This Broken Country of Ours

the birth certificate

2011-05-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

If you haven't taken a look at it, you can do so here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

Direct from the White House's official page, so you know I'm not feeding you the wrong one.

As soon as you look at this thing, you know something's up with it. Its obviously crafted in photoshop. You can see the edge of what would be the "real" paper form on all four sides, but most obviously on the left. There it is bowed upwards as though bound into a book and placed on a photocopier. But if that is the case, how does it mesh seamlessly with the official birth certificate background pattern?

I investigated. I opened up the .pdf file with photoshop and.... care to guess at what I found?

Layers.

Lots of layers.

For those unfamiliar with photoshop, a large part of the "magic" of the program in being able to make almost anything possible is the ability to "layer" a piece of image material over another. Often images that you see on the internet were meshed together with several layers before being saved into the image file format that you end up seeing.

Proof? Someone posted a video of them playing with the layers in photoshop. This is a hand-crafted fake birth certificate. Take a look.

Don't get me wrong. I think he's as American as you and me- he walks, talks, acts like an American. Why the hell does he need to have a fake birth certificate created when he can just get a copy of a real one? Something doesn't add up.

state of the union

2011-01-24T20:18:00.000-08:00

As a contrast to our current President, I'm quoting from Reagan's 1982 State of the Union address. Any emphasis on the text is added by me.

When I visited this chamber last year as a newcomer to Washington, critical of past policies which I believe had failed, I proposed a new spirit of partnership between this Congress and this Administration and between Washington and our state and local governments.

It's my duty to report to you tonight on the progress that we have made in our relations with other nations, on the foundation we've carefully laid for our economic recovery and, finally, on a bold and spirited initiative that I believe can change the face of American government and make it again the servant of the people.

To understand the State of the Union, we must look not only at where we are and where we're going but where we've been. The situation at this time last year was truly ominous.

The last decade has seen a series of recessions. There was a recession in 1970, in 1974, and again in the spring of 1980. Each time, unemployment increased and inflation soon turned up again. We coined the word "stagflation" to describe this.

Government's response to these recessions was to pump up the money supply and increase spending.

In the last six months of 1980, as an example, the money supply increased at the fastest rate in postwar history 13 percent. Inflation remained in double digits and Government spending increased at an annual rate of 17 percent. Interest rates reached a staggering 21 1/2 percent. There were eight million unemployed.

Late in 1981, we sank into the present recession largely because continued high interest rates hurt the auto industry and construction. And there was a drop in productivity and the already high unemployment increased.

This time, however, things are different. We have an economic program in place completely different from the artificial quick-fixes of the past. It calls for a reduction of the rate of increase in Government spending, and already that rate has been cut n early in half. But reduced spending alone isn't enough. We've just implemented the first and smallest phase of a three-year tax-rate reduction designed to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Already interest rates are down to 15 3/4 percent, but they must still go lower. Inflation is down from 12.4 percent to 8.9, and for the month of December it was running at an annualized rate of 5.2 percent.

If we had not acted as we did, things would be far worse for all Americans than they are today. Inflation, taxes and interest rates would all be higher.

Together, we not only cut the increase in Government spending nearly in half, we brought about the largest tax reductions and the most sweeping changes in our tax structure since the beginning of this century. And because we indexed future taxes to the rate of inflation, we took away Government's built-in profit on inflation and its hidden incentive to grow larger at the expense of American workers.

Together, after 50 years of taking power away from the hands of the people in their states and local communities we have started returning power and resources to them.

Together, we have cut the growth of new Federal regulations nearly in half. In 1981, there were 23,000 fewer pages in the Federal Register, which lists new regulations, than there were in 1980.

Together, we have created an effective Federal strike force to combat waste and fraud in Government. In just six months it has saved the taxpayers more than $2 billion, and it's only getting started.

Together, we've begun to mobilize the private sector not to duplicate wasteful and discredited Government programs but to bring thousands of Americans into a volunteer effort to help solve many of America's social problems.

Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that's only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe; they are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, and spend and spend.
Because our economic problems are deeply rooted and will not respond to quick political fixes, we must stick to our carefully integrated plan for recovery. And that plan is based on four common-sense fundamentals: continued reduction of the growth in Federal spending, preserving the individual and business tax deductions that will stimulate saving and investment, removing unnecessary Federal regulations to spark productivity and maintaining a healthy dollar and a stable monetary policy, the latter a responsibility of the Federal Reserve System.

The only alternative being offered to this economic program is a return to the policies that gave us a trillion-dollar debt, runaway inflation, runaway interest rates and unemployment.

oh, those wacky fringe liberals.

2010-11-19T20:36:00.000-08:00

Yahoo news has carried a blog post from Ted Rall, and a more frothing liberal I'd be hard pressed to find. Ordinarily, I'd completely ignore writing like this, but this one is really too good to pass up.

Obama is so far to the left, he pushed the American public into a voting storm that caused one of the biggest party gains in the history of the country.

But he's not nearly liberal enough for the fringe who got him elected. This guy accuses Obama of being just as much, if not more right wing, than W. Bush.

As my gaming friends like to say, "lol whut?"

Here's some choice bits out of Ted Rall's post.

Six days into the Obama presidency, I'd seen enough.

"Give the man a chance?" I asked on January 26, 2009. "Not me. I've sized up him, his advisors and their plans, and already found them sorely wanting. It won't take long, as Obama's failures prove the foolishness of Americans' blind trust in him. Obama isn't our FDR. He's our Mikhail Gorbachev: likeable, intelligent, well-meaning, and ultimately doomed by his insistence on being reasonable during unreasonable times."

That last one is really telling. This guy thinks that Obama has been "reasonable" pushing through all of his socialistic agenda. And, what's more, he wanted Obama to be unreasonable.

Wow.

We may have changed. But Obama hasn't. It was obvious from the beginning that Mr. Hopey Changey was devoid of character, deploying a toxic blend of liberal rhetoric and right-wing realpolitik.

I think that speaks for itself really. Head on over there and read through the article if you want to take a peek into the mind of a far, far fringe liberal.

"looming" poison vote

2010-11-18T20:35:00.000-08:00

The Christian Science Monitor has an article (here) talking about a "looming" vote for the freshmen Republican representatives, even though the vote is "months away". The vote I'm speaking of is the raising of the national debt limit, currently hovering just below $14.3 trillion.

I imagine we can expect to see a significant build up to this story in the months to come, because it raises some very serious issues that are described as being very complicated by the author of the article and experts quoted in the article.

Now, [the freshman Republicans] face the other side of the issue: A vote against raising the debt limit means the government could run out of money. Will fiscal responsibility look so appealing if the government essentially shuts down?

Excuse me, Gail Russel Chaddock, author of the article, but did you just say that the federal government of the United States of America cannot function without going into debt? Just what kind of fiscal children do we have running the country if running the government without running up debt is automatically treated as impossible by those who are accustomed to watching the politicians work?

GOP leaders hope to frame the debt vote in a broader context of rigorous budget cutting and enhanced oversight.

Translation: the GOP establishment is going to vote to increase the country's debt, is going to pressure the freshmen representatives to vote for increasing the country's debt, and the only thing left to do is minimize the political fallout resulting from the vote. This is an issue that nearly half of the freshmen Republicans ran against in their Tea Party funded campaigns, and many specifically attacked the Democrat incumbents on their voting record on this issue.

Voting to increase the national debt limit would be political suicide for these newly elected Tea Party candidates.

And you can be sure the media, both liberal and conservative, will be all over that story. They'll bite into it and shake it around like a dog after a successful hunt, and they won't stop once the story is dead, dead, dead- they'll chew it up and digest it before they let it lie.

We’re going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations, and we have obligations on our part.

Those are the words of the esteemed John Boehner, the current and future GOP House leader. I am dismayed - but not surprised - that he insinuates fiscal responsibility is a childish quality. He treats all "obligations" of the federal government as sacrosanct, even the ones that overreach constitutional federal authority, are over funded, or are in some other way identifiable as prime cut choices, ready to be stamped USDA Select pork.

It would look very negative to the rest of the world to not vote to increase the debt limit. We might have to be late on payments to government contractors. It would be chaotic. But having such huge debts is very negative, too.

You're very right, Congressman Ron Paul. It would be chaotic to not follow the same procedures the government has been following. What you need to understand, sir, is that "having such huge debts" is much more negative than "look[ing] very negative to the rest of the world". And, really, how does having a ridiculously high national debt look positive to the rest of the world? Other than, perhaps, China, who would very much like to see the federal government indebted to it permanently?

Seriously, screw the rest of the world for now. We need to get our own House in order first.

But liberals like Stan Collender disagree.

It does make a difference if you don’t raise the debt ceiling: the government will run out of cash. Delaying payments to social security recipients or government contractors is a nonstarter. It’s the day we start to look like a third world country.

A "nonstarter"? I had to look up this term; I don't really speak "Washington insider" - I speak "American citizen". Merriam-Webster defines nonstarter as "someone or something that is not productive or effective". What is raising the debt ceiling effective at, other than kicking the can down the road and allowing out of control spending in Washington to continue?

How does the government automatically run out of cash if you don't raise the debt ceiling? I'll tell you: you don't simultaneously do the sensible thing and cut spending. Politicians and liberal "experts" like Collender aren't sensible. They live in a different culture, very far removed from normal citizens.

Washington needs to understand; maybe we do need to "look like a third world country" for a short time. We rocked the boat in the elections because the status quo needs to be shaken up. Politicians need to take this seriously, especially the ones who were voted into office to change the status quo.

Stop racking up astronomical debts with out of control spending. Stop destroying my country's future!

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

2010-11-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

At a news conference in Seoul, our Dear Leader made the following comments:

It would be fiscally irresponsible for us to permanently extend the high-income tax cuts. I think that would be a mistake, particularly when we've got our Republican friends saying that their No. 1 priority is making sure that we deal with our debt and our deficit.

This isn't an eye opener, at least not anymore for me, but it sure is a great reminder of just where on the political spectrum our Comrade President preaches from.

ALL tax and economic experts that are politically unaffiliated will tell you that lower taxes leads to economic growth. All of them. And its not just an educated opinion- its historical, mathematical fact. Taxes go down, productivity and revenue go up. Isn't that what the government is looking for? Its a very simple concept. You decrease the rate at which you take money from your citizens' pockets. They feel they now have a better chance to make more money, so they work harder, invest more deeply, and do all of the things that help an economy grow. And they make more money- which leads to increased tax dollars paid, even though its a lower percentage.

The second part of his statement is... Its hard for me to even make a comment on it. Read between the lines a little bit, however, and you can divine some very important information; what he's saying is Republicans care about the financial health of the government and the country, and that he, and liberals in general, do not. The phrase "deal with our debt" is very telling. He thinks that he can run the government and not "deal" with the debt and deficit? If you ignore the big bad monster, will it go away and leave you alone?

These comments reflect the epitome of liberal thinking: fanciful ideas with disastrous consequences.

"obama has a listening problem"

2010-11-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

This article from the Wall Street Journal, written by Karl Rove, is so fantastic, it needs to be seen by more people.

Mr. Obama is in a pickle without an obvious path to winning back independents. After turning on him so decisively, they may well tell him, in the words of Ms. Bareilles: "You sound so innocent, all full of good intent/Swear you know best/But you expect me to jump up on board with you/Ride off into your delusional sunset . . . Who cares if you disagree, you are not me/Who made you king of anything?"

elitism doesn't work for politicians.

2010-11-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

But President Obama and Vice President Biden didn't get that memo.

And still haven't.

By now, we should long be familiar with Obama's elitism (even though he's an empty Chicago suit) due to his openness about it. To wit:

They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

I won't get into this rant again, even if being called a racist, ignorant, uneducated, armed religious freak goes way over the top, even for a politician.

People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so rough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared.

And I won't get into this one again, even though being called a lizard-brained, scared peasant goes way over the top, even for a politician.

If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place.

I really enjoy this one. Oh yes, Fearless Leader, insult your base and see where that gets you. Even Joe Biden chimed in with his "stop whining" comment.

Now, in a 60 Minutes interview, Obama's made another winning comment. He says

[leadership is] a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone. And making an argument that people can understand.

What?

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I just have to ask if I read that correctly.

Did I read that correctly?

Obama thinks that people have lost faith in him due to an inability to understand his arguments?

I do apologize, Dear Leader, for being an ignorant, undereducated, clinging-to-guns-and-religion country bumpkin (even though I live in a metropolitan area of California) who can't understand all those big words you string together in a vain attempt to educate me on your ideology. Please, dumb it down for me even more so that I can understand your grand design.

Get the hell out of our white house. Elitist socialistic liberal mindset plus Chicago windbag equals angry intelligent voters.

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

the stupidity of "politically correct"

2010-10-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

I saw an absolutely amazing post about the utterly idiotic extremes politically correctness has been taken to, and I saw it here.

To quote a relevant piece:

Valerie Jarrett is a well-known liberal figure with a history of vocal support for LGBT causes. Jonathan Capehart is a respected openly gay journalist who helped moderate the first presidential forum on gay issues for the LOGO network and the Human Rights Campaign in 2007. Juan Williams was NPR’s sole black, male commentator, with a distinguished career spent chronicling the civil-rights movement, addressing minority issues sensitively and sometimes bravely.

If, despite their obvious good intentions, none of these three could be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to discussing sensitive social issues, exactly who can have these discussions without being deemed a bigot?

bloomberg strikes (ineffectively) again

2010-10-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Today, CNN featured an "article" written by anti-gun politician Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which he asserts that states with "weak" gun laws are at fault for guns used in crimes. Well, he doesn't go quite that far- he says they are "are the largest contributors to the U.S. market for illegally trafficked guns."

What he fails to mention in the article is that 39% of all firearms presented to the ATF cannot be traced- whether through recordkeeping destruction or failures, or removal of serial numbers, or even foreign sources. The report that Bloomberg and his friends have published (Mayors Against Illegal Guns) does admit this liability; however, it does so in the appendices in the far rear of the document just ahead of the endnotes, and states "[w]hile this undercounts the number of guns, there is no evidence that this systematically distorts the findings of this analysis..."

I've heard of the ability of statisticians to "play" with the data sets they're given in order to couch the results in a more favorable light to one position or another, but do they really accept the loss of almost half of the data set without applying a rather significant margin of error? How can you apply accurate statistics to a situation when you're barely working with a majority of the data?

This isn't the only problem with the report. Due to the single source of the statistics (BATFE), what is presented is a two dimensional view of the numbers. A simple look at a webpage from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the Department of Justice (this page in particular) will show you that 80% of all guns used in crimes are obtained illegally.

And that's the part that these politicians don't want you to know about.

Criminals obtain firearms through illegal sources- criminals lose the right to purchase weapons when they are convicted. These statistics from MAIG unethically target law abiding citizens by not dealing at all with the source of the firearms beyond which state they come from. No mention is made if they were lost, stolen, or in any other way illegally obtained- simply that BATFE traced the original purchase back to a particular state.

Put simply, the overarching goal for Bloomberg and groups like MAIG is to disarm the country completely. They would like to ban firearms completely or prevent all sales of firearms to the point that the existing firearms in the hands of citizens would grow useless with age, netting a reduction in the amount of privately owned firearms. Let us look at some information from another country's experiment with disarming the population.

In Australia, firearms were effectively banned, and citizens were given "grace periods" in which to turn their firearms over to authorities. Since these laws were put into effect...

Accidental gun deaths: doubled.
Assault rates: doubled.

Armed robbery: slight increase.
Firearm homicides: same rate.

There are demonstrably no benefits to disarming a civilized populace, and I can think of no other cause that is as distinctly un-American as gun control.

spineless cowards!

2010-10-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job — approving a budget for the government year that begins on Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until angry and frustrated voters render their verdict in the Nov. 2 elections.

This is yet another example of what the modern politician in America has become: a spineless coward, who waffles on positions left and right based on "handlers" and polls to try and walk what they see as the perilous course of American public opinion so they can coninue to get reelected term after term after term. They do this because they have no skills to speak of- their resume includes wearing a suit, having professionals take care of their personal hygiene, smiling for the camera and reciting platitudes selected from the party's platter.

Get with the program! We are sick and tired of useless "public servants" who want nothing more than to keep your hands on power and wring every last personal advantage out of it.

YOU have an issue with the budget- BALANCE IT.
YOU have an issue with taxes- LOWER THEM.
YOU have an issue with ethics- SOLVE IT.

Learn how to be a "public servant" and you might actually stay in office. Fail to learn this lesson, and... well, I hope you can translate smiling for the camera into touring the motivational speaker circuit. Perhaps you can tell them how to lose with grace.

grow a backbone!

2010-10-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Found a quoted post of Mark Steyn's on Indisputable blog: (This stuff is fantastic.)

While I’ve been talking about free speech in Copenhagen, several free speech issues arose in North America. I was asked about them both at the Sappho Award event and in various interviews, so here’s a few thoughts for what they’re worth:

Too many people in the free world have internalized Islam’s view of them. A couple of years ago, I visited Guantanamo and subsequently wrote that, if I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new copy of the Koran in each cell: To reassure incoming prisoners that the filthy infidels haven’t touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Korans are hung from the walls in pristine, sterilized surgical masks. It’s one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it’s hard to see why it’s in the interests of us infidels to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry. What does that degree of prostration before their prejudices tell them about us? It’s a problem that Muslims think we’re unclean. It’s a far worse problem that we go along with it.

Take this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the president of the United States to denounce him, and the secretary of state, and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the Western world feel they have to weigh in.

Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama’s famous “teaching moments”? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the president, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where’s the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones’ First Amendment rights?

When someone destroys a Bible, U.S. government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys Bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.

So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for “respect” and “sensitivity” toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.

Maybe Pastor Jones doesn’t have any First Amendment rights. Musing on Koran burning, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued:

[Oliver Wendell] Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater… Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?

This is a particularly obtuse remark even by the standards of contemporary American jurists. As I’ve said before, the fire-in-a-crowded-theater shtick is the first refuge of the brain-dead. But it’s worth noting the repellent modification Justice Breyer makes to Holmes’ argument: If someone shouts fire in a gaslit Broadway theatre of 1893, people will panic. By definition, panic is an involuntary reaction. If someone threatens to burn a Koran, belligerent Muslims do not panic – they bully, they intimidate, they threaten, they burn and they kill. Those are conscious acts, at least if you take the view that Muslims are as fully human as the rest of us and therefore responsible for their choices. As my colleague Jonah Goldberg points out, Justice Breyer’s remarks seem to assume that Muslims are not fully human.

More importantly, the logic of Breyer’s halfwit intervention is to incentivize violence, and undermine law itself. What he seems to be telling the world is that Americans’ constitutional rights will bend to intimidation. If Koran-burning rates a First Amendment exemption because Muslims are willing to kill over it, maybe Catholics should threaten to kill over the next gay-Jesus play, and Broadway could have its First Amendment rights reined in. Maybe the next time Janeane Garafolo goes on MSNBC and calls Obama’s opponents racists, the Tea Partiers should rampage around town and NBC’s free-speech rights would be withdrawn.

Meanwhile, in smaller ways, Islamic intimidation continues. One reason why I am skeptical that the Internet will prove the great beacon of liberty on our darkening planet is because most of the anonymous entities that make it happen are run by people marinated in jelly-spined political correctness. In Canada, an ISP called Bluehost knocked Marginalized Action Dinosaur off the air in response to a complaint by Asad Raza, a laughably litigious doctor in Brampton, Ontario. Had his name been Gordy McHoser, I doubt even the nancy boys at Bluehost would have given him the time of day. A similar fate briefly befell our old pal the Binksmeister at FreeMarkSteyn.com: In other words, a website set up to protest Islamic legal jihad was shut down by the same phenomenon. In America, The New York Times has already proposed giving “some government commission” control over Google’s search algorithm; the City of Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitution signed, is now so removed from the spirit of the First Amendment that it’s demanding bloggers pay a $300 “privilege” license for expressing their opinions online. The statists grow ever more comfortable in discussing openly the government management of your computer. But, even if they don’t formally take it over, look at the people who run publishing houses, movie studios, schools and universities, and ask yourself whether you really want to bet the future on the commitment to free speech of those who run ISPs. SteynOnline, for example, is already banned by the Internet gatekeepers from the computers at both Marriott Hotels and Toronto Airport.

But forget about notorious rightwing hatemongers like me. Look at how liberal progressives protect their own. Do you remember a lady called Molly Norris? She’s the dopey Seattle cartoonist who cooked up “Everybody Draws Mohammed” Day, and then, when she realized what she’d stumbled into, tried to back out of it. I regard Miss Norris as (to rewrite Stalin) a useless idiot, and she wrote to Mark’s Mailbox to object. I stand by what I wrote then, especially the bit about her crappy peace-sign T-shirt. Now The Seattle Weekly informs us:

You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.

On the advice of the FBI, she’s been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization’s sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine’s Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris’ own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: “There is no more Molly”? That’s all the gutless pussies of The Seattle Weekly can say? As James Taranto notes in The Wall Street Journal, even much sought-after Ramadan-banquet constitutional scholar Barack Obama is remarkably silent:

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

Who knows? Given his highly selective enthusiasms, you can hardly blame a third of Americans for figuring their president must be Muslim. In a way, that’s the least pathetic explanation: The alternative is that he’s just a craven squish. Which is odd considering he is, supposedly, the most powerful man in the world.

Listen to what President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, The Seattle Weekly and Bluehost internet services are telling us about where we’re headed. As I said in America Alone, multiculturalism seems to operate to the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that “in my country everyone is free to criticize the President”, and the Soviet guy replies, “Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your President.” Under one-way multiculturalism, the Muslim world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance, and, likewise, the western world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than western liberals’ loathing of their own.

It is a basic rule of life that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Every time Muslims either commit violence or threaten it, we reward them by capitulating. Indeed, President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, and all the rest are now telling Islam, you don’t have to kill anyone, you don’t even have to threaten to kill anyone. We’ll be your enforcers. We’ll demand that the most footling and insignificant of our own citizens submit to the universal jurisdiction of Islam. So Obama and Breyer are now the “good cop” to the crazies’ “bad cop”. Ooh, no, you can’t say anything about Islam, because my friend here gets a little excitable, and you really don’t want to get him worked up. The same people who tell us “Islam is a religion of peace” then turn around and tell us you have to be quiet, you have to shut up because otherwise these guys will go bananas and kill a bunch of people.

While I was in Denmark, one of the usual Islamobozos lit up prematurely in a Copenhagen hotel. Not mine, I’m happy to say. He wound up burning only himself, but his targets were my comrades at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. I wouldn’t want to upset Justice Breyer by yelling “Fire!” over a smoldering jihadist, but one day even these idiots will get lucky. I didn’t like the Danish Security Police presence at the Copenhagen conference, and I preferred being footloose and fancy-free when I was prowling the more menacing parts of Rosengard across the water in Malmö the following evening. No one should lose his name, his home, his life, his liberty because ideological thugs are too insecure to take a joke. But Molly Norris is merely the latest squishy liberal to learn that, when the chips are down, your fellow lefties won’t be there for you.

today's democratic leadership failure

2010-09-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

I almost could not believe the headline I read today. "You may hate us, but GOP is worse."

... That's the best you can come up with?

Seriously, if the best message you can come up with to try and sway voters to your side is "don't hate us please", there's something wrong with your ideology, or your politics, or your actions. If you cannot point to your ideology, platform, or campaign promises because there is too much of a stigma on them for failing worse than any other platform in the history of the United States, just step down.

This isn't just my opinion. This is the majority of Americans' opinions.

A Rasmussen poll in August shows that Congress' approval rating is 16%.

Sixteen percent!

That earns them a Disapproval Rating of 84%. Vote the bums out!

In May of this year, Rasmussen conducted a poll asking voters if a random selection from the phone book would perform better in Congress than those presently in office. Care to take a guess as to what the response was?

61% of voters responded "yes" or "maybe", with 38% dissenting.

If 61% of voters think there's an even chance that a random person, with unknown temperament, unknown morals, unknown religion, unknown education, unknown political affiliation, unknown ideology, unknown sympathies, unknown agenda, can do a better job than the politicians currently in power there's something very, very wrong.

Vote the arrogant elitists out of office! They work for us! They should be afraid of the people, the people should not be afraid of the government. Send them the message-

DON'T TREAD ON ME!

Rasmussen's Congressional Performance
Rasmussen's Phone Book Survey

ahh, pundits.

2010-09-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice:

Tea Party candidates have upset the Republican establishment. In an important sense, the GOP has now fully made the jump into a political party with a soul anchored in talk radio: sharing many of the views and speaking in the tone and sound bites of a Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity. The political pros who juggled policies with ideology and formulas on how best to win by appealing to diverse groups are being edged out by true believers who believe that he or she who doesn’t embrace enough of the agenda needs to take a hike out of the party. It’s the next logical step on an ongoing exodus of moderates from the GOP, some intentionally and others being shoved to the door."

Yes, Joe. Yes. The term "moderate", when applied to Republicans, translates to "liberal". Mike Castle, the "moderate Republican" who was a favored pet of the Establishment voted for the exceedingly liberal Democrat agenda 70% of the time. If what you want is a bunch of "moderate" Republicans as the "opposition" party to the Democrats, what is the point in having two political parties? It would be just as effective to have one ruling party with subgroups for each set of interests.

But that's not what we have. We have a two party system and, although it has calcified into one large Establishment group, we do (still) have a second party to rebuff the agenda of the other, to represent the interests of the rest of the country. That's what its all about- representation.

The "political pros" you lovingly refer to were not representatives of their constituents, and the proof is evident in your choice of words. You say they "juggled policies with ideology and formulas on how best to win by appealing to diverse groups".

That's what it comes down to. Career politicians' main objective is to remain in power, which shifts their focus away from how best to serve their constituents to how best to win reelection. This becomes a problem when the campaign advisors are telling people, who should be doing what their constituents want, to pander to "diverse groups" in an effort to win liberal votes.

So, yes, there is an exodus of liberals from Republican ranks. They should switch to the liberal party, and if they don't, we'll vote them out of office.

MSNBC interviewd Vice President Joe Biden who said,

"It's real tough for the Republican Party... It's kind of hung on a shingle. You know, no moderates need apply. It's sort of spawned a ... tone in politics that is not helpful to getting things done."

Translation: It's real tough for the liberals in the Republican Party who work with my Democrats. No liberal Republicans need apply. It's a swelling of voters who are sick and tired of all of our bullcrap, and the conservatives that they're electing are not going to let us ramrod our agenda through the legislature anymore.

And its about time.

9/11 mosque

2010-09-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I'd just like to quote a piece of a wikipedia article on the Cordoba House. As a preface, immediately before this piece of the article, it was shown that every poll demonstrates the huge opposition Americans have towards allowing the mosque to be built 2 blocks away from the 9/11 attack.

Notably, opposition to the location of the project at the proposed site does not always entail opposition to a recognition of the developers' legal right to locate the project at the proposed site. The Quinniapac University poll of New York State residents released August 31, 2010 notes "By a 54 - 40 percent majority, voters agree 'that because of American freedom of religion, Muslims have the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero,'.". A Fox News national poll taken August 10–11, 2010 found that 61% felt that the project developers had a right to build a mosque there (a majority of Democrats (63-32%), Republicans (57-36%), and Independents (69-29%).

Hear that, elitist liberal mainstream media?

WE'RE NOT THE BIGOTED, RACIST, ANTI-MUSLIMS YOU THINK WE ARE.

We know that Muslims have a constitutional right to worship their religion. But they should take our sensibilities into account.

To use the other largest attack on American soil in the past century as an example, the Japanese have not pushed to create a Japanese cultural center or Shinto shrine near Pearl Harbor, trying to promote community and understanding and tolerance (and all those other euphemisms that the faces of radical Islam spout when defending their cause), even though Japan is one of the closest allies of the United States and we've gone so far as to create artworks about the nobility of the Japanese warriors who fought against us. I'm sure there are Japanese cultural centers or equivalent elsewhere in the nation, but good sense was exercised in the placement of their construction and they have not been build near the site of our national tragedy.

Yes, Muslims have the right to worship in our country. No, they should not construct a Muslim place of worship 2 blocks away from the site of the 9/11 tragedy, even if they use the term "community center" to describe it. Have some respect for the honored, innocent fallen.

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

"Fed Up With Politics, and Politicians"

2010-09-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

There's a story in the New York Times about how people in Illinois are fed up with politicians. And their politics. I think it would be a much more interesting story if it was written about the country as a whole, but the premise of the story is a feeling that I deeply share.

“I’m getting sick and tired of the politics — just get the job done,” said Cliff Olszewski, 50, a civil engineer.

You can read the story here.

In other news, I found a story at the Boston Herald and I just want to lay one quote on you that shows a piece of how broken the system is.

"We obviously have people in positions of influence in Washington right now," said state Rep. Mark Falzone (D-Saugus). "That means dollars back to Massachusetts, so just as a state legislature, we certainly want to see that money flowing to the state. It’s one of the things that’s helped balance our budget."

Massachusetts gets extra income from the federal government simply because their representatives are in positions of power in Congress. Take it a step further: being a chairman in Congress enables you to provide kickbacks to those who funded your campaign. This is BROKEN! This country was supposed to have been interested in merit and ability and morals, not money.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

All three by Thomas Jefferson.

uh oh, CAIR...

2010-09-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of ABC news:

"The issue I can sense brewing on hate sites on the Internet is, 'These Muslims are celebrating on September 11,'" Hooper told The Associated Press. "It's getting really scary out there."

"We are asking people to take into account security concerns... given the almost hysterical atmosphere we're in right now," said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Wait... Mr. Hooper, does that mean that people are starting to see through your BS lies about having only the best of all of humanity's interests at heart while your organization secretly funds terrorist groups? Maybe saying one thing to one group of people and saying something different to another group of people isn't paying off anymore.

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." - Ibrahim Hooper

Go stuff your fundamentalist, fascist, theocratic, terrorist-supporting self and organization elsewhere. This nation's worst is above your best. We don't want your kind here. Everyone who is here legally is more than welcome to enjoy the freedoms created by our forefathers and proteced by the blood of our soldiers, but no one who aims to limit those freedoms is welcome to do so, no matter if they're politicians or activists or spokesmen for front groups for terrorist organizations.

the horror of obamacare

2010-09-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Doctor Hal Scherz, a pediatric surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which he quotes a letter that he and fellow doctors are showing in their waiting rooms. I reproduce a part of it here.

"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."

There is much more good stuff in the rest of the article- I highly recommend you read it!

Furthermore, I found another article on the Wall Street Journal whose headline reads "Employers Raise Workers' Share of Health Costs", and it made me remember a conversation I had with one of the district managers for the company I currently work for.

I had written this man an email about the shoddy health benefits that the company was offering to me, now that I've completed my 90 days evaluation period. In short, if I want medical coverage, I have to pay 6.5% to nearly 25% of my income. And that's ridiculous. After we talked it over a bit, he brought up Obamacare and the effect it will have on companies- I addressed that in a post here.

personal stuff

2010-09-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

Other than talk about games and the initial post of personal views way back in the day, I haven't really said anything about me as a person. And what a fun situation I'm in. So here goes.

I had bought a new car in 2004 after I attained a managerial job for a retail company- this becomes significant later. More recently, I was unemployed for about 2 years after being let go from a different retail company as a store manager. I lived in an area without much industry at all- the area has a company that produces RVs and mobile homes, but that's about it- and the vast majority of everything else in the area was service sector. In the economy we had 2 years ago, that means the job market in the area was nonexistent. I looked and looked and looked, and the only positions I was able to find available were part time, minimum wage jobs. Doing the math, I needed to find a company that paid almost $12 an hour on a full time basis to simply equal what I was getting on unemployment, so I wasn't about to take a pay cut when I already had a hard time making ends meet, paying for my car payment, insurance, rent, etc etc.

Towards the end of those two years (the beginning of this year) I had fallen very behind on everything. My car was up for repossession, my registration was very expired and I had 3 parking tickets because of it. So if the repo squad didn't nab it, the police were about to. I'm piggybacking on a friend's cell phone plan, or the internet would be my only means of contacting the outside world. In short, my world was a shambles and hanging by a thread, on the edge of crumbling to ashes.

I finally took a job- it was minimum wage like all the rest of them, but it was full time, so it was at least something. I fell even further behind after accepting "gainful" employment, since I was making less money than I was getting even on unemployment. I worked it for a couple months, all the while fearing for my vehicle, double threatened by the legal owners of the car and by law enforcement just doing their job. My car was/is everything; without it, I lose my job because there are no other options to travel to work- cabs too expensive, much too far to walk or ride a bicycle, and the labyrinthine schedule and routes of buses in three or four different cities would not get the job done. And if I lose my job, I might as well go commit a crime that will put me in jail so I can have a roof over my head and not go hungry, and then receive all sorts of benefits given to convicts after they get out of prison- such as job training and placement assistance.

Things started to look up in June when I moved away from the tiny little hell hole of a desert town I was in to a place much closer to the coast- moved in with an old high school friend of mine who not only needed a roommate to help pay rent, but his company had positions they needed filled. And it paid better than minimum wage. Not much better, but anything helps. So in a time span of about two weeks I interviewed for the new position and was hired, and moved down there. It happened so fast, I worked the last night at my old job on a Sunday night (technically Monday morning, as the shift lasted until 12:30AM) and started training with my new company Monday morning at 9AM, with the final load of my belongings in the back of my car.

With the increase in pay from the new job from June to now, my car is no longer up for repossession, though I am again a month behind on the payment. I still owe the Department of Motor Vehicles for my registration, to include three times the value of the three parking tickets that were issued to me because I did not update my registration in a 30 day period from time of issuance of the ticket. My car will still likely be towed by the police if I get pulled over or leave it parked in a public area, and I will then, again, be helpless to prevent the destruction of my life due to not having a vehicle to drive to my work to earn income.

And don't tell me "just pay the ticket and get your car back", because that is not the way it works. I'll have to pay off all the tickets just to be able to update my registration, and then pay for the late registration, and then pay a fine to the law enforcement agency for their "troubles" in calling a company to tow my car away, and then, on top of all of that, I'll have the opportunity to pay the towing company a $200+ per day storage fee to have them release my car to me.

With less than $70 in my bank account, with all my money flying away from me faster than I can earn it just to pay off my debts, getting my car back after it gets towed will not happen.

To put icing on the cake, my car developed a wiring problem where my brake lights will not turn on when I depress the pedal. I still work until after sunset, so my lack of brake lights is readily apparent on my drive home from work. Its like having a giant, bright (dim?) sign for the entire local police force affixed to my car.

Thats my financial life as it stands right now.

Things could always be worse, I know, but it makes your life seem a little brighter by hearing about mine, doesn't it? :)

wow...

2010-09-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

I looked at my page today and found that I've been linked to by Concealed Carry News, and even though this is the kind of thing I've been hoping for, I'm still surprised.

Thanks, CCN, I appreciate it!

as part of my effort to post more...

2010-09-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

... I'm going to try to post more personal topics than political topics. Politics is exceptionally irritating and draining, for me.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it. -Thomas Jefferson

The system is so broken, and intentionally so, and yet most people don't see that they're simply being divisive (I do NOT use the word in the traditional media usage) to maintain power.

But today is a political topic. Unfortunately- in more than one sense.

Firearm ownership in America has become highly politicized, and it really shouldn't be. All of this talk of "interpreting the Second Amendment" and how pro-firearm people are interpreting it incorrectly is just bunk. There are no interpretations possible other than the plain text that is written, especially if you take any time to read anything that the founding fathers of the nation wrote about it. No free citizen of the United States of America shall be prevented from owning a firearm.

The key word there is "free". If you're a criminal, sorry, your right to arm yourself is gone. Mentally ill and hospitalized? No longer "free".

And, really, that's what this "debate" centers on. One side cries out, "Violent crime is on the rise!" While I reply, "And you've helped quite enough, thank you." By demonizing and stereotyping gun owners and anyone who is pro-second amendment as violent nutballs (and they've done a damn good job of it), it has become commonplace in my experience for many people to react negatively to anyone who owns a firearm and so much as mentions it in passing. This leads to a reduced amount of firearm owners and leads to increased crime.

Proof? The seven lowest crime states in America are Right To Carry states, meaning that their state laws provide for what I stated above- free citizens have the right to arm themselves. 24 states have adopted "shall issue" laws for gun permits for citizens since the violent crime peak of 1991. About 90 million more legally owned firearms are in civilian hands today than in 1991, and America's murder rate has dropped to a 43 year low- dropping by 46%. The total violent crime rate in America has decreased 41%, to a 35 year low. I took a look at the preliminary UCR from the FBI, and the statistics there show that crime has dropped again from 2008-2009, across the board. As determined by John Lott and David Mustard, when concealed carry laws went into effect, murders fell by 8.5%, rapes fell by 5%, and assaults fell by 7%.

National surveys of police officers show that they support concealed handgun laws by 3 to 1.

Florida has issued more than 1.7 million permits, more than any other state, and has revoked only 167, or 0.01% due to firearms related crimes by the citizens carrying permits.

Catch that? 0.01% of people who receive gun carry permits (in Florida, at least) commit crimes relating to their firearms. 0.01%. 0.01%! One hundreth of one percent!

Firearms used in crimes are used by criminals who obtain them illegally, not by law-abiding citizens who exercise their constitutional right to arm themselves and protect themselves from criminals.

Anti-gun laws only restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens; the supposed targets of the anti-gun laws, violent criminals, are already living outside the law anyway... what makes anyone think they'll obey this one law when they ignore the rest of them?

I think I'll cut this one short today. I could fill a book with my frustrations on this one topic alone.

In any case, I'll close with this message to the politicians:

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

Sites I borrowed from to write the post:

http://www.nraila.org/
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/

I haven't posted in awhile. But I was right.

2010-08-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

One of the last things I said was that my hope for positive change with this administration died. That's still absolutely true.

But I've read and listened and learned a lot of things in the more than year and a half that I haven't been posting and if anything I'm even less hopeful.

Let me start with Obamacare for the Obamanation from the Obamination.

I was given a lesson in the realities of this "universal healthcare" system from one of the people at my company who has worked directly with the official information given to our company.

Here's how it works: any company that fails to provide healthcare for each of its employees will be fined $2,000 per employee, per year. Any company that provides healthcare for its employees will, firstly, pay for said healthcare. And then the government will tax the company about $2,000 per covered employee, per year.

Do the math: the Obama administration is making it more expensive for your employer to provide healthcare for you than not providing healthcare.

Why? ... We should all be asking that. Shouldn't companies that provide healthcare for their employees be spared the $2,000 fine? Of course they should, in a reasonable country. But this country's legislators are anything but reasonable. So to find out why, let's examine what the consequences will be.

Let's pick an imaginary company that currently provides healthcare for its employees, ABC Industries. Medical costs are rising, and typical companies share the cost in some fashion with the employees by taking a portion of the expense out of the employees' checks. ABC Industries is one of those companies, though the company is a little on the less-generous side and pays a smaller portion of the medical costs than the employee does. When Obamacare goes into effect, ABC Industries' cost per employee will rise by $2,000 annually.
ABC Industries' board of executives gets together in a meeting and looks at the numbers- their cost for supplying healthcare for their employees will now be the cost of healthcare plus $2,000. One of the executives interjects into the discussion that the fine for not providing coverage is only $2,000. There's a moment of silence as that sinks in, and then they start to discuss the possibility of simply soaking up the "fine" while they save money from not needing to provide healthcare.

The decision gets made- from a business' bottom line standpoint, not providing healthcare is the cheaper and therefore smarter way to go. The employees are provided six months notice that their company provided health coverage is coming to an end, and behind this letter comes the informative packet to help them all sign up for Obamacare.

Oh... so that must be the reason why Obamacare's impact on employers is structured like it is- companies are being prodded to put their employees on the government healthcare system. When you get right down to it, its a government incentive- "we'll give you a break on costs if you turn your employees over to our care".

The government wants more people on the governmental system? I shouldn't be surprised. It seems to be a pretty continuous idea. Jerry Brown, one of the candidates for governor of California and a California politician for a number of years now, had a radio show in the 1990's. A direct quote from one of his shows: "We need more welfare and less jobs."

So that's the kind of government we're getting- socialistic. Just like I said in December 2008, when I lost motivation to continue preaching about this.

My biggest mistake to date.

2008-12-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

I won't go into details- not because you don't want to hear them but because I don't want to go into them. But I've made the biggest mistake of my life, even greater than leaving USAFA and giving up my free, guaranteed education and place in the military. I had to think about that for a few minutes to make sure about my position on that thought, but its true.

I finally cried today. I kinda feel relieved now.

Hopefully the way to go is up now.

Welcome to the Socialist States of Amerika, Comrade!

2008-11-04T21:16:00.001-08:00

Here it comes.

This is the beginning of the end of American freedom.

This post is really aimed at the masses of people who voted for Obama, but I don't mind if everyone else who has a head on their shoulders listens in.

Have you ever wondered why America is the economic powerhouse of the world? Why American consumers are the ones who drive the world's economy? (And by extension, when our economy suffers, the whole world's economy suffers?)

Because we let our people keep the money they make. America has one of the lowest income taxes in the world- and according to the Tax Foundation, 32% of Americans don't even pay an income tax- they likely pay it, of course, but get it all back when they file their tax forms.

Think about it. When people get to keep more of their money, they get to spend more of their money how they want to. And we do. Let's face it, American consumerism drives our economy, and it's the exact reason why our economy is so powerful worldwide. It's why people from all over the world want to come to America to start their own businesses, to live the American dream- because the rest of the world taxes their people and businesses up to 70%. Imagine how hard it would be to live on your $20,000 a year income if you were only able to keep $6,000 of it. (The above income figure is not meant as an insult; at the moment, I'm making less than you.)

Obama has been quoted as wanting to "redistribute the wealth". He wants to take money from the people who have lots of it, and put it into governmental programs for the poor of America. The problem with redistributing wealth, ie, giving money and programs to poor people, is that it locks them into dependency on those programs- and they make no effort to better themselves, because, lets face it, they don't have to. They're getting taken care of and paid to be poor.

African American economist Thomas Sowell stated in 2004, "The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."

America spends more than one trillion dollars every year on total benefits to the poorest one-fifth of America. To quote Right Truth:

"To put a trillion dollars in perspective, it’s more than twice our total spending on national defense.

It’s larger than the total revenue collected by the federal individual income tax.

It’s about ten times as much as we spent on redistributive policies in the 1950s (in inflation-adjusted dollars).

It’s equal to the total before-tax cash income of middle-income households. That’s right, we transfer to the low-income population an amount equal to the entire income of middle-income households, that is, households in the middle fifth (40th to 60th percentile) of the American income distribution.

If a trillion dollars were simply given to those counted as poor by the federal government (37 million in 2005), it would amount to $27,000 per person. That’s $81,000 for a family of three, higher than the median income of all American families, and far greater than the poverty threshold of $15,577."

Here's another eye-opener. When rich people have money to spend, they spend it in order to make more money. Translation: They conduct business, which means they open new businesses, create jobs, create wealth, drive the economy, make things better for everyone. And, conversely, when we try to take money away from rich people, they find ways to hold onto it, to hide it. And that also means they're not using it to create more wealth... which means they're not out there conducting business and creating jobs.

To put it all together: America leads the world economy because we're not Socialists. We don't tax our people up to 70% like the Socialists in Europe. And don't come crying to me when your income tax shoots up, and you watch it pay for a whole host of new programs for the poor in America, and our economy suffers due to high-end companies leaving America to other places in the world where they're not taxed as much- leaving little but minimum-wage service sector jobs in America.

Dirty spiral.

I hope the Democrats who'll be in control of the Senate, and, possibly, the House, aren't nearly as left-leaning as our President-elect. I hope they'll have the intelligence to know where that Socialistic road will take them.

But, as for me, my hope for a positive change has died.

2008-10-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

Check this site out. They've got a story about the Empire State building, newly the tallest building in New York (after the two tallest were destroyed 7 years ago), being bathed in the color of the religion that made sure the Empire State Building would be the tallest building.

This Broken Bailout of Ours

2008-09-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah!

Voted down, and a damn good thing too. This is a prime example for the reason why I picked the name I did for my blog.

Here's the root of the problem. Bad economic decisions in our modern banking industry (I refuse to call them "institutions" like the media seems to love doing - they are not "institutions" that we must simply keep afloat. They're businesses.) stretch back to at least the 1970's where the savings & loans started to go under. Laws passed in 1980 apparently made it acceptable for them to be increasingly loose with their money, and in the following decade we had a savings & loan meltdown. Lets notice the trend starting here: government got involved in business, and the market failed. In 1989, the government formed the Resolution Trust Corporation to help these companies get rid of their "toxic" investments, and a significant portion of this was funded with taxpayer dollars. Notice anything similar about what's happening today?

So the real meat of the problem here is that these companies feel safer since the door has been thrown wide open for government bailouts of bad financial decisions. The very same people who made these bad decisions are screaming for the bailout to happen, to avoid an economic "meltdown". Yeah, sure, let's bail you out so you can run away with your golden parachute. The man who took over as CEO for WaMu recently worked a whole 17 days before the company failed, and he received a $20 million payment. Let's not forget Stanley O'Neal, the former Merill Lynch CEO until 2007, left with $161 million.

The logic simply fails. These companies, whose business it was to loan money and make money on those investments, failed. They made bad investments, and now they're in financial trouble. The argument for the bailout is that the people of this country and their businesses won't be able to get home loans, car loans, student loans, business loans, because the institutions that loan money don't know how much they can loan. . . So we need to give them taxpayer money so that they can loan more money. They're in trouble because they made bad decisions about loaning money; we don't need to give them money from taxpayers so that they can continue their failing business.

Despite modern indications, we live in a Capitalist society, folks. The government is attempting to apply a Socialist solution to a Capitalist system.

Here's a hint: the free market fixes itself, and when the government gets involved in business, bad things happen.

Let me paint for you the true Capitalist, free-market scenario. These financial businesses fail (in part, at least, because of underhanded lending techniques. That's a totally separate matter). They get picked apart by the other companies who want to create or expand their financial influence. The assets of the failed companies get bought by people looking to make money on their failure to do so. If the government steps in at all, it should be to reduce or eliminate taxes on the income made from these "dangerous" investments to increase the speed that these assets get bought.

Not all of it is a bright, sunshiney picture. The stock market takes a dip, because some of its pillars have crumbled, but the pillars are being remade even as they crumble. The people who made silly purchases of homes or cars or what have you... I'm sorry, but have a little personal responsibility for your actions. You either didn't read the fine print on your loan contracts, or you didn't understand it. So, these people are in trouble. If the company that buys their bad loan has a good heart, they can restructure the loan to have a more sane interest rate, and probably decrease the overall amount owed, in order to keep these debtors in their car/home whatever they bought, and attempt to have a positive cash flow from the original people who made the loan. Failing that, or if the company is a little more cut throat, they'll evict the person or repossess the property, and attempt to sell it to someone else to recoup the money on their investment on these "bad" loans.

In the end, some people lose their property due to making a bad decision about which company and what loan, some people get a break and get to keep it... Some companies go under, some companies get bigger. The market and the economy has a little healthy turmoil, and then things normalize and stabilize. And we go back to living life, just like we always have.

... I seem to have run out of words. In closing, the government should get its big nose out of the market and the market will take care of itself. In the future, the people of this great nation and the businesses in it will be a lot more careful how they treat loans. We go through a short time of economnic difficulty, and then things normalize. The free market system works - you just have to leave it alone and let it. It has for the past 200 years, with various government induced hiccups.