Sunday, August 21, 2011
Bush's fault my ass
It's Bush's fault my ass. How quickly people forget that it was under the Clinton administration the the housing bubble began, and under his administration that the the dotcom bubble flourished - it popped just before the 2000 elections & layed off hundreds of thousands of tech workers alone and instantly the "budget surplus" evaporated along with a few trillion in paper wealth. Just as we started to recover from that, 9/11 happened (Clinton had the intel on Bin Laden & chose not to interrupt his golf game to act on it) knocking the economy right back down into the gutter & forcing both the fed and and the government to act by cutting interest rates and tax rates to keep the economy moving (the Bush tax cuts). Follow that up with the 2006/2007 oil spikes that pushed the average Joe to give up food budget to pay 3x to 4x at the pump just to get to work jumped the price of food & damn near everything else, eventually translating into not being able to make mortgage payments & voila - the start of the housing bust....Next time some liberal Idiot wants to " blame Bush", I may just knock him/her the hell out....just sayin....
Monday, July 18, 2011
Real Men - an example of what one is and what is expected.....
Theodore Roosevelt was a huge badass. Nothing illustrates that more than the following story. In 1912, while campaigning for President as the candidate of his newly formed Bull Moose Party, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a saloon keeper before a speech in Milwaukee. The bullet was slowed by Roosevelt’s steel eyeglass case and his thick, folded up fifty page speech, before it lodged itself in his chest. Roosevelt, an experienced hunter, realized that since he wasn’t coughing up blood, the bullet hadn’t reached his lungs and so he said to hell with it and decided to give the whole ninety minute speech anyway even though he had blood seeping into his shirt. Goddamn! His opening comments to the crowd were “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Indeed. Look, I don’t even have a joke here. Just read that over again and try not to be in awe of the badass that was Theodore Roosevelt.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Where I have gotten to
The kind of people that put faith in government first speaks to character, and to a character I prefer to not associate with much. I find them..., when all artifice is peeled away, to mostly be scared little children unwilling to stand and fall on their own and of their own accord - wanting to be, at their core, taken care of from cradle to grave & are willing to give up their rights and freedoms to have that life of mediocrity. I find that reprehensible & would rather live not at all than that foolhardy sort of half life. This is worsened by the fact that they are more than willing to try an coerce me into giving up my freedoms for their perception of safety & that is not only wrong but fundamentally offensive. So much so that I have reached the point of utterly discounting anything any one of the "Hope and Change" crowd says other than " I am sorry, my entire world view was selfish, immature, unrealistic, and wrong". Keeping this type of person at bay - This is the personification of the statement "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Why so many of us distrust the progressive movement. Their promises tend to not work out that well
In the late 1960s, no-fault divorce promised to simplify, streamline and decrease the contentiousness surrounding marital breakup. Instead, it only encouraged struggling spouses to throw in the towel. Fathers abandoned their families in droves. Poverty levels skyrocketed. Prison populations increased at dramatic levels, a consequence of kids now growing up without a father in the home.
A few years later, in 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion in all 50 states. Supporters heralded a new era of responsibility, where every child would be a wanted child. Tragically, over 48 million babies have now been aborted and the beauty of life has been cheapened as a result, while child abuse has skyrocketed.
The expansion of welfare promised to alleviate human suffering. While in some ways noble in intent, it disincentivized work, undermined the family unit and created a perpetual cycle of dependency and poverty. Fathers were no longer needed to be an integral part of the family.
Cohabitation is yet another experiment which promised to liberate couples from the “burden” of marriage. The number of couples living together outside of marriage has increased ten-fold between 1960 and 2000. Over 12 million unmarried partners now live together in the United States. The result? Cohabitation not only decreases a person’s appetite for marriage, it also increases the risk of divorce, should the couple ever tie the knot.
Further, a home with two unmarried partners has proven to be the most dangerous place for children in the U.S. Children who live with their mother and boyfriend are 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents.
In each example of social reengineering I’ve noted, progressives promised good things. Sadly, the exact opposite has happened.
A few years later, in 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion in all 50 states. Supporters heralded a new era of responsibility, where every child would be a wanted child. Tragically, over 48 million babies have now been aborted and the beauty of life has been cheapened as a result, while child abuse has skyrocketed.
The expansion of welfare promised to alleviate human suffering. While in some ways noble in intent, it disincentivized work, undermined the family unit and created a perpetual cycle of dependency and poverty. Fathers were no longer needed to be an integral part of the family.
Cohabitation is yet another experiment which promised to liberate couples from the “burden” of marriage. The number of couples living together outside of marriage has increased ten-fold between 1960 and 2000. Over 12 million unmarried partners now live together in the United States. The result? Cohabitation not only decreases a person’s appetite for marriage, it also increases the risk of divorce, should the couple ever tie the knot.
Further, a home with two unmarried partners has proven to be the most dangerous place for children in the U.S. Children who live with their mother and boyfriend are 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents.
In each example of social reengineering I’ve noted, progressives promised good things. Sadly, the exact opposite has happened.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Hyphenated Americans
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the mexican flag has no place whatsoever on American soil. Hyphenations are an abomination that are tearing this country apart. There is no such thing as a mexican-american or an african-american or an irish-american - either you are the old country or the new - either you fully assimilate or you get out.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else. - Theodore Roosevelt
"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready - Woodrow Wilson
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else. - Theodore Roosevelt
"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready - Woodrow Wilson
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Validity of the Reasoning behind the Civil War
Wars of independence should not be fought on shallow sectarian grounds, but upon fundamental principles of freedom. What entitled the Union to force millions of people against their will to swear fealty to a political system which the Southerners abhorred?
"Maintaining the Union" was political oppression under the pretext of principle. One cannot distinguish the efforts of the American Union of 1860 with the actions of the Soviet Union of 1960. Rigid control of land and people, contrary to their wishes, does not promote freedom. Contrary to the opinion of some, the American Constitution is not irrevocable; nor is any political system. The people have the inalienable right to choose their own future. They are not bound by a dusty piece of paper that their ancestors wrote.
Civil War Southerners grasped the idea that governments should serve the people, and that people should not exist simply to serve the government. They paid dearly for that belief for decades after the Civil War. You can probably be dismissive of such concerns, but as William Faulkner observed: "The past is never dead. It is not even past".
"Maintaining the Union" was political oppression under the pretext of principle. One cannot distinguish the efforts of the American Union of 1860 with the actions of the Soviet Union of 1960. Rigid control of land and people, contrary to their wishes, does not promote freedom. Contrary to the opinion of some, the American Constitution is not irrevocable; nor is any political system. The people have the inalienable right to choose their own future. They are not bound by a dusty piece of paper that their ancestors wrote.
Civil War Southerners grasped the idea that governments should serve the people, and that people should not exist simply to serve the government. They paid dearly for that belief for decades after the Civil War. You can probably be dismissive of such concerns, but as William Faulkner observed: "The past is never dead. It is not even past".
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
A bit of insight for you
When it suits their purposes and advances their political agenda, liberals are unabashedly elitist. Nonetheless, they recoil from that term when conservatives label them as such. Their reasoning is positively schizophrenic, confusing private behavior with public policy.
A true elite is one whose talents place him, objectively, at or among the top in his field. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer, in fact, the best in the world. Albert Einstein was an elite scientist, a genius. Michelangelo, an elite artist. An "elitist," on the other hand, is one who is not necessarily talented or brilliant but who simply regards himself as such, and who would subordinate others to his will.
Al Gore, for example, is certainly not an elite scientist. In fact, he's not a scientist at all. He's not a physicist, climatologist or meteorologist. He's a politician, and when it comes to the highly debatable subject of climate change, he's just a guy with an opinion. As an advocate for a doomsday version of the theory of human-induced global warming, he selectively and misleadingly brokers the work of actual scientists and other polemicists in this field. To the extent that Gore would dictate how people, businesses and governments behave in the course of imposing environmental and economic policies, he's a pretentious elitist in the worst sense of that term.
Liberals profess to be the champions of the common man. But they don't trust the common man to make the right decisions. As inveterate busybodies and nannyists, they presume to protect us from ourselves through government mandates and regulations on everything from what we eat, to how we travel, to where we live, to what we say; all written by liberal elitists who know what's best for us.
If I'm having open-heart surgery, I'd certainly want to be operated on by an elite surgeon. I want an elite builder to construct my home. As a conservative and an individualist, I'm a firm believer in meritocracy. Excellence deserves to be suitably rewarded and doing so breeds more of it. This is justice based on ability and performance. The liberal notion of "social justice" is based not on ability but on need. As Karl Marx put it: "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need." In that sense, presumptuous liberal elitists would wield the heavy hand of government to downgrade those whose ability has earned them truly elite status while elevating those of lesser ability.
One liberal pontificated that he wants only the "best and the brightest" in government to "run our country." I suspect he and I would disagree about who the best and brightest are and what qualities earn them that distinction. My list certainly wouldn't include Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama, to whom I don't defer as my intellectual superiors. His list probably wouldn't include Ronald Reagan. Moreover, I don't want government or politicians to "run our country." That's a statist view. The state is not society; it's a subset of society. It's the height of pretentious elitism to believe that any panel of bureaucrats is smart enough to "run" our intricate market economy. The Soviets tried that.
I'm no anarchist. I recognize the need for government but I believe in limited government. I want society to mostly run itself. And I'd extend the freedom of personal choice to others, within a reasonable body of laws, running the risk that some might make illiberal choices. That's the nature of a free society.
I agree with William F. Buckley Jr., who once declared that he'd rather be governed by the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard.
A true elite is one whose talents place him, objectively, at or among the top in his field. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer, in fact, the best in the world. Albert Einstein was an elite scientist, a genius. Michelangelo, an elite artist. An "elitist," on the other hand, is one who is not necessarily talented or brilliant but who simply regards himself as such, and who would subordinate others to his will.
Al Gore, for example, is certainly not an elite scientist. In fact, he's not a scientist at all. He's not a physicist, climatologist or meteorologist. He's a politician, and when it comes to the highly debatable subject of climate change, he's just a guy with an opinion. As an advocate for a doomsday version of the theory of human-induced global warming, he selectively and misleadingly brokers the work of actual scientists and other polemicists in this field. To the extent that Gore would dictate how people, businesses and governments behave in the course of imposing environmental and economic policies, he's a pretentious elitist in the worst sense of that term.
Liberals profess to be the champions of the common man. But they don't trust the common man to make the right decisions. As inveterate busybodies and nannyists, they presume to protect us from ourselves through government mandates and regulations on everything from what we eat, to how we travel, to where we live, to what we say; all written by liberal elitists who know what's best for us.
If I'm having open-heart surgery, I'd certainly want to be operated on by an elite surgeon. I want an elite builder to construct my home. As a conservative and an individualist, I'm a firm believer in meritocracy. Excellence deserves to be suitably rewarded and doing so breeds more of it. This is justice based on ability and performance. The liberal notion of "social justice" is based not on ability but on need. As Karl Marx put it: "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need." In that sense, presumptuous liberal elitists would wield the heavy hand of government to downgrade those whose ability has earned them truly elite status while elevating those of lesser ability.
One liberal pontificated that he wants only the "best and the brightest" in government to "run our country." I suspect he and I would disagree about who the best and brightest are and what qualities earn them that distinction. My list certainly wouldn't include Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama, to whom I don't defer as my intellectual superiors. His list probably wouldn't include Ronald Reagan. Moreover, I don't want government or politicians to "run our country." That's a statist view. The state is not society; it's a subset of society. It's the height of pretentious elitism to believe that any panel of bureaucrats is smart enough to "run" our intricate market economy. The Soviets tried that.
I'm no anarchist. I recognize the need for government but I believe in limited government. I want society to mostly run itself. And I'd extend the freedom of personal choice to others, within a reasonable body of laws, running the risk that some might make illiberal choices. That's the nature of a free society.
I agree with William F. Buckley Jr., who once declared that he'd rather be governed by the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Listening
took my daughters to the movie at my wife's suggestion - great movie and great time. Glad I listened to her for a change.
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