against trees, fish and Islamic Freedom Fighters. And Usa, because Usaloompa...whatever, like many Dutch words is just too long since Dutch is a Germanic language. English is a Germanic language too and that is why liberals want us to change to Spanish, which is much easier to pronounce and has nothing to do with what Joe Biden called "Undocumented Aliens" pouring across the borders, collecting welfare goodies and voting Democrat to keep the good times rolling. But let's get back to the story).
One day a crack appeared in the mighty dike built above The Usa to keep the the ocean out. Water poured into the town, undermining the foundation of the great clock tower that had been a long-time landmark. The tower came crashing down, much to the dismay of the villagers. It was soon determined that illegal immigrants from Iceland had stolen a bunch of carts and smashed them into the dike. An Icelandic terrorist group, I'llkillya, claimed responsibility. They objected to the way the Dutch interfered with the flow of water from across the world by blocking it with dikes. Dikes were, of course, a way of life in the Netherlands but Icelanders had no dikes and did not see why the Dutch should have them either. Mayor Van Busch dispatched his bravest boys to the dike to stop the flooding. The Little Dutch Boys, as they were called, quickly stuck their fingers in the crack too stop the flow while the mayor tried to formulate a permanent solution.
Now here is where it got a little sticky. The Usa was divided into two groups. One group liked trees, love songs and sweet rain. They frequently gathered to sing a song called "Let it Be" from which they got their name, the Let-It-Be party or the L.I.B.'s The other group believed in self reliance and taking care of your own nest (nest meant your own house in Dutch). The Care-Own-Nest or C.O.N.'s thought they should round up the Icelandofacists and put them in prison. The L.I.B.'s thought they should talk nicely to the Free-the-Water Fighters to find out why they hated the Dutch so much. In the midst of the debate there was a new election and the L.I.B candidate won, Mayor Barrack Van Damma. (The mayor had a middle name but I am not allowed to use it because it was Icelanic in origin on account of his father's family coming from Iceland).
Mayor Van Damma decided that is was the responsibility of the country dwellers that lived nearest the dike to repair it and announced he was going to withdraw the Little Dutch Boys in 16 months without a plan for the permanent repair of the dike. (Don't ask me where the 16-month time limit came from. It just gave the Icelanders an idea when they could attack again). Then the mayor announced he was going to focus on a problem that the rest of village had not thought about. Now, the village courthouse was where many people, especially the elderly, gathered for entertainment. It was, after all, very funny how child molesters got off with a few hours of community service while people convicted of yelling at cats, trees or children were sent to prison for years. Studies had shown that people lived longer when they indulged in regular attendance in the courthouse. But like many courthouses, it was infested with rats. The rats would chew through villager's wooden shoes. The affluent would wear steel-plate shoes lined with soft fur to avoid being bitten. But these shoes were very expensive and Mayor Van Damma did not think it fair that poor villagers could not afford them. But the village could not afford to buy steel shoes for everyone.
One day a piper from the far-away land of Montana named Maximus Backamus came to The Usa and promised to drive away the rats. When the mayor asked how much it would cost, the Pied Piper, as Max was called (I think pied refers to the shape of his face or something) assured the mayor that they need not worry about it since his piping will not only drive out the rats but cause sweet rain to fall endlessly on the village. Enthusiastically, the mayor reported to the L.I.B. dominated village counsel that signing the contract will cause sweet rain to fall and the poor will vote L.I.B forevermore. Many of the C.O.N.'s were concerned about the details of the contract and its huge cost. The L.I.B.'s accused them of being prejudice against the Mayor because he had big, floppy ears. Now the mayor was the first person with big, floppy ears to hold the office (although a previous L.I.B mayor, Wilhelm Van Grabanintern, claimed he was an honorary big-floppy earer) but the C.O.N.'s insisted their objections had nothing to do with ears.
Villagers protested the contract en masse but the counsel and the mayor approved the contract (without reading it; go figure) and the Pied Piper went to work. The rats left the courthouse (well a lot of them at least) but they did not leave The Usa. Instead, they infested the homes and businesses across the village, multiplying and tormenting everyone. When the baker complained that the rats were eating all the bread, the mayor simply took over the bakery and fired the baker. Somehow, that didn't fix anything and soon The Usa was broke from paying so much money to the Pied Piper. So the mayor decided to distract everybody by pointing out that while many of the Dutch boys holding up the dike were heroes, some of them were offending Icelandic Free-the-Water Fighters by pushing too hard against the water behind the dike. The C.O.N.'s insisted that the harsh finger-indention techniques were warranted to keep the ocean waters out and had been approved by Mayor Van Busch (After all, not a drop of water had come through the dike since the flood). But the L.I.B.s insisted that some boys had pushed so hard that they had contorted their face and contortion was illegal.
Unfortunately, the L.I.B.'s just said, "We are the ones in power." They threw half the Dutch boys in jail for what L.I.B.'s called their "dam crimes" and violations of "hydro-rights" while the other half was sent home with the Mayor's public thanks but told privately by the mayor's henchmen not to carry guns, display the Dutch flag in public or send emails about fish or they might be arrested. Meanwhile, I'llkillya had smuggled a giant bomb into the country and mounted it onto the dike. It exploded in a giant BOOM! The ocean poured into The Usa, wiping it from the map.
Now I you may not have heard this story before since Foxnews was the only outlet to cover it. But I am sure that if you had been made aware of the plight of The Usa before it happened, you would have done everything you could to prevent it. Well, maybe you still can.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Lessons of 9/11
Another anniversary of 9/11 got me thinking of the lessons of that day. President Bush declared in 2001 that 9/11 was an attack on freedom. He dedicated himself, successfully, to the protection of the American people and to the protection of their freedom. I have since pondered why he was so successful and whether we will continue.
First you have to recognize that 9/11 was a continuation of a drama that has played out throughout human history. The desire for freedom is innate to the human psyche, but so is the malevolent desire to dominate. Even our nation as it strove for the former has committed the sin of the latter. Our forefathers founded a nation of freedom on the back of slaves. But we have since repented and deserve forgiveness as we overcome racism. But as we turned from the slavery of the 19th century to the isolationism of the 20th century, we discovered the struggle continued on the world stage. After two world wars we realized that if we do not direct world events, someone else will. Communism rose immediately in the last half of the previous century as then new enslaver. When the Cold War ended abruptly, Saddam Hussein took Kuwait much as Hitler took Poland. We acted to dislodge him to prevent another world war but our actions angered Islamofacists who acted against us on 9/11. This struggle will never end. We can retreat and let someone else force us into another world war or we can continue to play the manifest role we have as the word's only super power.
Our success in changing two governments in the Middle East and dismantling Al Qaeda is owed to a strong military and intelligent agency. They also have the most technologically advanced tools developed by unleashed innovation. Innovation is fostered by capitalism which allows people and corporations to profit from their innovation. Both organizations are motivated by strong patriotism, a long-fostered characteristic of our nation.
Unfortunately, the current administration is assaulting our nation. Its takeover of businesses, badmouthing them, taxing them and regulating them to death will slow the progress of innovation. The refusal to wear the American flag on the lapel and suspicion of patriotism undermines the moral of the the military. Saying that people went into the military because they could not get a regular job in Bush's economy is insulting. Prosecuting intelligence agents for protecting us will bring this to a halt. We can't even call the replacement for the World Towers the Freedom Tower because it offends people. What's up with that? Peaceniks cry for us to play nice and leave the world alone. This will leave malevolent forces to wreak havoc on the world stage. The oppression of Viet Nam and North Korea left in the wake of listening to these "do-gooders" will become the global norm until a mushroom cloud vaporizes another group of liberals in LA, NY, Chicago or Washington.
The Federal government itself has become the oppressor of 9/11. As Islamofacists want to force their morality on us, Liberals lecture us that providing health care for everyone is our moral obligation and proposes the government force us to do it. Forcing someone to do something they do not want to do is the essence of slavery unless you return something of value back the them. Taxing you to protect you from terrorists is not slavery, but taking your money to give to someone else is. Taxing the "rich" to support someone else is no different than forcing black slaves to work to support white masters. (By the way, protecting America, unlike Obama care, is almost deficit neutral. How much revenue has the government raised on the rising stock market since 9/11 and the two wars versus doing nothing and letting the economy continue to tank?)
While liberals bad-mouth our forefathers as dead, white slave-owners, I forgive them their sins and thank them for gifting us a republic with the right to vote for our leaders. The tea-party movement drives Liberals nuts but in spite of the insults hurled at them from public officials, estimates indicate 2010 could shift Congress by 100 seats or more. And if they don't get it, we will shift again until someone figures out that moral obligations are a matter of conscience, not a Federal issue, profit is not a dirty word, and "God Bless America" is not racist profanity.
First you have to recognize that 9/11 was a continuation of a drama that has played out throughout human history. The desire for freedom is innate to the human psyche, but so is the malevolent desire to dominate. Even our nation as it strove for the former has committed the sin of the latter. Our forefathers founded a nation of freedom on the back of slaves. But we have since repented and deserve forgiveness as we overcome racism. But as we turned from the slavery of the 19th century to the isolationism of the 20th century, we discovered the struggle continued on the world stage. After two world wars we realized that if we do not direct world events, someone else will. Communism rose immediately in the last half of the previous century as then new enslaver. When the Cold War ended abruptly, Saddam Hussein took Kuwait much as Hitler took Poland. We acted to dislodge him to prevent another world war but our actions angered Islamofacists who acted against us on 9/11. This struggle will never end. We can retreat and let someone else force us into another world war or we can continue to play the manifest role we have as the word's only super power.
Our success in changing two governments in the Middle East and dismantling Al Qaeda is owed to a strong military and intelligent agency. They also have the most technologically advanced tools developed by unleashed innovation. Innovation is fostered by capitalism which allows people and corporations to profit from their innovation. Both organizations are motivated by strong patriotism, a long-fostered characteristic of our nation.
Unfortunately, the current administration is assaulting our nation. Its takeover of businesses, badmouthing them, taxing them and regulating them to death will slow the progress of innovation. The refusal to wear the American flag on the lapel and suspicion of patriotism undermines the moral of the the military. Saying that people went into the military because they could not get a regular job in Bush's economy is insulting. Prosecuting intelligence agents for protecting us will bring this to a halt. We can't even call the replacement for the World Towers the Freedom Tower because it offends people. What's up with that? Peaceniks cry for us to play nice and leave the world alone. This will leave malevolent forces to wreak havoc on the world stage. The oppression of Viet Nam and North Korea left in the wake of listening to these "do-gooders" will become the global norm until a mushroom cloud vaporizes another group of liberals in LA, NY, Chicago or Washington.
The Federal government itself has become the oppressor of 9/11. As Islamofacists want to force their morality on us, Liberals lecture us that providing health care for everyone is our moral obligation and proposes the government force us to do it. Forcing someone to do something they do not want to do is the essence of slavery unless you return something of value back the them. Taxing you to protect you from terrorists is not slavery, but taking your money to give to someone else is. Taxing the "rich" to support someone else is no different than forcing black slaves to work to support white masters. (By the way, protecting America, unlike Obama care, is almost deficit neutral. How much revenue has the government raised on the rising stock market since 9/11 and the two wars versus doing nothing and letting the economy continue to tank?)
While liberals bad-mouth our forefathers as dead, white slave-owners, I forgive them their sins and thank them for gifting us a republic with the right to vote for our leaders. The tea-party movement drives Liberals nuts but in spite of the insults hurled at them from public officials, estimates indicate 2010 could shift Congress by 100 seats or more. And if they don't get it, we will shift again until someone figures out that moral obligations are a matter of conscience, not a Federal issue, profit is not a dirty word, and "God Bless America" is not racist profanity.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Lessons From the Kennedy Family
When I first heard that Senator Ted Kennedy died, I felt like singing that old classic from the "Wizard of Oz" -- "Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead." Fortunately, my better nature precluded this. But having said goodbye to Senator Kennedy, I think it is time to reflect on lessons he and his family have taught us. Not those sappy, milk-toast fawnings you get on TV but some real gems.
Gem 1: To avoid consequences be a liberal politician with a liberal constituency.
Of course, I am talking about Chapaquitic. Many have been frustrated that he got away with murder or something close to it. But liberals to not care about what sins their people commit as long as they say warm, fuzzy liberal stuff. The American people fortunately do not have the same attitude, which kept Ted Kennedy out of the White House. This week Van Jones, Obama's Tsar for green jobs resigned for public statements about Republicans that included obscenities, belonging to a group that thinks President Bush was complicit in 9/11, belonging to another group that called for violent overthrow of the government and oh, ya; he proclaimed he was a communist. Yet he got in to the administration because they did not care about any of that because he was saying warm, fuzzy liberal stuff. Not even the main-stream press said anything until the resignation because Liberals do not care! Just don't interrupt them with facts while they are chanting "Love and peace, my hair is full of grease..."
Gem 2: Don't force the elderly into back-ally health care clinics.
Senator Kennedy was old with a fatal disease. Yet he rejected President Obama's advice to take a pain pill and just die. Ultimately, the health care he consumed was for naught but it was his choice. Senator Kennedy bemoaned attempts to make killing unborn babies illegal. Women would be forced into back-ally clinics to have abortions anyway. If he was so sure that women would endure risky, illegal measures just to rid themselves of inconvenient children, imagine what the elderly will do to dodge the Obama death panels. The Kennedys know well what happens when you make an activity illegal. During Prohibition, Joseph Kennedy (Ted's father) made moonshine and worked with the Mafia to distribute it to a public desperate for booze. This made him rich and the family has lived off the proceeds ever since. He became ambassador to Britain and might have even become president if he hadn't supported some German politician named Hitler. At least his kids had the sense not to do that. Imagine what San Francisco, whose job it is to elect the wackiest socialists, would have to do to outdo a Nazi from Massachusetts.
Gem 3: Even after two generations of Kennedy liberalism poverty cannot be eradicated.
In 1964 the Kennedys applauded Johnson's War on Poverty. The goal was to eradicate poverty by 1980. Of course, we keep changing the definition of poverty, revising ever upward. America does poor like no other with TVs, cell phones, cars, refrigerators and, of course, cigarettes (just another way for your tax money to go up in smoke). Senator Kennedy championed the little guy but using methods that ultimately shafted the little guy instead. That is because he used the biggest guy on the block, the Federal Government. The government's fatal flaw is that it is all powerful. This makes is great for running the military and police but terrible for social programs. Because presidents in the past have used public jobs to reward cronies, laws have been passed to prevent the practice. The Clinton's were guilty of violating civil service laws when they fired the White House travel office and replaced them with friends from Arkansas. But how would you react if your boss changed every four years and he had virtually no power to fire you regardless of what you did. Some would work hard for reasons of integrity but over time your work place would become a magnate for people who wanted to collect a paycheck while playing computer solitaire all day or simply running a chess tournament (I did not make this up, I observed this in a government facility I once visited). So there you have it, the government "worker". If a charity were tasked with helping the poor and its workers did nothing at work, abused the charity's credit cards with impunity, stole or allowed others to steal from the charity, you would stop contributing. Try doing that with the Federal Government and you hit the fatal flaw, the power to take your money anyway. Charities that perform as abysmally as the government eventually die but the government lives on and continues sucking money from the little guy in the form of higher taxes and ever larger bureaucracies. This takes from charities that would actually help the poor and even worse, the government has the power to regulate is competition out of existence. Whether it's two generations or twenty of Kennedys coming after your money (funny they are not giving up their trust fund to the government), the War on Poverty will never be won this way. Although Obama's War on Prosperity is going quite nicely.
So Goodbye, Teddy. They say you were one of a kind and for our sakes, I hope so. Say, can we donate is body to science? If we could just discover what gene causes whaco liberalism, I might become a supporter of tax-funded abortions in certain cases.
Gem 1: To avoid consequences be a liberal politician with a liberal constituency.
Of course, I am talking about Chapaquitic. Many have been frustrated that he got away with murder or something close to it. But liberals to not care about what sins their people commit as long as they say warm, fuzzy liberal stuff. The American people fortunately do not have the same attitude, which kept Ted Kennedy out of the White House. This week Van Jones, Obama's Tsar for green jobs resigned for public statements about Republicans that included obscenities, belonging to a group that thinks President Bush was complicit in 9/11, belonging to another group that called for violent overthrow of the government and oh, ya; he proclaimed he was a communist. Yet he got in to the administration because they did not care about any of that because he was saying warm, fuzzy liberal stuff. Not even the main-stream press said anything until the resignation because Liberals do not care! Just don't interrupt them with facts while they are chanting "Love and peace, my hair is full of grease..."
Gem 2: Don't force the elderly into back-ally health care clinics.
Senator Kennedy was old with a fatal disease. Yet he rejected President Obama's advice to take a pain pill and just die. Ultimately, the health care he consumed was for naught but it was his choice. Senator Kennedy bemoaned attempts to make killing unborn babies illegal. Women would be forced into back-ally clinics to have abortions anyway. If he was so sure that women would endure risky, illegal measures just to rid themselves of inconvenient children, imagine what the elderly will do to dodge the Obama death panels. The Kennedys know well what happens when you make an activity illegal. During Prohibition, Joseph Kennedy (Ted's father) made moonshine and worked with the Mafia to distribute it to a public desperate for booze. This made him rich and the family has lived off the proceeds ever since. He became ambassador to Britain and might have even become president if he hadn't supported some German politician named Hitler. At least his kids had the sense not to do that. Imagine what San Francisco, whose job it is to elect the wackiest socialists, would have to do to outdo a Nazi from Massachusetts.
Gem 3: Even after two generations of Kennedy liberalism poverty cannot be eradicated.
In 1964 the Kennedys applauded Johnson's War on Poverty. The goal was to eradicate poverty by 1980. Of course, we keep changing the definition of poverty, revising ever upward. America does poor like no other with TVs, cell phones, cars, refrigerators and, of course, cigarettes (just another way for your tax money to go up in smoke). Senator Kennedy championed the little guy but using methods that ultimately shafted the little guy instead. That is because he used the biggest guy on the block, the Federal Government. The government's fatal flaw is that it is all powerful. This makes is great for running the military and police but terrible for social programs. Because presidents in the past have used public jobs to reward cronies, laws have been passed to prevent the practice. The Clinton's were guilty of violating civil service laws when they fired the White House travel office and replaced them with friends from Arkansas. But how would you react if your boss changed every four years and he had virtually no power to fire you regardless of what you did. Some would work hard for reasons of integrity but over time your work place would become a magnate for people who wanted to collect a paycheck while playing computer solitaire all day or simply running a chess tournament (I did not make this up, I observed this in a government facility I once visited). So there you have it, the government "worker". If a charity were tasked with helping the poor and its workers did nothing at work, abused the charity's credit cards with impunity, stole or allowed others to steal from the charity, you would stop contributing. Try doing that with the Federal Government and you hit the fatal flaw, the power to take your money anyway. Charities that perform as abysmally as the government eventually die but the government lives on and continues sucking money from the little guy in the form of higher taxes and ever larger bureaucracies. This takes from charities that would actually help the poor and even worse, the government has the power to regulate is competition out of existence. Whether it's two generations or twenty of Kennedys coming after your money (funny they are not giving up their trust fund to the government), the War on Poverty will never be won this way. Although Obama's War on Prosperity is going quite nicely.
So Goodbye, Teddy. They say you were one of a kind and for our sakes, I hope so. Say, can we donate is body to science? If we could just discover what gene causes whaco liberalism, I might become a supporter of tax-funded abortions in certain cases.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Shadow Beliefs: The Key to Understanding Liberal Stupdity
Some years ago I heard Oprah Winfrey talk about shadow beliefs. (Hey, don’t give me grief, I was home sick that day and do not make a habit of watching such drivel.) A shadow belief is one that influences your world view; you behave as if it is totally true, and yet, the belief is completely false. Since then, I have noticed that liberals are masters at holding and defending shadow beliefs. These beliefs bring comfort and often validate a person’s reason for existence. These otherwise gentle people will defend their shadow beliefs with hate-filled rancor and personal attacks if necessary. Conservatives are often baffled how much Liberal are impervious to reason and logic. Liberals often attack people of faith for having religious beliefs while holding to their shadow beliefs with equal fervor, attempting to expunge religious expression from public life while extolling their PC beliefs as the true orthodoxy. Although the irony is lost on Liberals because of their blinding arrogance, irony is yet another of their hallmarks. In our current discussions I would like to point out some of the shadow beliefs you are seeing in play.
Shadow Belief 1: Only the Federal Government can solve domestic problems.
This belief is largely driven by the fact the government has virtually limitless taxing power. Having limitless resources is useful in solving large problems. The truth is that the government can only tax up to the size of the economy and the more it taxes, the smaller the economy. Liberals like to talk about how much money this or that tax will raise and then act surprised when the numbers fail to materialize. I saw a poignant example of this on a recent trip to Savanna, GA. The lovely antebellum houses have balconies lined with ornate wrought-iron railing but there are no doors leading to any of the balconies. Instead, they are lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. This is because the British government taxed the number of external doors you have so people stopped making doors and just stepped onto the balconies through the large windows. The style is so ingrained in the architecture that over 300 years later, new buildings in the city mimic the design. Now I am sure some British law makers intended to raise a lot of money, not start a new building trend that would last forever but history is replete with examples of government intending one thing and getting something quite different. Furthermore, the fact that pyramid schemes are illegal in private enterprise means we understand how inherently dangerous they are but government is allowed to package them as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All are going broke, as pyramid schemes do, and now they want to add health care? And if we continue to add $2 trillion to the national debt every year, I guess we will all find out where the resources of the Federal Government end.
Shadow Belief 2: Corporations are evil; Government is good.
From their tirade against Big Tobacco and Big Oil to their attacks on McDonald’s and Walmart, Liberals think corporations are out to get them. Current attacks against insurance companies continue the narrative. But corporations have created more wealth and made life better for more people than any government could. Where governments foster free enterprise and protect the right of corporations to operate, their people have become wealthy. In areas of the world where corporations are scarce or non-existent (largely due to adverse government action), people suffer crushing poverty. Placing sanctions on misbehaving governments is designed to drive out corporations to increase public hardship and, therefore, public pressure for reform.
Now the private sector does mess up but unlike the government, it self corrects quickly. Is anyone still complaining about the Edsel or platform shoes? But how many years are we to bemoan the state of public education, wonder why our food is literally being driven from the dinner table to our gas tanks, complain that our roads are full of potholes and our bridges are falling down? And while everyone knows what going Postal means, have you ever heard of someone going FedEx (other than someone trying to mail themselves to America from one of those flea-infested nations lacking a McDonald’s or a Walmart)?
Shadow Belief 3: Republicans are evil.
Perceived Republican sins make a lengthy list but two are particularly intriguing right now: Republicans are racist and want old people to suffer. Nancy Pelosi’s comments about town-hall protesters being Nazis flowed naturally from her inherent shadow belief. Dr. Hill, a distinguished professor and frequent guest on Fox News concluded that the protesters must be racist because they come from predominately white areas that voted heavily Republican. What other evidence did he offer? These people were old enough to have lived through the civil right movement and must have opposed it. They were not actually afraid of being condemned by Obama’s death panels but just disliked the President’s race. This stupid assumption about race played out in commercials when Bush ran and Liberals stated that more black churches would burn if Republicans were elected. More churches have burned and have been vandalized, but mostly all white. Yet you don’t see commercials warning that electing a liberal President who happens to be black, pretends to be Christian and is actually Muslim and listens to racist summons will cause more Christian churches to burn. That sounds almost as ridiculous as saying Obama care will create death panels. And while such panels may be one of the unintended consequences flowing from Shadow Belief 1, the Social Security Administration announced this week that benefit checks would be cut for each of the next two years. This while the government is wall to wall Democrat. I thought Democrats told us this would only happen if we elected Republicans.
So if you have a liberal friend who appears to get angry at you for no apparent reason, you probably stepped on one of their shadow beliefs. You might as well apologize now, because whether Grandma is done in by a death panel or the whole fiasco goes down in a blaze of glory, you and the virtually non-existent Republicans in Congress are getting the blame. How’s that for irony?
Shadow Belief 1: Only the Federal Government can solve domestic problems.
This belief is largely driven by the fact the government has virtually limitless taxing power. Having limitless resources is useful in solving large problems. The truth is that the government can only tax up to the size of the economy and the more it taxes, the smaller the economy. Liberals like to talk about how much money this or that tax will raise and then act surprised when the numbers fail to materialize. I saw a poignant example of this on a recent trip to Savanna, GA. The lovely antebellum houses have balconies lined with ornate wrought-iron railing but there are no doors leading to any of the balconies. Instead, they are lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. This is because the British government taxed the number of external doors you have so people stopped making doors and just stepped onto the balconies through the large windows. The style is so ingrained in the architecture that over 300 years later, new buildings in the city mimic the design. Now I am sure some British law makers intended to raise a lot of money, not start a new building trend that would last forever but history is replete with examples of government intending one thing and getting something quite different. Furthermore, the fact that pyramid schemes are illegal in private enterprise means we understand how inherently dangerous they are but government is allowed to package them as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All are going broke, as pyramid schemes do, and now they want to add health care? And if we continue to add $2 trillion to the national debt every year, I guess we will all find out where the resources of the Federal Government end.
Shadow Belief 2: Corporations are evil; Government is good.
From their tirade against Big Tobacco and Big Oil to their attacks on McDonald’s and Walmart, Liberals think corporations are out to get them. Current attacks against insurance companies continue the narrative. But corporations have created more wealth and made life better for more people than any government could. Where governments foster free enterprise and protect the right of corporations to operate, their people have become wealthy. In areas of the world where corporations are scarce or non-existent (largely due to adverse government action), people suffer crushing poverty. Placing sanctions on misbehaving governments is designed to drive out corporations to increase public hardship and, therefore, public pressure for reform.
Now the private sector does mess up but unlike the government, it self corrects quickly. Is anyone still complaining about the Edsel or platform shoes? But how many years are we to bemoan the state of public education, wonder why our food is literally being driven from the dinner table to our gas tanks, complain that our roads are full of potholes and our bridges are falling down? And while everyone knows what going Postal means, have you ever heard of someone going FedEx (other than someone trying to mail themselves to America from one of those flea-infested nations lacking a McDonald’s or a Walmart)?
Shadow Belief 3: Republicans are evil.
Perceived Republican sins make a lengthy list but two are particularly intriguing right now: Republicans are racist and want old people to suffer. Nancy Pelosi’s comments about town-hall protesters being Nazis flowed naturally from her inherent shadow belief. Dr. Hill, a distinguished professor and frequent guest on Fox News concluded that the protesters must be racist because they come from predominately white areas that voted heavily Republican. What other evidence did he offer? These people were old enough to have lived through the civil right movement and must have opposed it. They were not actually afraid of being condemned by Obama’s death panels but just disliked the President’s race. This stupid assumption about race played out in commercials when Bush ran and Liberals stated that more black churches would burn if Republicans were elected. More churches have burned and have been vandalized, but mostly all white. Yet you don’t see commercials warning that electing a liberal President who happens to be black, pretends to be Christian and is actually Muslim and listens to racist summons will cause more Christian churches to burn. That sounds almost as ridiculous as saying Obama care will create death panels. And while such panels may be one of the unintended consequences flowing from Shadow Belief 1, the Social Security Administration announced this week that benefit checks would be cut for each of the next two years. This while the government is wall to wall Democrat. I thought Democrats told us this would only happen if we elected Republicans.
So if you have a liberal friend who appears to get angry at you for no apparent reason, you probably stepped on one of their shadow beliefs. You might as well apologize now, because whether Grandma is done in by a death panel or the whole fiasco goes down in a blaze of glory, you and the virtually non-existent Republicans in Congress are getting the blame. How’s that for irony?
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Obama, the New Hitler?
The White House called on citizens this past week to forward “fishy” emails to the White House, emails that contradicted Obama’s claims in the health care debate. On par with buzzing New York City with Air Force One, this mistake is born of the President’s inexperience but also offers proof once again how broken down the American Press is.
Liberals defend the White House saying that it needs the opportunity to rebut misinformation that is floating out there about health care reform. The President is upset that people are mischaracterizing his health care reform plan. First, the President has not put forth a health care reform plan; the House has passed a bill. Much of the “fishy” emails stems from people reading and quoting from this bill. Many provisions are in conflict with Obama’s stated goals but instead of criticizing the bill, he demands it be passed immediately. Still many are uneasy with the call for emails. Senator Cornyn stated, "I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed ‘fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests…” Sen. Cornyn is not completely correct. Nixon ordered the FBI to attend anti-war rallies to collect data on what was said there and who said it. He was taken to court and the Supreme Court held this practice is unconstitutional. The government is forbidden to collect information about its citizens’ political speech. Furthermore, Obama need not sift through emails to discover the source of people’s “manufactured” outrage. The House bill is the source. But again, his inexperience shines through. He continues to point out that there is a fly in the room (i.e., medical inflation is too high, people without insurance overuse ERs, some go bankrupt over health issues) but has not explained to us why we need to whack the fly with a sledge hammer (i.e., dismantle the health care system) and does not explain what he will do with the damage when the sledge hammer, missing the fly, makes a hole in the wall (just look at Medicaid, Medicare, VA to see what can and will go wrong). But in the current debate there is only one pertinent question he needs to answer. If health care reform will be so wonderful, why do all proposal so far exclude him and his family, all of Congress and all government employees?
On a separate note, this call for “fishy” emails has demonstrated how broken the American press is. The institution known as the mainstream press, the constitutionally enshrined arbiter of our liberty has been virtually silent because of their blinding adoration for the President. Meanwhile, they have deluged the airwaves and wasted good ink criticizing Rush Limbaugh for comparing Democrats to Nazis while completing failing to mention that the Speaker of the House first claimed health care reform protesters were Nazis. Limbaugh is correct to point out that Nazi comes from a German word meaning National Socialist. The Nazis wanted free health care, guaranteed jobs, strong unions and a whole host of programs that are very similar to modern Democrat proposals. But they are most notorious for their evil atrocities in exterminating people they deemed unfit. However, they did not invent anti-Semitism; they simply exploited a prejudice that already existed. Fomenting this already ubiquitous hatred, they consolidated power. And then, when they had the upper hand, they terrorized everyone into submission. While no evil has yet surpassed the Nazi regime, how is it any better that Democrats, finding people full of envy for fellow citizens who have more, foment and exploit this envy to promote their policies and then cow political opponents with threats of political correctness and begin collecting IP addresses? Why does the press not object in harsh tones? The prewar German press was greatly enamored with Hitler and virulently anti-Semitic. Are the Rich simply the new Jews? Now I hate it when people quickly equate political opponents to Nazis but, since Pelosi started it, when are we going to question the policies of class warfare? Germany lay in ruins before questioning the destruction of Jewry. Health care reform is an assault on the Rich and on capitalism. What will be the condition of America before it realizes the immorality of destroying the Rich and the stupidity in attacking capitalism?
While Obama is no Hitler, with all due respect Ms. Pelosi, neither are the town-hall protesters who are just trying to save us from Obama’s inexperience. And those “fishy” emails wouldn’t be necessary if the malfeasant press would just do its job!
Liberals defend the White House saying that it needs the opportunity to rebut misinformation that is floating out there about health care reform. The President is upset that people are mischaracterizing his health care reform plan. First, the President has not put forth a health care reform plan; the House has passed a bill. Much of the “fishy” emails stems from people reading and quoting from this bill. Many provisions are in conflict with Obama’s stated goals but instead of criticizing the bill, he demands it be passed immediately. Still many are uneasy with the call for emails. Senator Cornyn stated, "I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed ‘fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests…” Sen. Cornyn is not completely correct. Nixon ordered the FBI to attend anti-war rallies to collect data on what was said there and who said it. He was taken to court and the Supreme Court held this practice is unconstitutional. The government is forbidden to collect information about its citizens’ political speech. Furthermore, Obama need not sift through emails to discover the source of people’s “manufactured” outrage. The House bill is the source. But again, his inexperience shines through. He continues to point out that there is a fly in the room (i.e., medical inflation is too high, people without insurance overuse ERs, some go bankrupt over health issues) but has not explained to us why we need to whack the fly with a sledge hammer (i.e., dismantle the health care system) and does not explain what he will do with the damage when the sledge hammer, missing the fly, makes a hole in the wall (just look at Medicaid, Medicare, VA to see what can and will go wrong). But in the current debate there is only one pertinent question he needs to answer. If health care reform will be so wonderful, why do all proposal so far exclude him and his family, all of Congress and all government employees?
On a separate note, this call for “fishy” emails has demonstrated how broken the American press is. The institution known as the mainstream press, the constitutionally enshrined arbiter of our liberty has been virtually silent because of their blinding adoration for the President. Meanwhile, they have deluged the airwaves and wasted good ink criticizing Rush Limbaugh for comparing Democrats to Nazis while completing failing to mention that the Speaker of the House first claimed health care reform protesters were Nazis. Limbaugh is correct to point out that Nazi comes from a German word meaning National Socialist. The Nazis wanted free health care, guaranteed jobs, strong unions and a whole host of programs that are very similar to modern Democrat proposals. But they are most notorious for their evil atrocities in exterminating people they deemed unfit. However, they did not invent anti-Semitism; they simply exploited a prejudice that already existed. Fomenting this already ubiquitous hatred, they consolidated power. And then, when they had the upper hand, they terrorized everyone into submission. While no evil has yet surpassed the Nazi regime, how is it any better that Democrats, finding people full of envy for fellow citizens who have more, foment and exploit this envy to promote their policies and then cow political opponents with threats of political correctness and begin collecting IP addresses? Why does the press not object in harsh tones? The prewar German press was greatly enamored with Hitler and virulently anti-Semitic. Are the Rich simply the new Jews? Now I hate it when people quickly equate political opponents to Nazis but, since Pelosi started it, when are we going to question the policies of class warfare? Germany lay in ruins before questioning the destruction of Jewry. Health care reform is an assault on the Rich and on capitalism. What will be the condition of America before it realizes the immorality of destroying the Rich and the stupidity in attacking capitalism?
While Obama is no Hitler, with all due respect Ms. Pelosi, neither are the town-hall protesters who are just trying to save us from Obama’s inexperience. And those “fishy” emails wouldn’t be necessary if the malfeasant press would just do its job!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Unexpected Consequences, the Hallmark of Liberalism
Liberalism's strength is that is sounds so good. It's weakness is that it's application is usually disastrous. It proposes solutions to problems without examining what other effects will manifest when the solution is implemented. These effects are usually predictable but are often misnomered "Unexpected Consequences" by Liberals. Liberal damage is most severely felt in economic matters. Because they like to pretend certain economic forces do not exist, they forge ahead and act surprised when the inevitable ill outcomes materialize. But as the Nobel-Prize winning Economist, Friedrich August von Hayek pointed out, "Economic forces are just that, forces; ignore them at your own peril."
This week we were treated to a new volley of simplistic solutions with some very nasty "unexpected consequences" looming in them. First, we had Barney Frank insisting that banks lower the payments for home borrowers who were having a difficult time making payments. The implication is that the principle be reduced, transferring money/assets from the bank to the borrower. The obvious result is that millions of home owners stay in their homes and avoid bankruptcy. But what other effects will follow? Just as water under the force of gravity seeks lower ground, economic activity seeks profit. By rewarding borrowers that did not pay their mortgage timely, you encourage this activity. You set the expectation that the government will rescue you if you get into trouble. This increases the number of borrowers going into arrears. At the same time you punish banks for making the loans. This causes a decrease in the amount the banks are willing to loan. We already have this problem and Frank proposes something to make the problem worse? What is more insidious is that when the problem does worsen, he will propose another "solution" more invasive and more idiotic to keep the abyss going.
Next, congressional leaders went after insurance companies. Harry Reed claimed that insurance companies have seen profits grow four fold over the last seven years. The fact is that they have seen their profits drop precipitously over the last two. But liberals just hate it when we confuse the issue with facts. Just as there is a reason a ball drops to the ground when thrown out a second-story window, there is a reason why insurance profits are the way they are. The simplistic answer is that they are greedy. But few businesses are altruistic. Greed and fear are essential to a free market. Businesses vie for your money (greed) and hope they make you happy (fear). This balance keeps prices in check while maximizing your satisfaction. You vote with your money who wins. Losers disappear in this economic Darwinism (Hey, don't liberals adore Darwin).
Government has only greed because it possesses what no business has, power. Government can be useful when it uses power in endeavors that require it. For example, military power can be used to strike fear in our enemies while sparing us the fear of invasion. When government power is aimed at economic activity, you get a disaster like Chrysler. Bailing out Chrysler in the '70s removed the fear of making bad decisions. Once I owned a Dodge that had its transmission blow at 60,000 miles. The dealer simply rolled his eyes and said that was happening to all them, then handed me a $700 bill. I decided not to buy any more Chrysler products. But the government reached into my pocket and undid that decision with a second bailout. Chrysler, immune from fear, can proceed without ever changing. Meanwhile, we instill fear in the insurance companies with the zeal Bush used against Al Qaeda. Do you have any doubt the Federal government can wipe out the insurance industry just as effectively?
And once the insurance industry is gone, replaced with an entity with massive power and greed and virtually lacking in fear (i.e., the government), how will that will be better? How will it be punished for mistakes? Currently, the government is tasked with curbing one of very few vices in capitalism, fraud. Bernie Madoff was supposed to be stopped by Federal regulators. The head regulator in New York at the time was Tim Geithner. And how was he punished for this massive failure? He was made Treasury Secretary. What kind of punishment is that? (Can somebody remind me why Obama thought he was the only one smart enough to do that job?)
Finally we have the proposal to cap executive salaries on Wall Street. This asinine idea presupposes that government officials can correctly guess what the salaries are supposed to be. Again, economic forces, like physical forces kick in. And just as throwing a couple liberals out a second story window may make you feel good for a while, capping executive pay will also leave you with a big mess in the end, no matter how many times Congress votes to repeal the Law of Gravity. This stuff has been tried before!
In Venezuela economic forces caused milk to rise in price above what most people could pay. Chavez vowed to fix the price at a lower level. People cheered at this idea (people often cheer at liberal ideas when the nasty consequences are hidden or glossed over). Now you cannot find milk anywhere in Caracas or in most of Venezuela. Do you think people would have cheered if he had promised to make milk disappear from the country? Will people cheer when their 401(k) plunges from lack of talented corporate leadership. Will people cheer when their insurance coverage is terminated, their doctor is force out of practice, and the number of years it takes to get a doctor increases as the pool of practicing doctors shrinks?
In the '70s Nixon responded to inflation by freezing wages and prices. The price of beef was set below the market price. Beef produces could not make a profit (there's that awful word again) and rushed their herds to slaughter. For a while the market was awash in beef. Then nothing. With no beef on the market people began searching for substitutions. Toast with peanut butter became known as a Nixon Burger. (Fortunately we were spared the Clinton Burger but I still hate to imagine what an Obama Burger would be made of.)
So Barney, Harry and Nancy, next time you talk to me about economic matters, let's all pretend I am an intelligent human being (i. e., a conservative) and give me the facts. And don't pretend you can squeeze one part of a balloon without affecting the rest of the balloon. Better yet, keep your hands off my balloon and go get your own!
This week we were treated to a new volley of simplistic solutions with some very nasty "unexpected consequences" looming in them. First, we had Barney Frank insisting that banks lower the payments for home borrowers who were having a difficult time making payments. The implication is that the principle be reduced, transferring money/assets from the bank to the borrower. The obvious result is that millions of home owners stay in their homes and avoid bankruptcy. But what other effects will follow? Just as water under the force of gravity seeks lower ground, economic activity seeks profit. By rewarding borrowers that did not pay their mortgage timely, you encourage this activity. You set the expectation that the government will rescue you if you get into trouble. This increases the number of borrowers going into arrears. At the same time you punish banks for making the loans. This causes a decrease in the amount the banks are willing to loan. We already have this problem and Frank proposes something to make the problem worse? What is more insidious is that when the problem does worsen, he will propose another "solution" more invasive and more idiotic to keep the abyss going.
Next, congressional leaders went after insurance companies. Harry Reed claimed that insurance companies have seen profits grow four fold over the last seven years. The fact is that they have seen their profits drop precipitously over the last two. But liberals just hate it when we confuse the issue with facts. Just as there is a reason a ball drops to the ground when thrown out a second-story window, there is a reason why insurance profits are the way they are. The simplistic answer is that they are greedy. But few businesses are altruistic. Greed and fear are essential to a free market. Businesses vie for your money (greed) and hope they make you happy (fear). This balance keeps prices in check while maximizing your satisfaction. You vote with your money who wins. Losers disappear in this economic Darwinism (Hey, don't liberals adore Darwin).
Government has only greed because it possesses what no business has, power. Government can be useful when it uses power in endeavors that require it. For example, military power can be used to strike fear in our enemies while sparing us the fear of invasion. When government power is aimed at economic activity, you get a disaster like Chrysler. Bailing out Chrysler in the '70s removed the fear of making bad decisions. Once I owned a Dodge that had its transmission blow at 60,000 miles. The dealer simply rolled his eyes and said that was happening to all them, then handed me a $700 bill. I decided not to buy any more Chrysler products. But the government reached into my pocket and undid that decision with a second bailout. Chrysler, immune from fear, can proceed without ever changing. Meanwhile, we instill fear in the insurance companies with the zeal Bush used against Al Qaeda. Do you have any doubt the Federal government can wipe out the insurance industry just as effectively?
And once the insurance industry is gone, replaced with an entity with massive power and greed and virtually lacking in fear (i.e., the government), how will that will be better? How will it be punished for mistakes? Currently, the government is tasked with curbing one of very few vices in capitalism, fraud. Bernie Madoff was supposed to be stopped by Federal regulators. The head regulator in New York at the time was Tim Geithner. And how was he punished for this massive failure? He was made Treasury Secretary. What kind of punishment is that? (Can somebody remind me why Obama thought he was the only one smart enough to do that job?)
Finally we have the proposal to cap executive salaries on Wall Street. This asinine idea presupposes that government officials can correctly guess what the salaries are supposed to be. Again, economic forces, like physical forces kick in. And just as throwing a couple liberals out a second story window may make you feel good for a while, capping executive pay will also leave you with a big mess in the end, no matter how many times Congress votes to repeal the Law of Gravity. This stuff has been tried before!
In Venezuela economic forces caused milk to rise in price above what most people could pay. Chavez vowed to fix the price at a lower level. People cheered at this idea (people often cheer at liberal ideas when the nasty consequences are hidden or glossed over). Now you cannot find milk anywhere in Caracas or in most of Venezuela. Do you think people would have cheered if he had promised to make milk disappear from the country? Will people cheer when their 401(k) plunges from lack of talented corporate leadership. Will people cheer when their insurance coverage is terminated, their doctor is force out of practice, and the number of years it takes to get a doctor increases as the pool of practicing doctors shrinks?
In the '70s Nixon responded to inflation by freezing wages and prices. The price of beef was set below the market price. Beef produces could not make a profit (there's that awful word again) and rushed their herds to slaughter. For a while the market was awash in beef. Then nothing. With no beef on the market people began searching for substitutions. Toast with peanut butter became known as a Nixon Burger. (Fortunately we were spared the Clinton Burger but I still hate to imagine what an Obama Burger would be made of.)
So Barney, Harry and Nancy, next time you talk to me about economic matters, let's all pretend I am an intelligent human being (i. e., a conservative) and give me the facts. And don't pretend you can squeeze one part of a balloon without affecting the rest of the balloon. Better yet, keep your hands off my balloon and go get your own!
Friday, July 24, 2009
How Could You Be So Stupid?!
With the launch of Obama's War on Health Care this week we get some more insight into quintessential liberal values that are often overlooked. This week was all about hubris. Hubris is a characteristic that says, “If you don’t think the way I do, you are too stupid for your own good!” Hubris naturally leads to power mongering. If you cannot be convinced to do what is good for you, then I need to take away your power to make the decision.
In the health care debate there are a lot of facts that can be discussed. Facts, such as survival rates for heart disease and cancer are 4 to 6 times higher in the US than in Britain or Canada. Or that the US is where the world comes to get medical care when their socialized systems fail to give quality, timely treatment. Or how about the fact that Hawaii implemented universal health care for its uninsured children in 2007 but abandoned it in 2008 before it bankrupted the state (Too bad California did not wise up in time). But liberal dogma ignores facts. If you do not eat right, exercise, or refrain from smoking, you need to be punished (We may even legalize spanking for such offenses). Liberal dogma says that socialism is good and we need universal health care. The love of socialism inspires stupid arguments such as “We need universal health care because we are the only industrialized nation without it.” This is said as if the US is supposed to emulate Europe. Europe, which is mostly incapable of defending itself, invents virtually nothing, develops neither cures nor new drugs while its citizens die waiting in line for health care and their governments march toward bankruptcy trying to provide it, is to be emulated simply because it’s industrialized (or do they mean because its socialized)?
Cap and Trade is another example of liberal hubris. This is a system where green house gases are capped at levels determined by the government (and I am sure the government will come up with the correct number free of any political bias) and if a company needs to exceed its limit, it trades credits with a company that has not reached its limits. The fact is that Cap and Trade was tried in Spain where electricity rates shot up 80 percent and 2.2 jobs were lost for every “green” job created. Their unemployment is now 18 percent and Obama is well on his way there without any “green” stuff (except possibly what Bill might bring to the White House from his trips abroad). But if you object or suggest that Global Warming is a hoax, liberals scream at you that the debate is over and they are determined to stop you from destroying the planet even if they have to strip you of all your civil rights to do it. Of course, they never explain what the point is of saving the planet if the only ones left with rights are spotted owls and the terrorists at GITMO.
But cramming Health Care Reform along with Cap and Trade down our throats has met with stiff opposition in the political arena. This is why confirming Judge Sotomayor is so crucial. Much of liberal dogma that cannot pass in legislation is thrust upon us by activist judges. Abortion, forced bussing, gay marriage, all are contrivances forced upon us by activist judges. No one in their right mind thinks our founding fathers ever intended any of these practice to be legal. But if you are too stupid to accept them through legislation, we won’t bother to convince you it’s good for you and we will force it on you through the judiciary. Sotomayor, and others like her, have stated that we need to look to foreign law in interpreting our constitution so we ensure we are in the mainstream of international thought. This is most certainly a reverencing of foreign socialism and when she was quizzed on this and other outrages liberal views she has expressed in public speeches, they were erased from history, as if from a page of Orwell’s 1984, as she simply disavowed them with the fervor rivaling Obama’s casting out of Rev. Wright. But when she is in power and free from the control of higher courts, you can bet you will see her liberal bias shine as brightly as Obama let his racism shine this week.
Of course, I refer to Obama’s taking the side of a black professor and would-be criminal over a white cop. In a speech reminiscent of his campaign speeches where he rambled on about nothing until my eyes crossed, the one specific thing he did say is that the cop acted “stupidly.” His natural view, without knowing the facts, is to assume the white guy was wrong (I guess Obama was paying attention in church all those years). His irritation the next day was evident that anyone would question the assumption that the white guy was being racist. How could you be so stupid as to think otherwise? And Officer Crowley had better gear up for a long fight. Just ask Joe, the Plumber, what happens when you cross the President. Next week it will be revealed that Crowley took drugs and while drunk had an affair with an office intern that he left to die in a river after driving his car off a bridge because she was going to rat him out for keeping $90,000 in cash in a refrigerator in his basement that he got from taking bribes from a bunch of rabbis from New Jersey. Now that really would be acting stupidly! Of course, if he lost his job, he could just announce he is a Democrat and run for Congress. With credentials like that, he would be a shoe-in.
In the health care debate there are a lot of facts that can be discussed. Facts, such as survival rates for heart disease and cancer are 4 to 6 times higher in the US than in Britain or Canada. Or that the US is where the world comes to get medical care when their socialized systems fail to give quality, timely treatment. Or how about the fact that Hawaii implemented universal health care for its uninsured children in 2007 but abandoned it in 2008 before it bankrupted the state (Too bad California did not wise up in time). But liberal dogma ignores facts. If you do not eat right, exercise, or refrain from smoking, you need to be punished (We may even legalize spanking for such offenses). Liberal dogma says that socialism is good and we need universal health care. The love of socialism inspires stupid arguments such as “We need universal health care because we are the only industrialized nation without it.” This is said as if the US is supposed to emulate Europe. Europe, which is mostly incapable of defending itself, invents virtually nothing, develops neither cures nor new drugs while its citizens die waiting in line for health care and their governments march toward bankruptcy trying to provide it, is to be emulated simply because it’s industrialized (or do they mean because its socialized)?
Cap and Trade is another example of liberal hubris. This is a system where green house gases are capped at levels determined by the government (and I am sure the government will come up with the correct number free of any political bias) and if a company needs to exceed its limit, it trades credits with a company that has not reached its limits. The fact is that Cap and Trade was tried in Spain where electricity rates shot up 80 percent and 2.2 jobs were lost for every “green” job created. Their unemployment is now 18 percent and Obama is well on his way there without any “green” stuff (except possibly what Bill might bring to the White House from his trips abroad). But if you object or suggest that Global Warming is a hoax, liberals scream at you that the debate is over and they are determined to stop you from destroying the planet even if they have to strip you of all your civil rights to do it. Of course, they never explain what the point is of saving the planet if the only ones left with rights are spotted owls and the terrorists at GITMO.
But cramming Health Care Reform along with Cap and Trade down our throats has met with stiff opposition in the political arena. This is why confirming Judge Sotomayor is so crucial. Much of liberal dogma that cannot pass in legislation is thrust upon us by activist judges. Abortion, forced bussing, gay marriage, all are contrivances forced upon us by activist judges. No one in their right mind thinks our founding fathers ever intended any of these practice to be legal. But if you are too stupid to accept them through legislation, we won’t bother to convince you it’s good for you and we will force it on you through the judiciary. Sotomayor, and others like her, have stated that we need to look to foreign law in interpreting our constitution so we ensure we are in the mainstream of international thought. This is most certainly a reverencing of foreign socialism and when she was quizzed on this and other outrages liberal views she has expressed in public speeches, they were erased from history, as if from a page of Orwell’s 1984, as she simply disavowed them with the fervor rivaling Obama’s casting out of Rev. Wright. But when she is in power and free from the control of higher courts, you can bet you will see her liberal bias shine as brightly as Obama let his racism shine this week.
Of course, I refer to Obama’s taking the side of a black professor and would-be criminal over a white cop. In a speech reminiscent of his campaign speeches where he rambled on about nothing until my eyes crossed, the one specific thing he did say is that the cop acted “stupidly.” His natural view, without knowing the facts, is to assume the white guy was wrong (I guess Obama was paying attention in church all those years). His irritation the next day was evident that anyone would question the assumption that the white guy was being racist. How could you be so stupid as to think otherwise? And Officer Crowley had better gear up for a long fight. Just ask Joe, the Plumber, what happens when you cross the President. Next week it will be revealed that Crowley took drugs and while drunk had an affair with an office intern that he left to die in a river after driving his car off a bridge because she was going to rat him out for keeping $90,000 in cash in a refrigerator in his basement that he got from taking bribes from a bunch of rabbis from New Jersey. Now that really would be acting stupidly! Of course, if he lost his job, he could just announce he is a Democrat and run for Congress. With credentials like that, he would be a shoe-in.
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