Monday, December 27, 2010

Quick Quiz... name the country

Just came across this in the Christian Science Monitor. For the moment, I'll block out the names. Try to figure out what country the story is about:
Just a few weeks ago, it appeared XXXX’s President XXX XXXX was in for a tough 2011. His party had lost seats in the parliament scheduled to sit in January and his political opponents were vowing to roll-back his socialist program.
But it now appears he has made up for his losses. The outgoing parliament passed a flurry of controversial initiatives that included giving Mr. XXXX decree powers for 18 months.
As is always the case in polarized XXXX, opinions are divided over the laws, which range from extending government control over universities to limiting foreign funding for NGOs. Critics, who seem to oppose President XXX no matter what he does, called the measures a “coup d’etat,” while his steadfast supporters say they ensure that his socialist “XXXX Revolution” is not halted in its tracks.
Or maybe I won't say. It just sounds very familiar, doesn't it??

Actually, it's the Comrade's idol, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Ol' Monkey-Face just finagled some kind of "government by decree" thing, where he can pretty much do what he damn pleases without any interference from the Venezuelan legislature. And he was shocked that some people accused him of being a dictator.

Sorry, Comrade, this will happen in the USA only in your dreams... despite Dr. Deathwish and all your other psychopathic czars and czarinas.

Save the Republic.

Dr. Deathwish's end run around congress

Remember Dr. Deathwish -- actually Berwick, who's in love with British socialized medicine? Apparently what he likes the best is determining how long people should live, just like the Brits do with their misnamed N.I.C.E. committee, which draws up the guidelines for healthcare rationing in the U.K.

Anyway, a big objection many people had to the Comrade's original socialized medicine bill was what Sarah Palin dubbed "Death Panels." The bill paid and encouraged doctors to "counsel" their terminally ill patients about "alternatives" -- apparently alternatives to continuing to go on living. You know, like wipe out the old people -- I mean, what good are they anyway? -- and spend the socialized medicine funding on someone else. Probably members of Acorn, the SEIU or the UAW. But I digress.

The Comrade and merry marxists had to take the death panel provision out of the socialized medicine bill before anyone in congress would vote for it -- even those senators who ended up taking huge bribes to vote for it. I mean, even those morally-impaired scumbags -- Landrieu, Nelson, et. al. -- didn't want to vote for the death panels -- even if they were paid off. So the death panels came out of the bill.

But Dr. Deathwish has now enabled the death panels by some kind of decree. That is, he likes the ideas of death panels and rationing, and screw the public, he's going to have them.

Of course, some moron in congress named Bumhead or something like that was so overfilled with joy at thought of resurrecting the death panels that he couldn't restrain himself from making this public He wrote some kind of memo or news release or something about it, adding a cautionary note at the end, something to effect, "Hey, guys, don't let the public know about this because they won't like it."

BUT DO IT ANYWAY? Does he think we won't find out? Does it occur to him that this has been considered by congress and tossed out? Yeah. Ignore congress and screw the public. Our job here is just to pay for the executive branch's god fantasies.

(I'm trying to control my language here....it ain't easy.)

When my mom was about 75 years old, she had a heart valve replacement. The doctors told her she'd be dead within five years if she didn't have the operation, but would probably live another 10 years, at least, with the valve replacement. She opted to have the replacement. She made the decision herself. I'm sure she wanted to spend more time with the grandkids and great-grandkids. And why not? They all loved her, too.

So I was visiting her in the hospital after the operation. A teaching hospital. While I was there, a doctor brought in about a half-dozen students to look at my mom. (I'd had pneumonia in that hospital about 15 years prior, and they'd brought in a bunch of students to listen to my congested breathing.) Anyway, I went and stood in the hall while that was going on. While I was out there, one of students left the group and stepped out to talk to me. She was from China. I mean, like a Chinese national studying here.

She asked me, "If your mother is 75, do you think it was a really wise decision to extend her life?"

What? I'd never thought about it. It was my mom's decision. I thought it was up to her. I really didn't know what to say to the student. I thought it was a bizarre and somewhat mean-spirited thing to mention all the way around. Why was it any of her business? I told her that. I mean, the other alternative for my mom was to die.What would you do?

Then some other person who was helping the doctor herd the students around came over to get the Chinese girl back with the group. That person said to me, "I hope she didn't upset you."

I wasn't upset. I was confused. Why was it anybody's business? My mom had an operation and somehow it's a social issue? Of course, this was before the crackpot liberals seized control of the government and decided to dictate what kind of health care we can have. That kind power-mad life-and-death decision-making was, then, pretty much confined to the U.K. and to dictatorships like Red China. Where individual human lives don't seem to matter much.

By the way, Mom lived another 15 years or thereabouts. And she didn't die from heart trouble.

With socialized medicine, the rest of us, I guess, will die at 75. Or at the first signs of impending death? And you do know, in the words of Bob Dylan, if you ain't busy being born, you're busy dying. So where do you want to draw the line? This far, this age, and then you're no longer worth the medication? Exactly where and when and to whom does that happen? I think Dr. Deathwish has already outlived his usefulness already. Let's put him on an ice floe and set him adrift in the Bering Sea.Maybe the Russians will find some good in him and extend his life.

Having a somewhat weird and questionable love relationship with British National Health, Dr. Deathwish seems to believe he has the supernatural power to determine the value of each and every human life. Truth is, he's more likely just a power-crazed sociopath like all the rest of the merry marxists.

You know, Dr. Deathwish, in the U.S., we don't ration anything. We just make more. And my life span, like my mother's, is none of your goddamn business.

Save the Republic.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Nihilism by any other name....

For a long time I was fascinated by Russian culture. I'm still a rather huge balletomane -- that means "fan" of ballet. Such a unique and peculiar group of folks, we deserve our own strange, French-sounding label. (Though ballet apparently originated in Italy, and was greatly promoted in France, when it hit Russia via a French company, a small group of Russian balletomanes once requested a dancer's shoes, so that they could boil them and eat them for dinner.)

At any rate, I never could quite conquer the Russian language or the cyrillic alphabet, and never got the pronunciation right, so I just read everything I could in translation. Sometimes different translations of the same thing. Sometimes it was the same book, but with the title translated differently. Anyway....

I read all of Dostoyevsky by the time I was about 18 years old. (Net result, I never read all of one author's works anymore, because I find that makes me feel lonely -- Ah, he's gone now. It's all over.) I've read a lot of Turgenyev, Tolstoy -- who I think is over-rated. War and Peace is very long. That's about the most remarkable thing about it, even if Tolstoy forswore his family's wealth and walked around barefoot or whatever. I was not terribly impressed. I like Dostoyevsky better. You can usually depend on the fact that at least one character in any Dostoyevsky novel will come down with "brain fever." Not sure exactly what that is, but it certainly makes for lots of drama. And Pushkin was rather strange, romantic in a rather old-fashioned way. Also perhaps a balletomane; he was supposed to have had a foot fetish. I don't know. Who else?? Boris Pasternak, Solzhenytsyn....

Anyway, my fascination with Russia led to my absolute revulsion for communism. Beneath the very regulated calm surface, Russia is sort of a cauldron of very rich passions. In addition to the literature, you can hear it in the music -- beautiful, beautiful music. Think of Tchaikovsky for one. And with a tradition of intellectual discipline -- I mean real discipline, and a capability of sorting out the garbage from the authentic. If you've ever argued with a Russian about anything, you know what I mean. And they're all a little crazy, too.

But what I really want to get to is that Russia -- under a calm surface totally regulated by ruthless Cossacks, among others -- was preparing for some sort of revolution for decades before it actually happened. See, the czars and the Cossacks kept beheading every protest movement. They'd kill the leaders or send them to Siberia, and that tended to discourage anti-czarist political activity. Lenin was successful because he fled Russia and did all his organizing and rabble-rousing from Switzerland or someplace. And too bad it was Lenin and communism that took over Russia. The tight clamps of political control remained, just given another name.

Like, got involved in a discussion about today's "anarchy." Like the idiots who turn up at the G-something conferences to run wild through the streets and break windows. Who've been helping the Greeks and the British disillusioned labor movements throw temper tantrums? Those anarchists.

I argue, if they want socialism, they can't be anarchist. Anarchy, literally, means "no government." None. For socialism, you need lots and lots of government, because only the profoundly committed are willing to abandon private property, and eventually you need a really strong government -- preferably with Cossacks -- to "redistribute the wealth." And threaten, intimidate, humiliate, and eventually incarcerate people who never liked the idea, along with those who become disenchanted with it when they've seen it in practice. And this last group almost always is made up of about 95% of the population.

So anyway, the so-called "anarchists" who are tearing through Europe right now, aren't "anarchists" at all. They are, more accurately defined, "nihilists." That is, they just want to destroy everything.

Odd, too, Turgenyev mentions them, and so do many other Russian authors. If you read the fiction, rather than simply political monologues and dry definitions of all the various "isms," you'll get an idea of what it really means to live with all this, and inside of it, annihilated by it. Not a pretty picture. Just something to think about.

Save the Republic.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Lame duck pretty lame

Well, the rat-bastards of the 111th Congress have finally packed up and gone home. My main concern was extending the Bush Tax Cuts, and that did happen. The rest is less important. But I do have a couple questions.

First, why do we allow Russia to dictate our missile defense policy? Russia's basically sort of a third-work nation, and they aren't the only other people in the world with atomic weapons. I'm tempted to say that Russia is rather more civilized than Iran or North Korea -- but foreign policy and governments are run by people who may or may not be reflective of the population. I think most individuals, on their own, are decent people no matter where they're from. However, give someone a taste of political power -- in the USA as well as overseas -- and they seem to go completely crazy, begin entertaining visions of their own infallibility and perfect wisdom, and become obstructions to human life on the planet. So I was going to say maybe Russia is a more trustworthy caretaker of nuclear weapons than Iran or North Korea -- who appear to be the more dangerous threats -- but probably not, after all. I mean, Russia appears to be so dead broke it's selling nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran. And I don't think the START treaty will stop that.

But I don't see why Russia should have anything at all to say about what we do with domestic defense. And I suspect no one's going to pay any attention at all to that treaty. The whole thing is, maybe, giving Hillary Clinton a little pat on the back for all her bad hair days as Secretary of State, then shunt her back to the hinterlands of upstate New York.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed. Well, if the soldiers don't mind, I don't. Do the soldiers mind? Does anyone really know? Anyone ask them? Seems some of the top command was not convinced, but do they speak for the soldiers, the actual "boots on the ground"? I don't know.

1st Responders aid I already talked about. Not against it, just question the excesses of it. As the bill passed, its funding was reduced from $6.2 billion to something like $4 billion. Apparently the feds don't recognize any spending figures in units of less than a billion. That's a very bad habit. It tends to devalue money and only generates a terrific amount of fraud and waste.

Something I found really interesting was that the lame duck congress also passed legislation that makes it illegal for a TV advertisement to blast at a higher volume than the rest of the TV show.

God knows, that's an issue that was keeping me awake at night. I mean, I got down on my knees every night, hoping that even a politically divided congress could come together to save the nation from the scourge of noisy TV commercials.

But you know what? I have a TV that you can set to modulate the sound -- all the sound. Congress had nothing to do with it. Wonder if, in the raucous and hysterical public meetings they held (joking) about this controversial proposal, the thing about the TV sets was ever brought up.

Why is this any of congress's business? What a bunch of douchebags, you know? But they can all go home and remind their constituents: "Ah, but TV commercials now can't be any louder than the other content." Think that will win them any votes?

That's enough for now. A few more things I want to write about, but they deserve their own titles.

Save the Republic.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Communications is SUPPOSED to be out of control

Hey, FCC -- shove it up your ass.

My speech, my communications -- none of your goddamn business.

I could elaborate, but short on time. Suffice it to say:

Save the Republic.

1st Responders - another look

Hey, I doubt there's anyone in the USA who is more grateful or respectful of the 1st Responders -- those people who rushed to the World Trade Center on 9/11 and in the days afterward than I am. They and their families have suffered and continue to suffer the most personal ill effects of that attack.

But let's look again at the proposed bill to fund the ongoing health care needs of the 1st Responders.New York Senator Gillibrand, who's sponsoring the bill, noted that there are about 100,000 surviving 1st Responders. They're a group that's already been identified -- there won't be any more added to the list.

So the proposed bill asks for $6.2 billion for their care -- or roughly that number.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that $600 million for each one?

I mean, isn't that just a bit excessive? Seems to me, with that kind of money, each one of them could buy their own country somewhere.

If any one of them stood on top of the Statue of Liberty and tossed $20 bills into the wind one bill at a time, it would be hard for any one of them to spend that much money over the course of a natural lifetime --which many of them -- due to their sense of honor and love of country -- will not enjoy.

So, while I totally agree with the spirit of that bill, I think the cost is more reflective of Washington's general inability to conceive of the value of money than it reflects the actual need.

That's all I got to say about it right now.

Save the Republic

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Lame duck dems: an insult to human intelligence

Well, congress is supposed to pass a bill that would allow for keeping the lights on in government facilities. Just a "continued funding" thing.

So, Nero Reid's knee-jerk blockheads in the Senate dumped a 1,900-page bill in the hopper that provides for continued funding, but also for lots and lots and lots of pork and earmarks for loads and loads and loads of useless crap. Like funding the production of tennis shoes for mallard ducks and things like that. Just the usual silly crap designed, primarily, to sink the US into debt and destroy the nation.

Do you ever get the feeling that the dems are just simply demented? I mean like serious brain damage, you know? Or maybe even criminally insane? Yeah. Closer to criminally insane.

Do the dems find this bullshit to be in any way productive? Any way at all? Or are they more like some snotty team of extremely spoiled 9-year-olds who just lost the soccer game, so they spray paint swear words all over the locker room, crap in the stadium seats, pour Crazy Glue down the shower drains and things like that.

Yet these are the dem members of the House. They were elected by... whom? Can't for the life of me figure out what kind of a moron would vote for any of these clowns. What a bunch of infantile buttheads. They apparently have experienced no intellectual or emotional development since their middle school years, if they matured that far. And I don't mean to insult middle schoolers, who are probably much wiser and more adult than these damn fools in congress.

But what do you expect from people who elected, several times, some asshole like Nero Reid to be their "leader?" I mean, that pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

You know what? Don't pass anything. Let CommEd come and shut off the power to the White House. I'm sure the Venezuelan Embassy will shelter the Comrade. Or maybe the Comrades can spend Christmas in Chappaqua with their good frends, the Clintons. Whaddaya think? Better yet, the Comrades can blow a half-million on an extended vacation in Martha's Vineyard or someplace. Not that they revel in behaving like what they call "fat cats" or anything like that.

At this point, we'd all be much, much better off without this federal government. They just are not grown up enough to understand that most of us little peons out here really, truly do want to see them gone. Or, preferably, dead and buried. We voted against the stupid bastards. Threw them out of office. They don't seem to have the sensitivity required to pick up on that message.

What next? They'll be pulling false fire alarms to send police and fire trucks to all of our  houses? Sit in their cars in the parking lots of our office buildings and tailgate us all the way home? Call and hang up in the middle of the night? Toilet paper our houses? Sounds exactly like what we can expect.

Any wonder WHY they were voted out?

Save the Republic.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Socialized medicine ruled "Unconstitutional"

Interesting news day so far. Where to start?

In Virginia, a federal judged has ruled that, no, congress can't twist and pervert the Constitution's commerce clause so badly out of shape that it can be interpreted to mean: "You will buy health insurance."

That is, the socialized medicine bill is unconstitutional, unless the merry marxists can find some other weird provision in the law, as written, to force us all to bow to their fantasy wishes.

Ha Ha. Told ya so.

I'm so happy I'm having a hard time trying to think about anything else. Just basking in the ecstasy.

Of course, the feds -- or whomever wants to defend this piece of crap legislation -- will take the whole thing to the Supreme Court probably.

So here we have the dems whining about how much it would "cost" to NOT raise taxes by ending the Bush Tax Cuts, and here's a major way to cut about $3 TRILLION out of the budget over the next five years -- NO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.

See how nice that all works out?

Meanwhile, some wingnut is burning down houses on Cape Cod after spray-painting them with "Hate the Rich" slogans. Anyone know where Pazzo Pelosi was this weekend?

Saving the Republic!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

The beltway farce

Do you have any idea what's going on in the so-called lame duck congressional session in Washington? I don't. Been very busy so haven't been tracking the blow-by-blow, but this is what seems to be happening:

The compromise tax bill that the Comrade put together with McConnell and Boehner I believe failed in the House. Pazzo and crackpot Vermont socialist Sanders were just outraged that even the Comrade had agreed to stop plundering the "rich" (very loosely defined). I thought the bill failed. I could be wrong.

Apparently there's a similar bill in the Senate -- stopping the massive tax increase, etc. But I thought I also heard somewhere that some senators were stuffing it full of pork. Or maybe the pork thing is in the House. Or, quite likely it's in both chambers. I mean let's face it, the blockheads inside the beltway have forgotten how to legislate without dangling juicy little bits of over-priced and generally useless public works projects in front of each other.

And the real kicker is the Comrade uncrating Can't-Keep-It-Zipped Bill Clinton from mothballs in upstate New York and getting Clinton to explain to the press how a pivot works. Clinton heaved himself from side-to-side at the podium and hinted at the huge benefits he'd be gaining via the compromise tax bill, since he makes so much money now. And the Comrade had to leave -- apparently Michelle was having a Christmas party. Or maybe Kwanzaa or Festivus?

Anyone else beginning to get a little nauseous at these antics?

I don't find Clinton endearing or reassuring. I was absolutely astounded -- and bitterly disillusioned in the American public -- when that buffoon was re-elected.

And, hey, Comrade, ever try making your own decisions? I mean, really, why was this jerk elected?

This is all really a disgrace. It's appalling. Just appalling.

Who are these idiots?

Save the Republic.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Kill the rich?

The one feature I find most revolting about the dem party is its "Kill the Rich" policy. But I think I understand their logic:

1.) The rich aren't a "protected" group, like blacks, Hispanics, gays, women. And I mean protected in the politically correct sense of being members of a category of victims in one way or another. That is, the rich haven't thrown themselves on the mercy of a federal agency yet, sued in the Supreme Court for special privileges, or issued press statements and video clips about their long history of being unjustly brutalized and abused by other people. It's this victim status that the dems so highly prize and reward. If you label yourself lame, useless, and defenseless -- that is, not really a contributing member of society -- the dems will adopt you and shower you with other peoples' money. And you probably won't be prosecuted even for the most heinous crime because, being a victim, you're really not responsible for yourself. According to dems/liberals. The liberals love the victims; the victims give the liberals a reason for living.

2.) The rich are natural targets for plunder. I mean, you gotta pay for your crap socialist programs somehow, right? Liberals believe the rich can "afford" to support the ever-growing unproductive victim class. Even as we speak, the dems are turning the "unemployed" into yet another victim group.

3.) Liberals apparently are as consumed by envy as they are by their unidentified floating anxiety and pervasive and mindless sense of guilt. Liberals see that the rich own things, and the liberals are determined to have those things for themselves, even if they have to rob the rich to get them. And, given the liberals' detachment from any concept of "earned wealth," and their determined hostility toward the whole concept of private property, liberals believe that they have some "right" to seize other peoples' wealth.

To illustrate all these points, take for example the current debate over extending the Bush Tax Cuts. The cuts were actually made six and eight years ago, or something like that. The cuts reflect the tax rates that we all pay now and have been paying for nearly a decade.

To refuse to extend the tax cuts, what happens is, in effect, a monumental tax increase. I've heard that this tax increase would compel the average American family to pay abut $3,000.00 more in income tax per year.

The feds are not currently collecting this additional amount of revenue. Since the feds don't now have this revenue, it's more than a little cuckoo to claim that failing to extend the tax cuts will result in the "loss" of any money at all. Truth is -- WHAT THE DEMS CLAIM IS A "LOSS IN REVENUE" IS MONEY THAT IS NOT THEIRS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

But socialized medicine and all the other crap the dems have dumped on citizens absolutely requires funding by this phantom money they intend to appropriate from the rich... or someone.

Like, I've taken out a new car loan based on my projected lottery winnings next year.

Is this making any sense to anyone? If so, you must be a looney liberal.

Anthony Weiner, the weiner, is on TV right now, claiming that he and other butthead dems are trying to block extending tax cuts on the rich because they're "fighting for what's right/"

When has it ever been "right" in the USA to kill the rich? Worse is the genuine stupidity behind the liberals' view of the rich. Because the libs have absolutely no concept of "working for a living," their only source of income is theft. They don't understand that if they steal from the rich, the rich are likely to stop producing. In effect, the libs are running full-bore in efforts to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

And so the libs demonstrate once again, that they are blind, deaf, and more than anything else -- terminally stupid. And icing on the cake, this to them is "what we believe in."

Save the Republic.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

WikiLeaks, rhymes with IckyFreaks

Breaking news! Julian Assange, the anti-American blockhead who's publishing hundreds of thousands of documents stolen from the US government, has been arrested in England on a Swedish warrant that accuses him of rape of some kind. Apparently he had consensual sex with someone without a condom. Apparently that's what passes for rape in Sweden. Oh well....

I do believe Assange's problem is that he just pushed things a little too far. One thing to try to embarrass the USA, but along with exposing private communications from US officials, Assange also embarrassed the people they communicated with -- officials from all over the world. And most countries in the world aren't anywhere near as tolerant as the USA. But the real kicker was Assange claiming "Look Ma! I'm king of the world!" No sorry, that was Jimmy Cagney in "White Heat"...

Actually, Assange made the public statement that if anyone came after him, well, he has 250,000 more private documents he's stolen that he could release if anyone threatened him.

Sorry, you silly-ass dingo, but you're dealing with actual governments here, and not many of them very mindful of your human rights. You draw a line in the sand -- they'll step over it and show you just exactly who is the boss. And the USA doesn't even have to be involved in that.

Assange is an idiot. The real question is, who would have consensual sex with him? I mean he's obviously the kiss-n-tell type.

Who knows, maybe he'll end up in Gitmo with his spiritual soulmates. I do believe if Assange is indicted here on espionage or something that he could be extradicted here for trial. And I suppose that means he'd have to submit to the final humiliation -- undergoing a "porn scan' or an "enhanced" pat-down by TSA people as he boards a plane for the USA. 'Course Assange would probably like that; he seems to be something of an exhibitionist.

Save the Republic.

Comrade gets an inkling

Wanted to write last night but had other things to do. But couldn't let the so-called "tax compromise" pass without comment.

Looking like he was sprayed by a skunk, the Comrade announced last night that the Bush Tax Cuts will be extended for all Americans for at least two years -- two years for what the Comrade calls, "the millionaires and billionaires," and apparently forever for everyone else. Everyone also will get a 2% cut on Social Security withholding taxes, and unemployment benefits will be extended for another 13 months. At least that's the suggestion the Comrade is making -- congress still has to pass all this.

So has it finally dawned on the Comrade that he doesn't have the nation behind him? That only about 20% of the population, if that, still supports his marxist tendencies?

Still, what pisses me off more than anything is the Comrade's and his supporters' assumption that they have some "right" to simply seize the revenues of private citizens. Maybe McConnell and Boehmer reminded him     that US courts continue to support private property rights. Or, more likely, they just dangled the Comrade out the window by his heels.

Anyways, I suppose the Comrade sooner or later had to admit -- even to himself -- that nobody likes him anymore and that he will no longer enjoy the slobbering, indiscriminate, and groveling support of the congress.

What's even funnier is that Bill Maher -- and I imagine a number of other rabid, envious and greedy liberals -- are walking around stunned senseless. OMG, someone's put the brakes on grand theft? What the hell has the nation come to? You can't methodically strip private citizens of their personal belongings, not even "millionaire and billionaire?" What next? People buying their own insurance -- and any kind of coverage they want? What a slap in the face. According to Maher's et. al. view of the world, all us little peons are supposed to be grateful for the pitiful debacle Pazzo Pelosi and Nero Reid staged in congress -- completely ignoring not only the Constitution, but the very openly stated will of the people.

And you know, of course, the Comrade hasn't got one chance in hell of being re-relected anyway in 2012, but maybe he's convinced himself that he'll be able to win over conservative hearts and minds. I don't think so. I'll never forget the hard hand of his arrogance and the vicious bite of his stupid policies. I'm no more inclined to fund the early retirement of SEIU and AUW workers now than I was a year ago. And I can't imagine changing those views.

Most of all, though, I really want to thank McConnell and Boehmer and all the other Republicans who met with the Comrade about this. Who knows, maybe they offered him to let him buy Medicare Advantage, or excused him from socialized medicine all together. Or maybe they just brought in the poll statistics from the last election. "Hey, Barry, did you get a look at this at all?"

Save the Republic.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Energy independence policy... NOT!

It seems the feds -- the Comrade mostly -- are still doing everything they can to prevent offshore oil drilling in the US, apparently trying to force citizens to buy the stupid demi-semi-electric cars coming out of Detroit. Or someplace. Japan, mostly, I imagine.

Just saw this published today (Dec. 6, 2010) in The Street:
Louisiana State University business chair and Wharton School fellow Joseph Mason came out swinging against Obama, saying that if the White House denies U.S. companies the opportunity to buy new offshore drilling leases in 2011, American policymakers will put an astounding amount of economic potential in jeopardy.
"I determined that America stood to gain $8 trillion in additional GDP, $2.2 trillion in tax revenue over the next 30 years, and 1.2 million new jobs annually by opening access to our offshore resources," Mason wrote. "Given that those estimates were based on federal inventories of offshore oil and gas reserves that have not been updated for decades, the actual economic benefits are likely much greater. In the same vein, the economic opportunities denied would be much greater too," he added.
So the country's going broke, and the Comrade won't let us make any money off oil leases. Is that really a very wise decision? One that's going to make American "energy independent"? Seems kinda stupid to me.

Then Fabio, the model, was on TV today. Apparently he's a spokesman now for the Tesla, another electric car that -- wonder of wonders -- re-charges in three to four hours instead of 12 to 14 hours. Needless to say, the Tesla, like the Prius and the Fusion and what-all, also are supposed to help make America engergy-independent.

But you know what? Until those cars come with some kind of antenna that will reach up into the clouds and tap into fresh lightening, they don't do one damn thing to make anyone energy independent. I mean, it's not like electricity is just laying around like rainwater. People actually burn coal, natural gas, and God forbid, oil, to produce electricity.

So where's the edge up on energy independence? All those electric cars do is make sure you can't go too far from home.

And that's about it for now.

Save the Republic.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

FCC vs. The First Amendment

Some blockhead fascist at the FCC named Michael Cocks says the media in America is out of control and needs more regulation from the FCC.

HEY, COCKS, READ THE FIRST AMENDMENT. THE MEDIA IN AMERICA IS SUPPOSED TO BE OUT OF CONTROL. 

But of course, working for the FCC, he's probably some illiterate who lost his job when Lehmann crashed and bribed some buddy in the White House to give him a job for which he likely has absolutely no qualifications or experience. I mean, after all, was it his fault he didn't work for Goldman Sachs?

And who would Cocks like to see "fix" American media? The merry marxists who control the federal bureaucracies, of course.

What's wrong with this picture?

Not to mention, the FCC -- or anyone else -- seizing control of the media would require a Constitutional amendment. So the idiot is promoting a federal rights violation. Or, because the FCC does grant licenses for use of the public airwaves, Cocks and gang can just go on ahead and regulate the TV networks. Heaven knows, the TV networks have already made themselves so irrelevant I doubt anyone would miss them.

YOU ARE CLEARLY A MORON, COCKS, AND I, FOR ONE, RESENT PAYING YOUR SALARY.

That's all.

Save the Republic.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Shut down the feds? Sounds like a plan

Well, another day and Nero Reid, joined now by big-spending Butthead Baucus, are apparently digging in their heels. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell got all the Republicans to sign a letter stating that they won't consider any other legislation until the Senate takes up the Bush Tax Cuts and authorizes "continuing funding" for the federal government -- that is, the funding that pays the light bills, Social Security, etc., to  keep the government in operation. The tax cuts and continuing funding would seem to take priority over the silly shit giveaways Nero Reid is fixated on.

Like, Nero wants to make sure he pays off those illegals in Nevada who voted for him with his "Dream Act" Yes, dream of a USA that's stone broke and descending into third-world poverty levels, with even higher taxes to pay for the marxist pipe dreams of the last two years. Yet even most dems are too gutless to vote against extending the tax cuts. Many of them won't be coming back in January, and they're probably afraid to go home after the Nov. 2 massacre. They probably have their personal assistants starting their cars, just in case. Nero's plan is to filibuster his own party and keep the tax cut legislation from reaching the floor.

The democrats claim the Republican are being "obstructionist" again. That is, Republicans refuse to endorse a whole shitload of new social programs and billions more spending that blockhead Nero Reid wants to legislate -- instead of taking care of the peoples' business.

Clearly, Nero Reid is an asshole. So are the people who voted for him. 'Course, most of them probably don't understand English anyway, and when the big dem bus drove them to the polling places, these illegals were probably told they were ordering egg rolls or something -- "Here, just pull this lever."

And now Pazzo Pelosi chimes in, all worried about losing the money from the tax cuts. Yet she was not at all concerned about deficit spending when she rammed and bribed through the $3 TRILLION dollars in debt that's attached to socialized medicine.

These people are such unbelievable morons.

And you know what? I'd like to see the federal government shut down. Think of all the money and heartache the nation will save. No more harassment at the airport. No more IRS. No more foul and disgusting porn in the National Gallery. How will we live without it?

Imagine US citizens freed from all the bullshit that comes out of the beltway. I, for one, can't wait to see all the power go out in the White House. Will the Comrade lose his Secret Service detail?

We can only hope.

Save the Republic.

While the USA burns

I've been actually seeking a descriptive name for Sad Sack Harry Reid, and finally hit on one today: Nero.

On the floor of the US Senate today, the damnfool got lost in some adolescent fantasy where he's a sports reporter, rather than conducting any useful business for the nation.

There comes a time when you're so far beyond believing that the blockheads in DC are worth a "pitcher full of warm spit," that you start daydreaming about some kind of terrorist breaking in, lining them up against a wall... and... supply your own happy ending.

And the Comrade met with the incoming Republican leaders today, crowing about compromise and brotherhood and all that kind of bullshit that seems to have escaped him entirely for all of his earlier life and time in the White House. Kiss my ass, Comrade. Know what I mean? You're a rotten filthy and worse -- totally ignorant and incompetent LIAR. Does anyone care with this drek-for-brains has to say?

If I was Boehner, Cantor, et. al., I'd refer him to the Golden Rule, just before I spit in his face and walked out.

I'm so fed up with this bullshit it's almost unbelievable.

Nero Reid is promoting the Fantasy Act -- oh, excuse me the Dream Act -- apparently what he used to get Hispanic voters to support him. Ol' Nero is something of a disgrace on the Republic. Let's give illegals a shitload of benefits, but screw the Bush Tax Cuts. Ol' Nero's head is so far up his butt he can probably see his tonsils.

These assholes can't leave quick enough to satisfy me.

Save the Republic.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Nightmare in Econ 101

I was just looking for a video that had been on YouTube that gave a very clear and very concise definition of capitalism as an economic system. Can't find that video. Instead, came across dozens of others that would have been funny except that they were so very painful to watch. When you get a headache while you're thinking about something -- I mean your head just starts to ache as you try to wrap your brain around a certain idea -- usually it's because the idea is fundamentally flawed and so full of contradictions that it can't be assimilated by anything as stubbornly logical as the human mind. 

After listening very sincerely to some of these poor people on YouTube, I think I discovered what their problem is: They've all been taught Marxism as a sort of "economic truth." And Marxism really doesn't make a damn bit of sense when you hold it up against REALITY. The confusion, and the headache, come in as you try to reconcile what you see all around you with Marx's interpretation of it. 

First of all, Marx says that labor is the basis of economic value. No. Not necessarily. Not unless you want it to be. According to that standard, wildflowers would have no value, since they require no human labor to produce. Is it true that wildflowers have no value? What do they mean to you personally? 

You see, nothing in the world contains within itself what we, as human beings, would call "value." Gold, diamonds and things like that are said to have an "intrinsic value" due to their scarcity. But who cares if they're scarce? We care, the human race cares, so we assign them a value. 

Is oil valuable? Up until the middle of the 1800s or thereabouts, crude bubbling up out of the ground was collected by con artists, packaged into small bottles with ornate labels, and sold as cure-alls (the infamous "snake oil.") The smelly, tarry stuff had not much other value, and it certainly didn't cure anything. Until somebody figured out how to make kerosene out of it to replace whale oil for use in lamps. Then Rockefeller started mining and marketing it. 

Takes lobsters... please. I don't like lobster and once asked a guy, "What on earth possessed someone to actually eat something that looked like that?" Easy answer: Starvation. I suppose if I was starving in Maine or someplace, I'd assign some value to lobster.

OK, so compare this to labor-as-the-source-of-value. All of you cogs in the corporate machinery, who sit all day taking one column of numbers and turning it into two or three other columns of numbers... Do you value those columns you've created? I mean, do they have any value for you? You've invested your labor in them. According to Marx, they should be of extreme importance to you. Are they?

On the other hand, you might own a little hat that your mother knitted for you from a ball of cheap yarn. She probably invested a couple hours in the hat's creation. Is it the labor that makes it valuable, or is it because it is your mother's labor? You give it value; the poor little hat probably doesn't mean much to anyone else.

In one video on YouTube, you can see this one tormented wannabe economic scholar sinking ever more deeply into the quicksand of confusion as he claims that "early capitalists" wanted monopolies so that they could sell "commodities" for more than they were worth. Here's a hint, earnest little dude, you can't sell commodities or anything else for more than they're worth. The buyer pays only what it's worth to him or he doesn't buy it. The price he's willing to pay is one way to measure its value TO HIM. It may not be as valuable to someone else. And what other value does the commodity have? Compared to what? Where ELSE does this commodity get value, except from people who assign a specific value to it? 

If the seller prices a thing too high, potential buyers will find or create substitutes. Labor, priced too high, is substituted with machinery. AUW, SEIU, Teamsters, beware. No one really has to put up with your demands and if you price your skill and labor too high, well, too bad for you. 

And this is what a "market" is:  A place where buyers and sellers determine the economic value of things. Doesn't matter how much labor it took to create a thing. Doesn't always matter much what it's made of. The buyer and seller get together and determine -- How much is this worth?

There simply is no other source of value, economic or otherwise, in human civilization, except the human capacity for identifying and organizing things. In addition, the markets and the value they generate for things is extremely fluid. A while back, some people would stand out in the rain in front of Toys R Us and pay anything for a Cabbage Patch doll. What do you think these dolls are going for now? Not a fraction of the current "value" of the latest iPad, apparently.

Another example, people who do crafts can sit for hours producing a single lovely cut-out paper snowflake, or a crocheted afghan, or a handmade sweater. The fact that these items might represent hours of somebody's labor doesn't give them any kind of value -- not when they're exchanged in a market where all of these items can be made by machine much more quickly and usually to a higher standard of quality. 

So Marx is full of crap. He's just one more guy who contrived a metaphor for the world he saw around him. We all do. We all have our way of interpreting the world around us. Some use religious precepts as their way to organize and evaluate their lives and the world around them. Others use money exclusively. Others prioritize and value things according to their usefulness for their children, spouses, or pets. 

The metaphor Marx came up with apparently suited his own purposes -- or at least his friend, Engels, was willing to pay Marx's bills to keep Marx producing -- but Marxism is not a very accurate description of the world or of human civilization, and therefore not a very useful interpretation of economics. 

Keynes doesn't really work, either. If anything, Keynesian economics only demonstrates the principle that Milton Friedman described as the economy being like a balloon -- if you pinch one end of it, the air inside only bulges out somewhere else. (And, of course, pinched too tight all around, or inflated beyond capacity, the balloon can also explode....)

You know, life is not all that complicated -- until misguided professors and others compel you to view the world through a distorted lens. Suddenly nothing makes any sense. Here comes that damn headache.

So what to do? Live by your own lights. Organize and evaluate the world according to what makes you comfortable and satisfied. I think Jefferson called this "the pursuit of happiness." You have to have some personal liberty to have any chance at that at all. And you  have to have some confidence in your own individual judgment. Don't be afraid to try and fail. That's how you learn, as in, "Man, that socialist thing is totally screwed up!" Tried and failed. 

Save the Republic! 



Saturday, November 27, 2010

North Korea: the irrational actor

You know, law is built on the idea of the "rational actor." The rational actor is a person or entity that will act in its own best interests. They act more or less rationally; they have a positive reason for what they do.

So introducing the "irrational actor." The irrational actor is a person or entity that acts on what looks like impulse, whether or not their actions are apparently in their own best interests. They are, in a word, loose cannons.

Khaddaffi played the irrational actor for a while. Just a looney-toons, doing what comes natcherly, impuslively, without a thought to the impact of his actions. Supposedly. That is, Khaddaffi did somehow profit for his role as the irrational actor. For a while. Until Ronald Reagan just got fed up with it and bombed the crap out of him. We haven't heard too much from Khaddaffi since then, except for that bizarre spectacle he put on at the U.N. a year or so ago. We must conclude, on the basis of that, that he has completely lost his grip on reality -- if he had a grip in the first place.

So now comes Kim Il Jong or whatever. The lunatic who heads up North Korea. Lately he's been sort indiscriminately bombing South Korea, sinking South Korean ships, lobbing mortars over a small island.

China has long served as a kind of suzerain for Korea as a whole. I mean, over centuries. A suzerain is kind of a protector. And China also has stepped in when Korea got just so nutsoid even China couldn't deal with it. China would just take over until Korea could sort out its internal problems and prove it was capable of looking after itself. Then China would step back.

So now with Korea going nuts and shooting off rockets and bombs kind of willy-nilly, the USA among others has asked China to go have a quiet talk with the lunatics running North Korea. Heard just today that China finally has agreed to go have some kind of talk.

Meanwhile, the US is participating in "war games" in the Yellow Sea this week with South Korea. North Korea says that's why it's been so nervous lately. Actually, North Korea is less "nervous" than it is entirely "unstable." And that's why it's been behaving badly.

So, while we have air craft carriers and all that over there, why not just take out their high command? See, in a country with a dictator and highly centralized command-over-everything government situation, it's pretty easy to annihuilate them in one fell swoop. So, why not? The worst that could happen is that Kim Jung Un (the Un-Kim?) will pop up at the U.N. in a couple years, dressed like a polar bear or something, and rambling about God knows what.

Just a thought.

Save the Republic.

(P.S.: I've worked 60 - 70 hours in each of the past couple weeks, so now's my chance to make up for it with all these pent up comments. You don't have to read them all.)

So what's with Assange?

What is this Assange guy's problem, exactly? He's an Australian with some history in Sweden -- that is, he is accused of rape there, so apparently fled that country. He seems to be living in Iceland now or someplace? Not sure. At any rate, he really, really, really, really, really hates America, even though he seems to have so little experience with the USA.

He's the guy with WikiLeeks (yeah, I know I spelled it my way) where he releases confidential information stolen from the US government.

First of all, let's set Assange aside for a moment. What about the US citizen -- and a soldier, I believe -- who sent Assange the secret files? I do hope that person is charged with treason and will be executed. Treason is the only crime defined in the US Constitution, and historically it's been very hard to prove. However, in this case, treason seems to be pretty apparent, if not blatantly obvious. So hang the guy. Or exile him to the mountains along the Afghan-Paki border and let's see if does as well as bn Laden.

At any rate, so we come back to Assange. I repeat, what is his problem? What the hell has he got to do with anything? Just trying to bring the USA down? Why? I can only conclude that Assange likes the idea of global terrorism and will do all that he, as an individual, can do to protect and promote it.

One sick puppy, n'est-ce pas? And a rapist? Apparently. He seems to be among the knee-jerk anti-American crowd. And I repeat, what has America ever done to him? Perhaps he failed to qualify for a job rounding up dingos in the outback and it was all George Bush's fault. I don't know. For people like him, that seems to be as good an excuse as any.

What a twisted world.

We need the USA more than ever with lunatics like Assange at large.

Save the Republic.

What makes people happy?

Just watched this rather weird segment on Fox with a guy named Dan Buettner, author of a book called Thrive. Apparently the National Geographic Society funded Buettner's trips around the world as he sought the world's happiest places.

I was expecting a review of Disneyland. But Buettner's findings were very different.

So what did Buettner come up with? He discussed a few:

*  Some town in Denmark where Buettner says the government funds everything, so lawyers make about the same thing as garbage collectors and nobody cares about status.

*  Singapore, where the government makes it easy for people to buy property, so extended families all live together. And people like to socialize most with their parents.

*  Then, San Luis Obispo, Calif., where no one smokes, there's not much obesity, and everyone rides bikes.

Anybody else find this a little strange?

First of all, personally I'm not plagued with envy of the rich, and don't know many people who are. Being concerned with justice, I find it appalling that a lawyer would make about the same income as a garbage collector, but that's just me. Do believe Buettner has confused "justice" with "egalitarianism" though.

Second, my relatives are dead, but my mother lived me for the last 15 years or so of her life. I didn't own a house at the time, and still managed, somehow, to socialize with her. I mean, why does that require a government-funded house? And maybe Singapore has a different system, but our government helps people buy houses, and the overall impact on the economy has been completely disastrous.

Frankly, smoking, obesity, and bike riding seem like pretty weak criteria to judge somebody's happiness. I mean, really, those specific values are rather markedly characteristic of political correctness. Seems to me that those values are held mainly by the small far-left splinter group that supports the Comrade.

But perhaps this book may useful as a handbook about what the left regards as the criteria for happiness.

And it just goes to show, one size doesn't fit all.

Save the Republic.

Friday, November 26, 2010

State capitalism by any other name....

Was watching Glenn Beck as he was describing "state capitalism." Honestly, I think he sometimes takes the longest and most complicated route to explaining things. Like the way he struggled with "monetizing the debt." But maybe he was too young to remember exactly what inflation was like in the 1970s, so he goes through three or four chalkboards and lots of graphics when he could have just said "flooding the globe with lots of paper dollars seriously dilutes the value of each individual dollar."

Anyway, back to state capitalism. Which sounds to me like a contradiction in terms. Like "socialist-anarchists." That's actually laughable.

Look, if you have "state capitalism" that means the state essentially owns everything -- going by a strict definition of "own," which means to have the right to determine a thing's use -- though citizens get to run it day-to-day. When it comes to big decisions, the government steps in with regulations and so forth. Strikes me that it's a total recipe for clinical stress, stress being when you have a lot of responsibility and no authority. You don't get to make any decisions, but everything is all your fault.

What a dream world, huh? Wouldn't you want to live there? Sorta like heading up a pharmaceutical company, isn't it? Or a bank. Or GM. Or anyplace that hires people or serves food.

I've mentioned this book before, but actually found it in my library -- The Russians, by Hedrick Smith, who was the New York Times (I think) bureau chief in Moscow for many years when it was the USSR. He wrote the book about everyday life in a "state capitalist" culture. He doesn't really go for the outrages and shocking rights violations so much as he just talks about the routine stuff, like toilet paper not being available to buy all the time -- or anything else. The central planning committee just had bigger fish to fry.

That's what you get with a centrally-controlled economy. Believe it was in this book that he talks about how Russian women complained that the clothes in the stores were unfashionable, unattractive, etc etc. So the state's central committee really made an effort to respond to these complaints and one year came out with something like a dozen different dress styles you could buy. When they were available. Somehow a dozen different styles really didn't solve the problem. They still all looked like cut-out dolls.

Don't even have to go so far afield. Anyone else remember when Nixon froze prices? That was interesting. At the time I worked for a company that made equipment used mainly for aircraft maintenance. (No, not factory work; I worked in the Engineering Office.) Anyway, so Nixon froze prices and everything else.

I used to have lunch every so often with the company's purchasing agent. Almost always when a salesman invited her to lunch, because her husband was the production manager and didn't want her going to lunch alone with the salesmen. So, anyway, this company used a lot of steel for manufacturing, and we sold an awful lot of stuff to the military. But when Nixon put the freeze on, the mills were apparently in process of making rolled steel -- like pipes and stuff -- and we needed flat steel. And couldn't get it. Because there was a freeze, and the steel companies couldn't make it. They couldn't even allow buyers to bid up the price for whatever inventory they might have for flat steel, or not legally anyway, because of the price freeze. The only reason my company got any flat steel was when we could prove it was to produce something the feds had ordered. You like that scenario?

I mean, a centrally-controlled economy is just exactly that stupid and inflexible. One size fits all, they say, it's more efficient that way. Except that it just doesn't work when you're dealing with human beings in a civilized society. Introduce freedom and free markets, and everyone's happy and much, much more productive. Suddenly there's tons of options for everything, lots of jobs, everyone has money to spend. You get the idea.

And anarchist-socialists, like those poop-for-brains currently burning down London because suddenly they're threatened with having pay something for a college education... What the hell kind of an education are they getting? Anarchy is just about the diametric opposite of socialism. Anarchy is the absence of government. Socialism is having a very tightly centralized and authoritarian government that divvies up and redistributes the goods. You can't have both at the same time. It just isn't possible.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

Save the Republic.

Thankful

I wanted to take some time and write about things to be thankful for.

Well, for one thing, I had to work on Thanksgiving. So I'm thankful for that -- that I am working.

I'm extremely thankful that I'm not the only American citizen who still believes in America.Can't even say how thankful. I love America not only for its ideals, but because we understand and believe in those ideals, and are willing to act in order to maintain them.

Thankful that people like Jim DeMint and John Boehner and even Mitch McConnell have agreed to try to do something to make congress more accountable and responsible.

Thankful that there is an America and that I was just lucky enough to be born here. But that wasn't luck so much as some long-dead relatives escaping from Europe. I'm thankful for their courage in making the journey to someplace thousands of miles from their homeland and families, thankful that they were willing and able to put in the work and commitment to build their lives here.

Thankful for Jefferson's idealism and Madison's foresight, George Washington's integrity, and Lincoln's, Reagan's, and even George W. Bush's steadfastness in insisting that America is right and worth preserving.

I'm very thankful that Fox News presents both sides of the story. Don't know that anyone else noticed, but the networks traditionally never discussed substance -- or the actual content of anyone's argument in politics. All they reported on was process -- that is, strategy. How a candidate plans to win, not the platform he or she is running on.

Fox changed all that. I love those guys.

And for anyone (like Ted Koppel or Jay Rockefeller) who perceive Fox and/or even MSNBC as "the death of journalism," gotta say, you guys don't know history. Newspapers and other media have been extremely and forthrightly biased through 99% of their existence in human history. Objectivity is only an illusion, and it's actually dangerous if people believe a news source is unbiased. Bias comes out not only in things like language or a slanted tone, but primarily in deciding exactly which stories are picked up and which aren't. No way to escape being biased. So thank you Fox and even all those looney and extremist blogs, like Huffington, who tell it as they see it and let the public sort it out.

Lots to be thankful for, but that's the public part.

Save the Republic.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

All about the junk

Well, I don't fly. So I don't have to worry about strangers goosing me in the name of national security.

You do know how terrorism works? Terrorists aren't trying for the typical capture-the-flag war goals. Their aim is to destabilize governments, create internal conflicts, and provoke otherwise benign governments into becoming oppressors for the sake of "public safety."

So with the new TSA airport feel-'em-all-up policy, Al-Qaeda seems to be winning. Actually my favorite description of the policy comes from a bumper sticker: "Can't see London, Can't see France, Until we see your underpants." I do hope Janet Napolitano flies commercial. She really should. I mean if anybody's a threat to the USA....

What bugs me the most is the posture of so-called Homeland Security. Their modus operandi is to wait until terrorists think up some new tactic, and then respond to that by stripping away one more layer of privacy and dignity from American citizens. We had the shoe bomber, so everyone had to have their shoes scanned. We had the underwear bomber, now airline passengers are subjected to the "porn scans" and/or "enhanced pat-downs" that, in one case, required a breast cancer survivor to show the screener her breast prosthesis. And supposedly neither the scanners nor the pat-downs can detect things like potentially lethal powders or C-4 plastic explosives.

Someone on Fox asked something like, "What will the response be if a terrorist sticks some C-4 up his butt?" Don't even want to think about it. I suppose in that case, every airport would be equipped with an MRI or something. Or you'd have to have a colonoscopy immediately before boarding.

I'd rather drive, anyway. But soon we'll all be required to drive only Government Motors "enhanced semi-electric-powered roller skates," so that the bird-brains in the EPA can nurture their own personal doomsday myth.

It all kind of emphasizes that those in DC have put Al-Qaeda in charge of US security policy. That pisses me off more than anything else. Like, "We'll have to wait and see what they do before we can do anything." That's truly stupid. No other word to describe it.

And meanwhile, any ol' terrorist who wanted to could strap on 150 lbs of C-4 and simply stroll unmolested across the border into Arizona. He'd be lost among all the other mules burdened with marijuana.

What's wrong with this picture?

I think the Israelis have a better program. A former security chief for El-Al airlines was talking, and noted that stopping and searching everyone isn't half as effective as using your brain. The guy brought up the explosives recently found in toner cartridges that were being shipped to Chicago from Yemen. The El-Al guy pointed out that it was a curious situation all together, since there are no toner cartridge factories in Yemen, and tone cartridges don't need to be imported to Chicago. Apparently these things made some people suspicious.

'Course, the USA doesn't want to offend anybody. So even if a Nigerian kid's father calls the US Embassy and warns that his son is probably going to blow up an airplane, the US does nothing about that. Or some schmuck buys a one-way ticket on a trans-Atlantic flight and has no luggage with him. Doesn't even raise an eyebrow.

But that's the difference between putting on a show for the public and really getting smart about security. Napolitano et al fall into the first category, unfortunately. Challenge her or Pistole (strange name for a security guy?), and they demand "Well, what would you do?"

Tell you what, give me your salary and resources and I'll come up with something.

And that's all for now. Probably write more later. I'll feel better once I get my load of tryptophan.

Save the Republic.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Hey, Mr. Rockefeller...

Why don't you just shut up?

Seriously, Mr. Rockefeller, why don't you just shut up?

Does that jerk actually hold any office anymore? Pity the fools who'd vote for him.

Save the Republic.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Wranglin' Rangel

Oh, I get it. Thanks for the tip, Charlie.

The feds are after me for my taxes. So next time I hear from them, I'll just tell them, "Gee whiz. I'm sorry. I just haven't had time to launch a legal defense fund to pay for a lawyer and an accountant."

Doesn't Rangel qualify for a public defender?

That's all for now.

Save the Republic.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The great earmark debate

OK, when you hear the word "earmark" are you really thinking "pork"? Because they are two slightly different things. Heard the debate about this on Fox this morning and also looked it up to make sure I'm not just making a fool of myself discussing it. So here's what I found.

Not all pork is earmarked, but all earmarks are pork, otherwise they'd be "special bills," which apply to only certain individuals or states rather than to the population as a whole.

That is to say, congress can pass a law that says, "$250 billion will be allocated for interstate highways," and this might be interpreted as pork. But with an earmark, the bill would read, "$250 billion will be allocated for interstate highways, with $100 billion going to fund projects on I-75 between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia." In addition, earmarks aren't limited to money allocations, but can also take the form of "special favors" for one or another interest group.

See the difference?

Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, argues in favor of earmarks, saying, "The money will be spent anyway. The argument is over who controls where it's spent."

That's kinda true. If that $100 billion of the total $250 billion for highways is NOT earmarked by congress to be spent in Pennsylvania, then the Executive branch will decide where it goes -- maybe Pennsylvania, maybe somewhere else, probably depending on who kisses the Comrade's butt.

On the other hand, Senator Jim DeMint and others in the Tea Party who want to eliminate earmarking all together claim that if the dollars can't be earmarked, they probably won't be allocated at all. I mean, who wants to give the Executive branch any more money to play with and spend at its own discretion?

I tend to agree with the Tea Party argument. If congressmen do look at legislation and ask, "So, what's n it for me and my state?" and they see there ain't nothin' in it for them, they probably won't vote for it without some other, more compelling reason -- like genuine need, or because it's right, or would help the nation as a whole.

It's a disgrace and a shame on the nation that it's become almost business-as-usual in congress to "buy" support for legislation by promising earmarks to legislators.  For example, let's look at the socialized medicine bill. Any earmarks there? How about exempting Florida from the bill's ban on Medicare Advantage programs? The Corn Husker Kick-back that gave Nebraska special favors to buy Nelson's vote? Or the $200 billion pay-off to Mary Landrieu of Louisiana to secure her vote?

Would the socialized medicine bill have passed without these earmarks? I don't think so. Socialized medicine didn't then and doesn't now enjoy much public support. The only way to pass that piece of crap was to bribe the senate. That it worked highlights a very, very sad state of affairs in American government. And I don't care if "they do it all the time." If congress does operate that way all the time, then we should vote all the bums out and start over with a clean slate and nothing but the Constitution. And judging by the last election, I'm not alone in holding that attitude.

"They do it all the time" assumes that legislators don't vote on issues or policy anymore, but on how many goodies they can accumulate. That's not the way America is supposed to work. Changing it -- taking it back to Constitutional intentions -- is not blind idealism, either, but more like restoring the nation to its stated principles and securing the blessings of liberty. That is, after all, the only purpose for the US government.

Some interesting fall-out from all the earmarks in the socialized medicine bill, too. Because of all the personal promises and earmarks in that bill, legislators did not include what's called a "severability clause." "Severability" means that if one section or clause in the bill is ruled unconstitutional, then that clause alone can be omitted, or severed, but the rest of the bill would stand.

However, in order to protect the earmarks -- to make sure that they couldn't be cut out of the bill -- the socialized medicine bill doesn't include a severability clause. So if one clause or one section of that bill is ruled unconstitutional, the whole thing goes out the window.

Woohoo! Otherwise known (to lit majors, anyway) as "hoisted on their own petard."

We can only hope.

Save the Republic. And eliminate earmarking.

"Cool It" or Don't give up on socialism quite yet

Saw this guy, Bjorn Lomborg, on TV the other day talking about a movie he's got out called "Cool It." Let me make it clear that I haven't seen this movie and really don't intend to. But I did see the guy and read about a half-dozen reviews of it at RottenTomatoes. It may not be as bad as I assumed, or perhaps not bad in the same way that I assumed.

Lomborg looks like a college cheerleader. Really. Very bouncy, optimistic, hair cut that looks exactly like a hay stack after a not-too-devastating wind storm. For some reason he reminded me of these relentlessly cheerful and clean-cut singing groups that were popular in the late 1960s/early 1970s. They made a bizarre kind of counterpoint to the hippies and went around the country singing happy songs and apparently indulging in some well-rehearsed and entirely non-offensive patter between sets. Pretending it was maybe 1954 and there was no "Generation Gap" and your kids weren't dropping acid and burning down the Administration Building on weekends. Sort of playing into the wishful delusions of a certain market.

Anyway, that's how this guy struck me. My first thought, OMG, Al Gore Lite.

He said something like, "OK, for the movie, we're just assuming there is Global Warming... We just think there might be some less disruptive solutions for it."

Yup. Al Gore Lite? As it turns out, going by the reviews, maybe not. Quite.

According to the film's synopsis at RottenTomates, "Lomborg is the founder of the economic think tank, Copenhagen Consensus, which brings together the world's leading economists to prioritize major global problems -- among them malaria, the lack of potable water and HIV/AIDS -- based upon a cost/benefit analysis of available solutions."

So he's basically another globalist, and apparently what he wants to do mainly is shift the public's attention from Saving the Planet to his own particular concerns. OK. Fine.

But don't we (the US and other developed nations) already pour billions of dollars every year into U.N. programs to combat malaria, the lack of potable water, and HIV/AIDS around the world? And doesn't all that money already just go into some rat-hole somewhere, i.e. the numbered bank accounts of certain third-world ambassadors or delegates or whatever they call themselves?

I mean, maybe Bjorn is new to the USA, though he speaks pretty good, idiomatic, and even bouncy and perky English -- but doesn't he know that most of the people in the US are growing pretty damn weary of having all the world's problems laid on our doorstep? I mean, it's not like we have any money left. And what we do have is not going to be worth anything by Christmas.

And why is this movie in English, by the way, if his think tank is in Copenhagen? Shouldn't it be in Danish? Or maybe even Esperanto to attract the world's attention.

Anyway, just something that caught my attention. Haven't written in here for a while, and these things pile up.

Wouldn't it be nice if the so-called undeveloped nations of the world did something once in a while to develop themselves? I mean instead of just accepting the status of being "causes" for well-meaning global socialists?

Just a thought.

Save the Republic.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

"deNial" on de Potomac

Haven't written for a couple days -- just bombarded with work, which is a good thing. Kinda blows my mind how, starting on Election Day, my personal economy has suddenly exploded. I've hardly had time to sleep with so much paying work on order.

Anyway, I have been keeping up with events, such as they are.

The Comrade was smart to get the hell out of Dodge after the Nov. 2 massacre. Not so sure it was necessary to bring $200 million-per-day worth of the USA along with him. But he did get to visit his boyhood home on the taxpayer's dime. From what I hear, that was probably the greatest benefit to come out of that trip. Maybe he should consider staying forever in the Far East.

What really boggles my mind is that the dems in congress still just don't seem to get it. Pazzo Pelosi still insists things like socialized medicine and the proposed annihilation of US industry through crap-n-tax were just "badly explained" or just "didn't happen fast enough." And perhaps that's because she has such a problem constructing complete sentences. However, I do believe the Stimulus acted pretty powerfully and quickly -- to put the USA almost irretrievably into overwhelming debt and help stamp out individual liberty. No doubt this is exactly what Pazzo wants for us all. She's such a damn fool.

Most recently, she's "carving out," according to the news, a third position in the Minority leadership so that everyone can hang onto some useless title and specious sense of personal power, even while Pelosi refuses to withdraw gracefully. And of course, the "chain of command" assures that all her underlings report to her directly... That is, she is the peak of the hierarchy. She doesn't want to share her power even with those who claim to agree with her. Even the most casual observer must admit, she is a little tetched.

Pazzo is demonstrably quite the control freak. She puts Elizabeth I to shame. She may be rather more like Russia's Catherine.

Have another Oxycontin, Pazzo, and everything will remain rosy in your little world. And keep your grip on that giant hammer as you wallow in the misty nostalgia of your glory days, long gone now.

I'll try to write more later, but I've been busy.

Save the Republic.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Change we can believe in

Watched Fox Sunday, with Eric Cantor, Issa, and Paul Ryan, but haven't had time to see the regular network stuff. And I'm assuming the regular networks had all the former majority on, hinting about how stupid the population-at-large is to boot out their sorry butts.

Must say, I'm rather amazed that Pazzo Pelosi still wants to serve, but as House Minority Leader. Poor Steny Hoyer.  He spends years sucking up to Pazzo only to be shafted in the end. And is Pazzo really the best choice? Sure she rammed through socialized medicine -- and without a second thought about undermining the US Constitution along the way -- but she also handed the Republicans their greatest victory in 60 years. Yeah, keep her on. The dems need someone like her. So do the Republicans.

I must say, if there's anything we "little people" out here in the hinterland have seen this year, it's how addictive power is.  First, Arlen Specter, then Crist, then Murkowski, and on and on, down to Pazzo Pelosi -- 70 years old, defeated, and still a determined control freak. Hey, Pazzo, think "Johnny Carson," and bow out gracefully, before you make a total fool of yourself drooling all over your shoes.

Even more surprising is the dems' apparent inability to understand that We, the People, really did mean it with the Nov. 2 election. We don't like you people. We want you out. We don't think you're doing us any good; matter of fact, we're certain you're trying to kill us.

Meanwhile, Pazzo, and I'm sure others like Dick(head) Durbin are still running around going, "Wait until the benefits kick in, then you'll love it." They're beginning to sound a bit like incorrigible rapists, convincing themselves their victims are just asking for it and really just love being assaulted and violated.

As far as a rift between Republicans and the Tea Party goes, I don't really see much daylight between them. Maybe in some districts.  However, look who's going to be in majority leadership positions in the next congress:  John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Issa, Paul Ryan.  I don't see the "Old Guard" anywhere -- the old leadership. Looks to me like the older generation is giving the younger ones an opportunity, though I guess Boehner was in congress during the 1994 Republican sweep. And I don't see that any of those people named here vary in any large degree from Tea Party values.

The Senate is much older, as they probably should be. And the Senate is still under a dem majority, though not by much.

Anyway, interesting to watch. Here's hoping the "Young Guns" in the House majority now follow through. We'll be watching.

Save the Republic.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Agenda for the new congress

I believe it was one of the "Young Guns" in congress, or it may have been the Republican Pledge to America, that suggested that congress pass a law to ensure that no agency or department of the executive branch can institute regulatory measures that would place a burden of more than $100 million (in aggregate) on American citizens without legislation.  That is, if the EPA still wants to do crap-n-tax, it would have to go to congress and ask for legislation to pass such sweeping and expensive rules.

In my opinion, this should be the very first thing the new congress does. Because you know the Comrade may have been moderately amused by our little election, but he's also very likely entirely undaunted by it in his efforts to turn America into a backwash commune. He still doesn't "get it." And I'm sure it doesn't bother him to be opposed by 300 million people -- not as long as he has his little coven of like-minded marxists around him. I'm sure they're all still patting each other on the back and assuring each other that the House of Representatives so dramatically changing hands was just a minor setback. Something they can circumvent and ignore.

After all, the merry marxists know what's good for America so much better than American citizens do.

Apparently the Comrade has finally given up blaming George W for everything. Now it's more like "shit happens"  As in, there was an emergency and he simply rose to the occasion. Not like there were other approaches he could take, other options. 'Course, it's not like he knows about any other options, having been a dedicated marxist his entire life.

Perhaps he believes it's that inexorable marxist dialectic at work -- the pendulum swinging back and forth. No doubt the Comrade sees Tuesday's election as a similar swing. Anything but face the facts, right, Comrade?

He's already suggested even more spending. My stars, does he comprehend nothing? See nothing? Hear nothing? If he'd been on the ballot, he'd be out on his butt, like most of his cronies.

What's even funnier is the "lamestream media" blaming the Republican success on Fox News. Truly a case of "shoot the messenger." At least Fox is a messenger, rather than a cheering section.

And isn't it funny that Fox stands all by itself, while "the other side" is made up of three nationwide networks and two cable channels. And Fox is still preferred.

How very blind can the left be? I guess we'll find out. Their blockheaded density has been apparent to me for quite some time, and it's also rather obvious now to much of the rest of the country.

But let's face it, the fight is far from over. I'm actually more optimistic about what this congress can and will do -- much more optimistic than some naysayers. After all, the Tuesday massacre of liberals can't go unnoticed by others who face regular elections. The Comrade, of course, doesn't care about being re-elected. He regards the US Presidency as little more than a bully pulpit, and his primary aim is to just do as much irreversible damage as possible in his four years with a political forum.

All the rest of us are charged with the task of stopping him. At least now we'll have some help from certain portions of the government -- not all, but some.

Save the Republic.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Give that man a hug

Well, I'm happy.

By the latest count, the score stands:

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
   Republicans: 243
   democrats:    192

U.S. SENATE
   Republicans:  46
   democrats:     49
   Independent:   2

I was going to name this blog "Woohoo!" but let's not rub it in.  And remember, somewhere in Washington, DC, Pazzo Pelosi is locked in her bathroom crying into a towel. Just like the Comrade at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

I like John Boehner. He cried as he delivered a victory speech tonight, talking about putting himself through school and having "every rotten night job in the world." We share that. He said his life has always been all about the American Dream. And nobody stepped up and gave him a hug. I wanted to.

And apparently the Comrade, for the first time in his inexcusable term in the White House, telephoned Boehner, who has been Minority Leader. Better late than never, Comrade? Think it's still possible to turn on the ol' charm and maybe ram yet another TRILLION in new b.s. taxes on the American public cover the TRILLIONS the Comrade has already flushed down the toilet? We've got a ways to go to undo all the damage Comrade, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the merry marxists have done.

By the way, in Illinois, the Comrade's former Senate seat went to Mark Kirk, who wouldn't have been my first choice, but at least he's a Republican. He did vote for crap-n-tax, however. After being verbally assaulted about that for a month or two, Kirk noted "OK. I get it." We'll see.

And bubblehead Melissa Bean, US Rep and a dem from my district, the 8th, lost to Joe Walsh. For some reason, Fox seems to be refusing to report on the Illinois 8th. But they do suggest that Walsh has flip-flopped on abortion and gun control. Oh well, he seems to be in the right place for now. And better than Bean.

You know, just after Bean voted for socialized medicine, I emailed her and told her it would be wise for her to start looking for another job now, because the employment situation was pretty bleak out here and she'd be out on the street soon. Apparently she didn't believe me.

Cannot fathom how Pat Quinn has clung (by his fingernails) to a slim lead over Brady for Illinois Governor. I met Pat Quinn a couple times, though I'm sure he wouldn't remember me. He was running for State Treasurer or Secretary of State or something at the time. I'm quite sure he's run for every available position in Illinois at one time or another, and by a trick of fate -- and Blagojovich's dishonesty -- Quinn finally ends up as governor. But I just can't imagine he's going to stay there.

Sharron Angle didn't win in Nevada, and if I was her, I'd demand a recount. Lots of funny things going on with Nevada voting machines for a week now, and I heard they also had a power outage there that put the machines down. Double-check, Sharron.

Of course, the problem with Nevada is that so many liberals fled there from California, after ruining the Golden State. But the Golden State seems to like it just fine. I mean really, who the hell would vote for Barbara Boxer? Apparently the same people who vote for Pazzo Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Governor Moonbeam, et. al. I've always believed that California was not really part of the USA. They proved it tonight.

And I also got a whole truckload of work today. I knew that would happen -- just because I wanted to watch the election returns. Oh well -- can't complain. My economy is already looking up!

Now we must begin to get rid of the Comrade. As Boehner said, our work has just begun. But the Comrade and the Federal Reserve are giving the effort a huge boost. Tomorrow the Fed starts printing up trillions of pieces of Monopoly dollars to scatter far and wide across the nation. So inflation is on its way, with a bullet. Just another way to tax us into poverty. And what do you want to bet that the Comrade and Sad Sack Harry Reid already are blaming the Republicans for it? I'm sure they've already got their signs printed up.

Save the Republic!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Save the Republic

This is just crazy. I feel like a kid on Christmas:  I get to vote today! I get to vote!

And the polls aren't even open yet.

Cherish the USA.

And, of course, save the Republic!

Monday, November 1, 2010

YOU are the driver

So the Comrade started out with this nifty little metaphor about George W driving "the car" into a ditch and asking if you want to give the keys back to the Republicans. Then he suggested that all Republicans can just sit "in the back," in a rather unfortunate reference to racial prejudice in the South. Yup. That's exactly it -- trying to make everyone but his merry marxists second-class citizens. Glad he finally admitted that. "Some are more equal than others," Comrade?

Let me tell you about how I learned to drive a car. I took lessons, and scared the instructor to within an inch of his life on a Chicago side street when I squeezed between a double-parked delivery truck and cars parked on the other side of the street doing about 40 mph. Hey, I didn't hit anything. Didn't even sideswipe. No problem, why the panic?

Anyway, so all the lessons were in a car with an automatic transmission, and the instructor even had his own brake pedal on the passenger's side. However, when it came to actually buying a car, about the best I could do was a VW Bug with a stick shift. I bought it from a guy I worked with for about $400, and it was in pretty good condition. He showed me the basics about stick shifts and took a spin with me around a shopping mall parking lot in the middle of the night. Then the car sat in front of my house for about a month while I tried to work up the courage to actually try driving it on my own.

The guy I bought it from suggested I drive it around early Sunday mornings when there wouldn't be too much traffic. Only in Chicago, early Sunday mornings, the streets are littered with the twisted wrecks and pools of human blood left behind by the Saturday night drunks. Not encouraging. Anyway, one of my brothers volunteered to ride along with me for a while until I felt comfortable with it.

That was interesting. Don't know if he did it on purpose, but he drove us out to a fairly rural area (well, it was then) northwest of Chicago and the 'burbs, and we drove around through forest preserves. Low speed limit, not a lot of traffic, pretty easy roads. I did OK there, so my brother insisted that I drive us home -- through some ravines and all. Sort of hilly country, which, granted, is pretty damn rare around Chicago.

Don't know if you know anything stick shifts, but when you're stopped, your feet are on the brake and the clutch, and as you start moving again, you shift, then give it a little gas and lighten up on the clutch until first gear engages. But to do that, you've got to take your foot off the brake.

And in a stick shift, if you're stopped at the top of a really steep hill and don't have your foot on the brake, you tend to roll backwards down the hill.

So here we are at a stop sign on top of a hill. I take my foot off the brake and we start rolling backwards down the hill. So I slam on the brake again -- other foot on the clutch -- and we just sit there for a minute. I'm panicking -- OH MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE! My brother's just very calm, looking out the window.

Finally he looked at me and said, "The car's not going to do anything until you do. You're the driver."

Needless to say, I figured it out. I've also owned a couple other stick shifts since then, and even taught a couple other people how to drive them. It isn't hard, it's just a matter of confidence, mainly. Honestly, about the worst thing you can do is stall.

So tomorrow is Election Day. I've been waiting for this day for TWO YEARS!

The country's not going to go anywhere or do anything until we at least vote. We're the drivers, no matter what kind of drivel the Comrade is trying to sell you. The worst thing we can do is stall.

Your vote does count. You might say, "People who vote against my guy will cancel out my vote." But look at it this way -- you're canceling out their vote, too!! Your one little measly vote is serving a large and important purpose. Feel better now??

Need a ride to the polling place? I've got an automatic now. I've even driven through mountains. I can get you there, but you've got to pull the lever, or punch the card, or make the check mark, or whatever. But you've got to do it. Nothing good's going to happen until you do.

Save the Republic. We're the only people who can.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Let's hear it for the unions?

Think I mentioned a couple times that I've been in labor unions. Illinois is a "closed shop" state, meaning that it allows unions to outlaw employers from hiring non-union employees. So I had a job in a factory that was represented by -- believe it or not -- the SEIU. But that was before Andy (Karl Marx Jr.) Stern took that union over and split it away from the AFL-CIO. Now the AFL is trying to throw in with SEIU -- tells you how successful unionism has been in the USA over the last 30 years, doesn't it?

At any rate, I had that job in 1972, when George McGovern ran against Nixon. McGovern's big brilliant suggestion was a so-called "guaranteed income" for every American. So no matter what you did -- or didn't -- do, you would get a certain amount of income every year. Apparently from the feds if no one else thought you were worth the money.

And the union, of course, the SEIU, backed McGovern and sent him a 18-wheeler full of union dues. And all the people I worked with, most of whom liked the union, got very upset about that.

"We work so hard.... yadayadayada.... and 'they' will get an income for doing nothing?!"

Maybe no one else remembers, but McGovern lost pretty big that year, and Nixon was not exactly everyone's favorite personality.

I mention this because I watched Hannity on TV tonight and he had Frank Luntz on, doing a focus group in Cleveland, Ohio. Also flashed a bunch of new poll results -- not necessarily for the candidates, but on the issues and general attitudes. Something very interesting:

60% OF UNION MEMBERS THINK THEIR UNIONS ARE WASTING THEIR DUES.

One lady, apparently a union member, said she believed her union should be investing their dues, or at least consulting with the membership about where their dues should go, rather than just shoveling it all into dem coffers.

So the union leadership thinks the best way to guarantee jobs is to get in bed with the Comrade and the merry marxists, while most of the union members seem to have more realistic ideas about that. Even they understand that the government does not create jobs. Matter of fact, wonder if Ohio is a closed-shop state --where you don't work if you don't join the union. That might explain why Frank Luntz could even find so many union members. Anyway, just found those poll results extremely interesting.

All of this may help to explain why unions get smaller and smaller every year in the USA, apart from their government worker membership. I understand unions are even recruiting the unemployed now. I mean, really, who else would join a union? Let's face it, people who work for the government are probably incapable of finding a real job anyway. In Chicago and most parts of Illinois, people who work for the government are usually members of the an office-holder's immediate family, ward heelers who pass out literature during campaigns (that's honest-to-God how you get a city job in Chicago), or are cast-off mistresses of other government workers, especially the elected ones. I don't suppose it's really too much different in other states or for the feds.

Anyway, I thought that was cool. So the Comrade and the merry marxists get union donations, but they don't get the union vote.

Excuse me, I'm rolling on the floor laughing.

Don't forget to vote -- especially you fed-up union members. Apparently they've figured out, even if their leadership hasn't, that if there is no business in America, there are no jobs, either.

Save the Republic.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

About the bail-outs

Been wanting to write for some time about the bail-outs, and why they're bad and how they may even be retarding the chance for economic recovery. Maybe not, though, because of the nature of the economic collapse.

Anyway, when a company goes out of business, its products usually go off the market for a time -- its branded products, anyway -- and there's a temporary displacement of the employees. Over all, though, when a company goes out of business, it's because it's inefficient, obsolete, badly managed, or something similar. And I find I've got to preface all of this by saying "In a free market economy," because let's face, we don't live in a free market economy, and the economic meltdown is less the fault of the free market than it is of government interference and poltical bullying.

At any rate, when a bad or outdated or inefficient or poorly-run company goes out of business, it's a good thing. The assets it was sitting on are then freed up to go to more useful, better managed, and more efficient companies, or they can even be re-directed to some new area all together.

On the other hand, if you take a crummy company or one that produces buggy whips or something, and prop it up with public funds, all you're doing is 1) throwing money down a hole; 2) keeping the capital and employees from going somewhere else where they would be more productive; 3) blocking growth and innovation in the economy in general. Going out of business is the real world's way of saying: You're only taking up space and wasting resources.

In the 2008 meltdown in particular, I'm not convinced the bail-outs -- as in TARP and Geithner's picking and choosing which financial institutions got to survive -- did much good, though apparently the Comrade among others keeps repeating the mantra, "It could have been worse. It could have been worse." Who really knows? Maybe "It could have been better. It could have been better." I think the very fact that recovery isn't happening is a strong indication that "It could have been better. It could have been better."

The only thing is, the financial collapse didn't happen in a free market. Contrary to the Comrade's peculiar economic ideas, Wall Street is not "unregulated" and it hasn't been "unregulated" for many, many decades. No doubt the stupid diktats from the government about giving mortgages to the unemployed and unemployable went a long way toward destroying the banks and insurance companies, and the other companies and individuals who invest in them. So perhaps we could classify the collapsing companies as being "badly managed" -- by the federal government and the Reserve Bank?

That makes more sense than blaming the collapse on the personal greed of Wall Street traders. I mean, the traders are there to make money. If they make money, their companies make money. If they were getting reckless -- which hasn't been proved to me -- perhaps they were spurred to take more and more risk in hopes of making enough money to compensate for what they were losing on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and related. If they hadn't had so many losses in one department, maybe other departments wouldn't have been under so much pressure to perform?

I don't know. I doubt anyone knows what kinds of deals go down between the feds and Wall Street. I'm sure that Wall Street appreciates the support -- with Uncle Sam standing behind them, they can take all kinds of screwy risks. I mean, who cares? If they throw away a billion or so, the government will rush to their rescue.

Which brings us to the worst reason for bail-outs: They tend to support the very worst organizations around. They reward the incompetent bunglers -- and use the profits of the successful to do it.

And that's about it. I've been wanting to write that for some time, but have been distracted by the shenanigans of the politicians.

And I saw where Charlie Sheen was found "drunk and naked" in a hotel room. This is news? And still, he sets himself up as some kind of guru and font of wisdom for how others should behave... and vote? I like Charlie Sheen. He's funny. But he doesn't know jack about politics or economics.

Save the Republic!

Monday, October 25, 2010

Before you vote, another thing to think about

I already wrote one blog today, but am inspired to write another.

The Comrade put together something called the "Debt Commission" to think up new ways of putting the USA more into debt. No, I'm sorry, that should be, to think up new ways to increase the tax burden on US citizens. Oops! I mean, to try to hammer out a plan to help the USA retain some sovereignty from Red China, which owns our butts at the moment. They bought a lot of our debt.

Toward this end, the Comrade named Jan Schakowski (dem-IL), among others, to this little committee. Couldn't have picked a better person to promote the cause of tax and spend and spend and spend and spend... She's an addle-brained machine political hack from Chicago. And I believe even her husband is on the government payroll in some useless but highly-remunerated government job. Or a lobbyist or something. If Schakowski's on this committee, the electorate doesn't have much of a chance of survival. I shudder to think who else might be working relentlessly on crushing American liberty through taxation.

At any rate, earlier reports said the Debt Kommissars were considering a V.A.T. tax -- basically a sales tax on wholesale goods, which is then passed along to consumers. The V.A.T. is very popular in Europe -- and look what it's done for Greece and France.

But the latest report is that the Debt Kommissars are likely to recommend eliminating the income tax break that's currently allowed on mortgage interest. And, WSJ says:
At stake, in addition to the mortgage-interest deductions, are child tax credits and the ability of employees to pay their portion of their health-insurance tab with pretax dollars. Commission officials are expected to look at preserving these breaks but at a lower level, according to people familiar with the matter.
The officials are also looking at potential cuts to defense spending and a freeze on domestic discretionary spending.
In other words, don't reduce outrageous over-the-top spending, but do raise taxes.

The same article notes, "The White House has said these and other breaks cost the government about $1 trillion a year."

OK, first of all, contrary to marxist opinion, the money in question does not belong to the government. It belongs to citizens. To say that the failure to steal a certain amount of private property from citizens is a "cost" to the government is really pretty much a pile of steaming crap and an insult to us all. It's NOT THEIR MONEY. It only becomes their money under threat of seizing the rest of our property and putting us in jail. Let's face it. That's what this all comes down to.

I mean, would you voluntarily fork over 30% to 40% of your earnings to a bunch of clowns who have loudly and proudly demonstrated that they are completely irresponsible with money? You know, if you give that drunken pan-handler $5.00, he's not going to buy food with it, he's only going to buy some more cheap wine. Such is the federal government and the Debt Kommissars.

Second, leave it to the dems to first look at grinding citizens more deeply into the dirt rather than giving up any of those specious little bribes they dangle in attempts to lure potential voters, like "free" health care -- which is already costing us a fortune and leading many large employers to cancel the benefits they currently offer.

The government racks up TRILLIONS of dollars of debt building Turtle Tunnels in Florida and funding research into new ways to preserve dead insects, and then they turn to us and say, "Gee, you folks are just going to have to pay a little more for all this."

Here's news, you jackwagons in DC -- We never wanted this bullshit to begin with. YOU pay for it! You're making six figures and snuffle up as many perks and bennies as you can fit inside the trunks of your chauffered limos. You pay for it. I can't even find a job.

On the up side -- Nice that this information comes out a week before the elections. Add the elimination of income tax credits to congress's failure to extend the Bush Tax Cuts -- and they're putting us all in the poor house. And why? To coddle and baby their SEIU and AUW thugs, the bumbling, illiterate members of the Teachers unions and the lay-abouts at the Post Office.

What a country, huh?

Just one more extremely good reasons to vote the bums out.

Save the Republic.