Day 300

I have more to write about than I can put in a blog.

There’s my health care plan idea. Let’s have a health care trial for 10 million people for the next 3 years. We’ll see how much it REALLY costs. OF course, government plans never end, so that won’t happen.

Olby is going to make fun of Glenn Beck for grammar and spelling errors. That’s a favorite hobby of his, given his rigorous farm college education. You know, because Olbermann graduated from the Columbia School of Agriculture.

Jackass’ approval ratings are down to 46% according to Rasmussen. Even the other poll organizations barely have him above 50%.

Tom Ridge made some claims in his book that were sure to drive sales up among MSNBC hosts and down among most of the rest of the potential audience. Now he’s backtracking. Dick Cheney is sticking to his guns and his approval is up.

Harry Reid is down double digits against virtual unknown Republican challengers. He decided to go after a newspaper in Las Vegas. They responded with a scathing editorial.

Soros puppet side Huffington Post is launching an effort to knock the conservative books populating the top seller lists down by a semi-legal sweepstakes. They should just pay people to buy the books. I heard it worked for Dianetics.

Day 299 – Go Absolve Yourself

Why do good things happen to bad people? There is a fundamental belief that it is not the government’s job to take from the earners and distribute it how they see fit to the downtrodden. The real kicker is when that largess makes its way to the wrong people.

Uppity Woman posted a story about prisoners who got stimulus checks. Half were given out because they met the criteria, (not in jail when they earned the previous year’s income) the other half because the government is incompetent at giving out money.

This is key. While the government was never charged with the task of giving out charity unwillingly donated by taxpayers, it does it more than any other job based on dollars alone. Worse, it’s not very effective at the job. 45 million people don’t have health insurance while tens of million get it from the government, and the people on government care make more than the people who don’t have it.

More central planning all over the world by socialized democracies have led to a serious lack of empathy. Why look out for your struggling neighbor when there’s supposed to be some place for them to go? Why should a doctor care for someone for a reduced rate when they have a guaranteed income from people the government deems worthy of free benefits. In New York, for example, an application for food stamps is the permission slip to every state handout available. Is that the case because a person on food stamps needs all those services? No, it’s because bureaucrats are lazy and one form fits all.

Without a central planner, when you walk out the door and see someone suffering and exposed, hungry and in pain, you feel a moral compulsion to try to help them. With central planning, someone else will take care of it. This is even more true for the rich. All over the world, the wealthy had a moral and community obligation to help their neighborhoods. Now, they have an obligation to pay taxes. Some do, like Teresa Kerry’s 12.5%

Social engineering is the large scale, high priced absolution of guilt. Instead of finding a warm blanket for someone, you have the feds take half of everyone’s blanket and give the collection to whomever was on your list that day. You don’t make people whole, you make them even and hope even is close to whole.

Day 298 – No Drama Club

One thing that has been the object of derision and what they call “snark” is passion. Over-expression of one’s faith or beliefs put them in a position to not be their fastidious best. Emotion is fine, but it’s best left to words in stirring speech said in a precisely modulated monotone.

More and more people are bothered by “drama,” be it in their private lives or in the public sphere. It’s an uncomfortable reminder that people are human beings with feelings and emotion. I like a little drama. People who care are interesting. I know people with seemingly little drama. They’re not only boring, they actively annoy me.

There was too much anti-drama in this campaign. Sarah Palin fired up crowds, but she also liked to jump in with both feet. That led to a considerable amount of nit picking by the media. Some reporters actually started to complain about the Vietnam stories of John McCain. It probably made them feel uncomfortable knowing that the US does not even get in the door compared to the monsters who torture Americans.

You can see truth in the unexpected moments. McCain was a good leader, well liked, but a bit unfocused as a Navy man. When he was captured, he showed his true nature. He fought when he could and endured when he couldn’t.

Barack Obama had few unscripted moments and virtually no history. Whatever people say about him, one moment scared the hell out of me. Late night shows made a joke out of it. He was talking to someone in one of his crisp white dress shirts when she pointed out a spider on it. He stared at it. He seemed to be deciding what to do. There is being drama free and then there’s being an automaton.

We are coming to a point where governments are not serving the people, but being maintained by people. Making everyone the same, giving them the same pay, giving them the same services, teaching them to count to ten instead of flicking off a bug, these are things you do to maintain order. There are liberal people who laugh at religion and the way the church used to control peoples’ lives instead of guiding them. Then they turn right around and work to “share the wealth” by making each cog in the machine as good as another. When the state is the only one making the decision of who is good enough, what happens when you don’t fit the mold?

Day 297

Eight days of stock market increases coincide with a presidential vacation. It’s like a vacation for all of us when Jackass stays off TV. Then, the Kennedy memorial tax money giveaway sent the market into a freeze.

And guess what? 300 days since the election and the stock market is still below where it was on Election Day. Even if the economy crosses that point, we’re still at a loss of about 3 million jobs since the Inauguration. Not only is this a jobless “recovery,” it’s a recovery-less recovery.

Day 296

In the world we still have countries led by kings and royalty. We have military strongmen in charge. Some people have overthrown a democratic government for a considerably less democratic one. Then, there are the democracies. Whom do they serve? To whom do they answer?

The Founding Fathers made the United States a democracy, in basic terms. People had a right to vote for their government representation. Those people were male landowners at the time. This was not such a disgrace considering that the Federal government only took taxes from landowners and gave no financial benefits in return. An 18th century United States government made laws governing the ways states interacted and how the nation dealt with other countries. One man presided over the government for the times when a single decision had to be made.

As I’ve posted before, the federal government eventually took on the role of central government. Tax money went to people outside the government. Income was taxed for more revenue. The budget became a tool of control. More money passes through the US government than is spent on government.

In a monarchy or an oligarchy, you know what to expect.  They are looking out for themselves. In the more direct democracies of Europe, unsurprisingly, the same thing happens. The easiest way to win people over is to bribe them. Democracies are all too often represented by a self-anointed ruling class whose primary conviction is permanence. It turns out the easiest way to stay in power is to give money to people without any, regardless of how they got that way. Tax cuts are costly and bribe a smaller segment of the population. Government revenues increase, but reelection chances decrease. A large vote advantage can be gained by buying the poor and charging the rich for it. When you run out of money, you just borrow it.

The Founders tried to avoid this by creating a weaker Federal government, giving rights to the states and arguing for a citizen government. Executive orders, federal mandates, political campaigning and a massive budget took care of that. States have very few rights. Their residents pay more to the country than to their states. Transfer payments are administered to states but provided by the federal government. Term limits are absent from the people with the most control over money.

Despite what some tell you, Saul Alinsky and ACORN did not create some ingenious master plan. This is the logical extension of a direct democracy legislated by criminals. A king does what he wants. A democracy votes for what it wants. The real winners are the ones with the best sales job. The loser is liberty.

Day 295 – Dynasty

I decided not to lie and give some kind of glowing tribute I didn’t believe in. At the same time, I also chose not to point out obvious flaws and detail what I found wrong with him. I think Uppity Woman’s site is doing a decent job of that. No, this is about something else entirely.

The Kennedy era was deemed Camelot decades ago. Like the good king of that fictional land, the Kennedys were considered American royalty. Public service was their calling. For the most part, that public service took the form of political office.

This country has a history of family presidencies. Of the 44 men who held the office, there were three sets related to each other. That number doubles if you count relatives who ran for the office. Then there are the families who have multiple governors, senators and representatives among them.

Of course, most of these families are also wealthy. The Bushes, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys and others came from money. The current resident came from a financially successful family, even if his mother chose to live an unconventional lifestyle. That lifestyle gave him an aura of superiority among liberals, a sort of Chicago thug royalty.

Interestingly enough, the Clintons are the true rags to riches story. Bill’s white trash upbringing may have soured him somewhat to Ted Kennedy. Clinton was the kind of man who should be serving him dinner, not serving the public.

The country clings to Horatio Alger stories, where the rich give back to the community. This turns out to be a very dangerous thing, however. The Founding Fathers were against such great families. They believed in great men who come from the day to day existence of society, take their place representing their community and returning to their lives. The idea of a man who had no real job taking office for nearly 3/4 of his natural life would be offensive to them.

When I talk about term limits, I usually point out the number of politicians who are term limited only by God. Ted Kennedy was one of those who died while he was still technically in office. He exemplified the vicious circle. Vote for him because he has the power to get things for the state. Vote for him again because he has even more power and influence.

The country has been stagnant since the 60s. There are still politicians from that era serving. These dinosaurs have become good at something that one should never become good at, bending government to their personal will. They like to treat the people as cogs in a machine while they are the ones who see themselves as gods among men. The people need to bring them down to earth.

Day 294

Remember swiftboating? This was another clever marketing term (like astroturfing or teabagging) the Democrats invented to boil down a series of 527 ads that put John Kerry’s Vietnam experiences in a negative light. Personally, I think Bush and Kerry had similar experiences when it came to Vietnam. John McCain outclassed both of them and Jackass may or may not have even been born then. Who even knows? I do know that no one ever uses the term “national guarded” for what Dan Rather tried unsuccessfully to do to Bush in 2004.

This was tangential. What people really didn’t like was the extent to which Kerry badmouthed the US military as men like McCain were tortured in POW camps. Kerry may have worsened the situation when he came out against an Iraq war that had just started, trying to fan the flames of the burned out Howard Dean campaign.

One thing that happened to Kerry, Bush and McCain is that they were vetted. They faced trial by fire in the media. Jackass did not and it shows. His record was paper thin and his paper trail was even thinner. Any claim as to his governance was deflected by a lack of evidence of, well, anything. Now, his administration is the evidence and he has no record of competence to reassure anyone.

So, he plays to his base. Liberals are using a lot of tortured logic to justify the kinds of political shenanigans being considered to bypass the Constitution. Many a rabid supporter has used the logic that Bush “rammed” legislation through, so they should do it because they’re smarter than we are. It’s moral relativism wrapped moral absolutism. We’ll do the right thing the wrong way.

Hey, I think the ends can justify the means sometimes. It’s politics, after all. We gave up of the idea of a representative democracy years ago. What I cannot stand is the sociopathic belief that there is some moral wrong in enhanced interrogation among people who believe that anything is okay as long as your side won an election.

If you think that bringing back the perceived immoral tactics of the previous administration is acceptable, you have given up the right to take offense at anything that was done with the belief that it was necessary by that administration.

Believe this. There is but a sliver of the American population who can’t sleep at night because murderous bastards were tricked into thinking they were in mortal danger by activities that would be too tame for a “Fear Factor” episode. Most offense is taken by the idea that the administration lied to them about these tactics.

This president has driven a wedge between the FBI and the CIA so great it may lead to a cabinet level resignation. Dick Cheney is not going to jail. George Bush is not going to jail. Presidential approval will not go up over this. In two months a series of smaller races will set the stage for the 2010 election season. If the Congress doesn’t like what they see, a 51 vote majority will be a fond memory.

Day 293

President Jackass tried to play nice.

He was going to set people up with all kinds of free government stuff. He was going to end the war, eventually. He was going to fix health care. He was going to clean the skies and fill the country with green jobs.

But no, you had to complain. Veterans, senior citizens, soccer moms and other people driven to distress over health care and out of control government spending went to town halls, started tea parties, contacted their representatives and worked to oust the party in power. Now, you must be punished.

First of all, your cash for clunkers ends tonight. Obviously, it was a giveaway to soccer moms and families that already had SUVs to get more fuel efficient SUVs. It won’t impact annual car sales. It isn’t better for the environment. It might be a short term boost to the automakers. It could have gone on. Congress could dump more money into it. But it’s time to pander to the base, so no more cars for you.

And did you see that veteran who talked about the national socialist party at a town hall? That went too far. The president isn’t making vets pay for their own health care like he was going to do. What more do you want? Now it’s time for the book of death. “Your Life, Your Choices” will be handed out to veterans in hospitals to make sure they don’t “burden” their families with their annoying problems or a pesky case of “the blues.”

The worst are you old people. The massive spending was going to impact the younger generation. The people who voted for Jackass would be in indentured servitude to China, not retirees. But now old people have to pay. For the first time since the Ford administration, there will be no cost of living increase for Social Security. There will, however, be an increase for Medicare premiums. You’re not the greatest generation anymore.

This is the United Middle North American Landmass now. You tow the party line or you suffer the consequences. You are endowed by your government with specific temporary rights, which can be revoked at any time. And if you turn down a swine flu show next month, you are in for a world of trouble.

Day 292 – The American Scheme

I made a blog comment this week about too many people living beyond their means. It’s unavoidable in some cases, but there is a tendency to stack purchases on credit to the point where they will never be collectively paid off.

I read a book last year by Adam Shepard called “Scratch Beginnings.” After graduating college, Shepard went to a new city with $25 and wanted to see if he could make a living within a year. He started as a day laborer in a homeless shelter and ended up as a successful mover with an apartment and a dependable truck.

People have many reasons why they don’t succeed. The real problem is when you achieve a certain level and mortgage it on a flashier lifestyle. Get rich quick mentality is an unfortunate aspect of a capitalist society (in other societies, it’s get rich never). Even the government does it. Withholding taxes were invented so that you never feel the death by a thousand cuts of your money being siphoned. The federal government deficit spends to the point where it may never balance. And so our portion of the national debt is close to our level of personal debt.

The biggest MSNBC lefties are now trying to target fiscal conservatives that are opponents of popular programs like Medicare and Social Security. The truth is that these programs benefit the newest generations less and less. By the time Medicare was introduced, people on Social Security were just starting to get money drawn from their own payments instead of the free money from working people that defined Social Security for decades. In the 80’s, Social Security taxes were increased and payouts were decreased. The people who retired then were the ones who had paid into Social Security their whole working lives. They got screwed.

Now, we are in historic debt with historic obligations to social programs that both expect more from current workers and promise more to current recipients. We’re back in the old debate of cutting off benefits to granny and throwing her in the street. We will ALL be in the street at this rate.

There are not many fans of the Iraq War, but its $2 trillion price tag includes pay and benefits for hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families. Government transfer payments go into dozens of trillions of dollars over the next decade. The Iraq War will provide more health care through the VA than Congress has so far.

If there is a third party or a new way in government, I hope they know the lesson of living within your means. Figure out what you want, what you need and what you can afford. Then realize what happens when what you can afford can’t pay for what you need.

Day 291 – Tool Time

There are some very cagey marketers in this administration.

Selling a product that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to is the one thing the idiots in the White House are good at. There is enough pressure on Jackass that he will do everything possible to both ram this health bill through and convince people that they want it. His troubles were compounded by the fact he didn’t expect the resistance he got.

People seemed to want change. Even when the government spent $3 trillion more than it had, they convinced people that things couldn’t get much worse. Bush did some stupid things, too. Voting for TARP probably put the nail in the Republican coffin for 2008.

But health care is different. Yes, the system is “broken.” It’s been broken for decades. The only thing Bush did to health care was throw billions of dollars more at it to shut up seniors with expensive drugs. Not really a fundamental change.

Think of the problems this way. The economy is like a leaky faucet. If it can’t be fixed, it has to be replaced. Health care is like an old dish washer. It’s costly to run, costly to replace, but it has 90% of the capabilities you want from it.

Now, here comes Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor from ABC’s long running show “Home Improvement.” You’ll let him fix your faucet because it’s one step away from the trash anyway. If he fixes it, great. If he doesn’t, you’re not worse off

You don’t, however, want him to give more power to your dishwasher. That appliance works. You know how to deal with it. If he busts that, it’s a lot more headache. From what you’ve seen of his previous work, there’s a good chance you’ll lose a perfectly serviceable system.

We already know the president is a tool, but now people think he’s the tool man.