These so-called moderators shed no light whatsoever on the Republican candidates or their policy positions. Their intent was to divert attention away from the abject failure that is the Obama administration and focus on the Republican candidates' warts, especially Newt Gingrich's. It's time for these pretentious, shallow mainstream media people to go away.
I was one of a few people who caught the Republican debate on ABC Saturday night. It was awful, mainly because moderators Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos continued to prove how irrelevant, out of touch and shallow the so-called mainstream media really is.
The style of questioning was more appropriate for American Idol, The X Factor and Jersey Shore than it was a serious debate among people vying for the highest office in the land. Rather than substantive policy questions, the entire debate was geared toward the usual Gossip Girl nonsense… “So and so said you’re an idiot. Do you agree with that?”
So, for 15 or 20 minutes we were treated to the spectacle of the candidates nitpicking each other instead of addressing the issues that really matter to voters. It got so bad that Gardasil came up again. It was exhausting to watch the pointless back and forth.
When health care came up, we had to suffer through the usual rehash of Romneycare and Newt’s flirtation with the individual mandate. I really don’t care what either candidate did or believed in the past about health care. What I really want to know is what their ideas about health care are going forward.
The low point of the evening came when the so-called moderators asked how important marital fidelity was in a presidential hopeful. This was an obvious dig at Newt and a blatant attempt to get the other candidates to take turns ripping on Newt. (Ironic, wasn’t it, that Stephanopoulos worked for a serial adulterer; I don’t recall the mainstream media or Stephanopoulos being overly concerned about marital fidelity and the presidency then.)
Perry was asked first, and blathered on about how faithful he is, etc. His response should have been: “Why don’t you ask Newt since you’re so obviously talking to him? I’ll pass on this until you ask a real policy question.” The candidates should have nipped the ridiculous questions in the bud and asked the moderators to ask real ones. Instead, they took the bait.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, but I trust this modern-day P.T. Barnum to ask better questions than clowns like Stephanopoulos, Sawyer, Williams, Cramer and Cooper.
Harassing cops at Occupy Denver with chants of, "The police are the army of the rich!" In reality the police are the army of civilized society that lives by the rule of law.
In the interest of being “fair and balanced” my family and I recently stopped by Occupy Denver at Civic Center Park across from the state capitol. Back in 2009, we also attended the pre-Tea Party stimulus bill protest at the capitol, then the follow-up Tea Party protest.
This time around we were in Denver for the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo to enjoy the fruits of capitalism provided by evil corporations like Vail Resorts and Intrawest. I’m pleased to report that Colorado ski resorts and ski and snowboard retailers were doing a brisk business.
It’s strange how the free market works: People provide a product based on demand and then compete to make that product as economical and accessible as possible in order to profit from said product. Everyone wins who wants to win in this system. The catch is that you have to work, and work hard, to succeed.
Meanwhile, just around the corner at Occupy Denver, the dregs of society were gathered to protest that same system. They claim it’s Wall Street in particular they’re protesting, but by and large they blame capitalism in general for society’s ills.
What they haven’t figured out is that while Wall Street is certainly a problem, especially its cozy relationship with porky politicians in Washington, D.C., it is not the poster boy for capitalism. The poster boy, among many other poster boys, is the person exhibiting at the Ski and Snowboard Expo working hard to deliver a great product.
In one of my earlier eyewitness Tea Party posts, I wrote the following:
Another striking thing about the protest was how orderly and well-behaved everyone was. This was in stark contrast to your typical left-wing protest, where profanity, invective, and mean-spiritedness prevail. My hope is that the hard-working, family-oriented American wins the day and wins back our country.
An f-bomb throwing evangelist exchanges pleasantries with f-bombing anarchists at Occupy Denver. Nice.
Some objected to these general characterizations as being unfair to progressives, but the dichotomy between the Tea Party and Occupy protests I witnessed proved the theory, at least at the Denver versions of the protests.
Immediately upon arrival at Occupy Denver the onslaught of “profanity, invective and mean-spiritedness” began in earnest. A group of anarchists was harassing the cops, who were merely hanging around to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. They chanted, “The police are the army of the rich!” I asked one of the policemen if he was part of the army of the rich, and he just shook his head as if to say, “Yeah, right.”
Then, an “evangelist” approached the anarchists, waving a Bible and punctuating every other word with the F-word. They yelled at each other for awhile, the anarchists matching every evangelical F-word with their own F-bombs and some sacrilege to boot.
That scene got old rather quickly, so we wandered into the heart of the beast, a motley collection of 911 Truthers, punks with spikes and tattoos, neo-Nazis, hipster dufus wanabees, the homeless and a lonely man with a Ron Paul t-shirt. The area in which they congregated was dirty, disheveled and disorganized. We didn’t stay long; there wasn’t really much to see, other than losers with nothing better to do.
Running with the Devil: The motley crew of anarchists, communists, neo-Nazis, punksters, 911 Truthers, the homeless and other losers at Occupy Denver.
My overall impression was that those who were first attracted to the movement and who may have had a legitimate beef about the abuses of Wall Street likely abandoned the protest to the fringe elements. This reinforces my theory that anyone who’s really serious about reforming Wall Street should join the Tea Party. Tea Partiers, at least this Tea Partier, very much resent the immoral and unethical relationship between Wall Street and the Federal government whereby the largest Wall Street donors are ensured bailouts when their risky, shady deals go south. Everyone else can go to hell.
The system is rigged, but it’s rigged by big government. Banking regulations, for instance, favor the existence of giant banks. The regulations are designed to make it difficult for small banks to be competitive, thus capital and the risk associated with it are concentrated in very few hands. If that risk was spread out among smaller banks, systemic crashes would be averted. Now, when one giant bank collapses it threatens to collapse the entire system, but that’s how porky politicians like it.
Now that's more like it... People buying and selling goods and services at the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo. These ordinary, hard-working people were decidedly happier, enjoying the fruits of their labors, than were the bitchy baby Occupiers around the corner at Civic Center Park in Denver.
Therefore, why would one who doesn’t like the games Wall Street plays want to make the Federal government larger? So that it can continue to consolidate its political power with economic power? This is a recipe that will ensure the poor get poorer while the connected few rich get richer, which is why the likes of Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, George Soros and Warren Buffet are in favor of this disaster recipe arrangement.
There really is no rational reason to vote Democrat, the party dedicated to growing government at the expense of the individual. Leftist movements have historically left misery and destruction in their wake, from the French Revolution to the people’s revolutions in Russia, China, Korea and Cuba. The Occupy protest I witnessed was a microcosm of what happens when the left is in control, which is to say hell on earth.
That's right. Whenever there are financial difficulties the Jews are behind it, just like they were in the 1930s. Just ask David Duke, who recently endorsed Occupy Wall Street.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is essentially a re-boot of the Tea Party, but the Occupiers don’t know it. Were the Occupiers savvier and more educated about economics, politics, history and the Constitution they would echo the cry of the Tea Party, which is to limit the federal government.
The Occupiers have become tools, or useful idiots, of the rich and powerful left, which manipulates markets and benefits from the cozy relationship between Washington, D.C. and Wall Street.
Barack Obama’s top donors list from the 2008 presidential campaign is a Who’s Who of Wall Street financial giants (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup), over-priced educational institutions gouging families with their tuition (Harvard, UC Berkeley) and big corporations (Google, Microsoft).
The left’s biggest money man, George Soros, owns Soros Fund Management LLC (hmmmm… I wonder if it’s related to Wall Street at all?) and is a notorious currency and stock market manipulator. In other words, Soros has repeatedly gamed the system to enrich himself, which is exactly what irks (or I guess is supposed to irk) the Occupiers.
Soros also funds and agitates for left-wing causes, understanding that as the people’s individual power recedes, he and others of his ilk will become more powerful. It’s exactly what happened in the Soviet Union: The Russian people were relegated to a drab life of bare subsistence, while their betters in the bureaucracy enjoyed the spoils of the proletariat’s toil.
This is what happens when people become dependent on the state. America’s unrivaled success was built on individual self-reliance, not a reliance on the state to provide for our every need. If America had been built on the latter, we’d all be speaking German right now.
But the Occupiers seem to have the whole thing backwards, at least as far as one can tell what the hell they’re protesting… The whole thing is such an odd mish-mash of anarchists, communists, neo-Nazis, confused students, baby-talking thirtysomethings, professional protesters ginned up and paid by unions and community organizers, anti-Semites, baby Baby Boomers who missed out on Woodstock, and a smattering of well-meaning liberals.
When the Occupiers went to march on the mansions of the powerful, they studiously avoided left-wing barons who are knee-deep in Wall Street funny business and went to protest at the mansions of right-wingers (Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Corp., and David Koch, Koch Industries) who have little to do with Wall Street.
As one of my favorite pundits put it recently: “Even assuming, for purposes of argument, that Koch and Murdoch are as evil as these morons seems to think, the protesters call their demonstration ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ not ‘Occupy Businesses Whose Products We Disapprove Of.’ This would be like protesting the Holocaust by walking past Adolf Hitler’s house and protesting at O.J. Simpson’s house.”
Wall Street is an excellent target for protest. The financial giants contribute to campaigns, wheeling and dealing their way to immunity when all hell breaks loose, as it did in 2008. A government with the power to pick winners and losers during a crisis is far too powerful, and this is where we need reform.
I’m not talking about campaign finance reform, which restricts free speech and is merely a symptom of far worse disease, but reigning in government per the Constitution so that it does not have the power to reward cronies as it did with TARP and all the other stimulus, bail-out, green jobs BS perpetrated on the American taxpayer. How many more Solyndras will it take before we figure out that we’re being taken for a ride?
“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see…”
As time goes by I become ever more convinced that we’re living in America’s twilight years. The tide is turning from a nation of go-getting, productive and unabashedly ambitious people to one of whining crybabies, paralyzed by the fact that life can be a real bitch, with all due respect to my neighbor’s dog. Americans have lost all sense of proportion, and it gets worst each passing day.
While there are people being slaughtered in other parts of the world simply because of their beliefs, we’re worried about finding a WiFi hot spot in Starbucks so we can Tweet about Demi Moore. Yet many of our fellow countrymen have decided that America is awful and the epicenter of all that is wrong in the world. They pine for an America that’s more like a cross between Denmark and some basket-case third-world backwater.
The Magical Mystery Tour is hoping to take you away... Hoping to take you away.
The Occupy Wall Street (and other cities across the nation) crowd is a spectacular example of bratty baby talkers who apparently want Big Daddy government to take care of their every need. They are the Entitlement Generation, spawned by the Worst Generation, a.k.a., Baby Boomers.
While compared to the Tea Party by the media, the Occupy “movement” has nothing in common with those protests. Where the Tea Parties are civil, law-abiding and respectful, the Occupy urchins are uncivil, profane and law-breaking. They are, in short, the definition of a mob.
The Tea Party’s message was for government to back off and allow us the freedom to take care of ourselves. The Occupiers’ message, as far as anything cohesive can be discerned from it, is more government, more intrusion and more entitlements, all paid for by everyone but them.
The element of the Occupiers that irks me most is the college grads who sunk tens of thousands of dollars into a pointless education, expecting to immediately emerge as middle-class urban hipster dufuses with loads of disposable income.
The first thing they should have learned at school was that it might help to have a marketable skill. I’m sorry, but constructing and using a beer bong or rolling a joint doesn’t count, nor does all the progressive multicultural claptrap that passes for scholarship at our increasingly irrelevant universities.
While other developing nations are focusing on engineering and technology, American universities increasingly focus on regressive nonsense. For instance, the mission statement of the University of Texas’ Center for Women’s and Gender Studies says, in part: “The mission of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS) is to create committed communities that address the challenges faced in the areas of gender, sexuality, diversity, and equity.”
Note that the Center’s mission is not to impart useful, practical knowledge that someone could apply to be a productive member of society, but to “create committed communities.” In other words, its entire mission is propaganda.
I assume that someone who graduates with a BS degree in Women’s and Gender Studies could get a job as a diversity manager at some corporation, creating rules and red tape that hinder and harass those who have real jobs at the company. It’s no wonder that America is becoming less competitive in the global market.
Moreover, while these graduates may be well-versed in Gay and Lesbian Literature and Culture (an actual class in the Center’s curriculum), they will be perplexed by the most basic of economic principles. Because they don’t understand economics, they will assume governments are instituted to secure their right to a flat screen TV, round-the-clock WiFi Internet access and health care, among others, without having to do anything to get whatever goodies they might want… Strawberry Fields Forever.
Unfortunately, there’s something called reality that smacks all of us in the face, and that reality is human nature. As I’ve written here a million times, all people, and I mean all people, are selfish. Whether you want to call it Original Sin or Natural Selection, it is an incontrovertible fact.
America’s founders worked human nature into the fabric of the founding documents in order to protect the people from the people who would govern them. According to the founders, governments are instituted for a very simple purpose: To secure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are not instituted to take money from someone else and give it to you so that you live a more comfortable life.
But in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world that is 21st Century America, lawless, unproductive wussies take to the streets to protest the fact that hard-working Americans are making money. They say the system is rigged, and I agree; it’s rigged to reward those who work hard and aren’t afraid to start at the bottom of the ladder and work their way up.
There is no other nation in the history of the world that has allowed so many from the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to become wildly rich and successful. This is not possible in the fantastical dream world Magical Mystery Tour of the Occupiers and their ilk, who would love to destroy the pillars upon which our nation’s success was built and lead us into the Strawberry Fields of universal poverty and despair… Forever.
“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary… The great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Occupy Wall Street and its spinoffs are 99 percent hipster dufus; naive, economically illiterate babies who believe that storks bring them their iPhones, clothing, transportation and coffee beans.
I continue to puzzle over the notion that people turn into angels when they’re elected to public office or become part of the machinery of government. It’s not my notion, but it seems to be a dearly held belief by those who are politically left of center. Why else would one vote for a Democrat, particularly now?
There are those on the left who claim to be skeptical of government. They’ll say things like, “Well, they’re all corrupt,” or, “We should throw them all out of office,” and so forth. But then they’ll turn around and vote Democrat, the party dedicated to making government larger and more intrusive.
I sometimes agree with the sentiment that it would be nice to throw all the bums out of office, but barring that I vote Republican simply because a Republican will at least grow government more slowly. Even Republicans, supposedly dedicated to limiting government, can’t help themselves and the relentless march away from limited government and toward limitless government continues.
I suppose a limitless government would be fine, “if men were angels,” but they’re not, regardless of whether they work in the private or public sector. Again, “if men were angels,” there would be no need for government in the first place.
Every human being has a self-centered profit motive. There are exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions do not reside in Washington, D.C., Madison, Sacramento, Denver, Austin, or any other seat of power. Self interest is a powerful motivating factor and the consistently aberrant behavior of our representatives is a constant reminder of this fact.
Duke Cunningham, the former Republican California congressman, used his office to enrich himself as much as possible. He resigned after pleading guilty to accepting bribes in the neighborhood of $2 million. Cunningham was also the Navy’s only flying ace in the Vietnam War. He served his country well and honorably, but once given the power that comes with public office he succumbed to the temptations.
I use Cunningham as an example because there’s no need to get into a tug-of-war debate about which party is more corrupt. Corruption crosses party lines and can grasp those who were once honorable and ethical. That’s because the seed of corruption is in each of us.
Therefore, it seems quite logical to me that, as Madison warned, government is under an obligation to control itself. Government is not controlling itself when it spends a gazillion dollars on “jobs” bills and whatnot. Who in their right mind believes that money is being well spent? These bills are thinly disguised as legislation, but are designed to launder tax dollars through connected political interests in order to find their way back into campaign coffers.
Meanwhile, economically illiterate hipster dufuses protest because corporations have a profit motive. People who run corporations and those who work for them have the same propensity toward corruption as anyone in government. The difference is that I’m not forced to buy a corporation’s product. I am forced to buy the government’s product, whatever it may be and however much it may inconvenience me.
I’ll admit it. I’m in the tank for corporations because they serve my interests. The irony of free market capitalism is that in serving its own interests, a corporation must serve mine. Just a quick glance around the room tells me they’re doing a damn fine job of it, too.
Let’s see, computer equipment from Dell, HP and Cisco, landline courtesy of AT&T, cell phone courtesy of Verizon, semi-electric guitar and amplifier by Fender (thanks Henshaw!), re-writable DVDs from Memorex, stapler from Swingline, furniture by some corporation somewhere, camera from Canon, and on and on and on it goes.
You can’t get away from the evil corporations! That’s how evil they are! They made me buy all this stuff to make my life more convenient! Wait a minute… I chose to buy that stuff, and I hope each and every corporation I mentioned is making a huge profit.
Where do these hipster dufus protesters think all of their modern conveniences come from? Do they think that if government planned and ran our economy that products would be self innovating and appear magically at our doorsteps? It’s religious to believe all will be well when government takes over and the evil corporations are punished for making things easy for us. Big government is suddenly Jesus feeding the multitudes from five loaves and two fishes.
Let’s say one of the corporations from which I buy products makes a really bad investment in a solar energy company. In order to recoup the half billion they wasted they then raise the prices of their products. Chances are I’ll find a competitive corporation from which to buy those products. I love what they make, but I don’t love it that much.
Then let’s say the federal government makes a really bad investment in the same solar energy company. They raise my taxes, so I move to Honduras? That’s my only choice, because government makes me pay dearly for its mistakes and throws me in jail if I don’t pay for its mistakes.
Let’s further postulate that the product I love is actually manufactured in China. I think it’s supposed to bother me that it’s made elsewhere, but I get a great price and have more disposable income. Our government’s product, which I suppose is the growing number of overpaid bureaucrats, are made and paid in the USA. Yeah! Only… they’re overpaid because their union negotiated with the government to ensure not only a fantastic paycheck, but one helluva benefits and pension package.
The same people who negotiated with the union and come up with new bureaucracies to employ even more public employees get kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions to help ensure the cycle continues. Oh well, at least my money stays in the USA, except for the foreign aid that’s likely remodeling some penny ante dictator’s personal castle.
I leave you with Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue discussing greed and capitalism back in the day, a day that was apparently more civil than ours…
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
There’s a simple truth about economics: Market forces could care less about your skin color, your sex, your sexual preferences, your ethnicity, or anything else that superficially divides us as human beings. Did it matter much that the Soviet Union incorporated a rainbow of ethnic groups in its national mix? No. The economic system sucked, and still sucks. The same goes for Cuba, Venezuela, Greece and any other wannabe spread-the-wealth worker’s paradise.
This is one of many reasons I can’t comprehend the left’s fascination with race, ethnicity and identity in general. I figured the election of someone with a mixed racial background would finally end the nonsense, but it’s gotten worse.
America is not a racist nation. It was a racist nation, but systemic racism has been all but eradicated. Sure, there’s still racism (now mostly found on the left; more on that below), and there always will be. As long as there are people there will be hatred and strife. It’s just a fact of life, but if you live in a Utopian dream world filled with rainbows and unicorns, I suggest you bring yourself back to earth and read some history.
Free market capitalism turns humanity’s weakness – its overriding selfishness – into a strength. Economic central planning does the exact opposite; it exploits humanity’s weakness to reward the select few.
Let's send someone to the White House who is less likely to favor cronies and identity groups and more likely to allow Americans to exercise their liberties.
What does this have to do with race and identity politics? Two words: Herman Cain. I am endorsing Mr. Cain for President. Am I supporting Mr. Cain because he’s black, or because I’m excited about someone who’s not part of the traditional political structure and who actually speaks truth to power?
I’m exhausted by career politicians with degrees from Yale and Harvard who tell us they’re going to fix everything for us because they’re so damn smart. They may be “smart,” but they’re also arrogant, and the combination is toxic (see Enron, see also the Financial Meltdown of 2008).
Cain is smart, but he also has common sense, something you find in short supply in the rarefied air of Harvard, Yale, Lehman Brothers and the Beltway. He believes in limited government, personal responsibility and that all people are created equal, which is the only sensible way to govern a free people. Free people expect little from their government. Free people prefer to be treated based on the common denominator of their humanity rather than the vagaries of whatever identity group into which they may fit.
Our government was instituted to protect citizens from foreign and domestic enemies so they can pursue life, liberty and happiness. It was not instituted to provide life, liberty and happiness. Cain understands this, and the concept that the larger the government, the smaller the citizen.
The left, however, sneers at Cain and his accomplishments. They call him an “Oreo” and an “Uncle Tom”; he is a traitor to his race and not authentically black. Remember, these are people who call themselves “progressive.”
What of Dr. King’s dream? “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Progressives, however, prefer to live in a nation where we are judged by the color of our skin, not the content of our character. This is progress?
Unlike the left, I judge Herman Cain, and Barack Obama for that matter, by the content of their character. I can’t stand Obama’s politics, but I have nothing against him personally. And again, I could care less if he’s black, white, purple or blue. Note that the left demonizes its opponents, labeling them as evil, stupid or both. Rather than debate policy positions, the left personalizes and polarizes.
The difference between the two men – Cain and Obama – has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with philosophy. Two divergent backgrounds produced two opposing philosophies. Obama worked hard and succeeded through academia and politics. He lived a life of social theory and never had any practical experience in the real world.
Cain also worked hard, but excelled in business, despite rising in the ranks during a time when racism was much more prevalent. Cain has practical experience. He’s met a payroll, as the pundits like to put it. In other words, he’s more likely to understand how big government impacts the average person negatively because he’s been there. People like Barack Obama have never been there and are far less likely to understand basic, real-world economics.
But because Cain’s real-world view that government’s coddling of victim groups, which leads to dependency and poverty (you can look it up; Google “poverty black family since war on poverty”), he’s a racist traitor, according to the left. Back in the real world, Cain is exactly right that just because white liberals and big government treat you like you’re stupid and lazy, doesn’t mean you are.
The left seeks to divide. By dividing, they conquer. And when they conquer, they destroy. E Unum Pluribus!
The Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that some people are more equal than others. What began as “hope” and “change” has turned into despair and stagnation as average citizens like Yours Truly watch our tax money fall into the hands of preferred political interests.
Where are you in the federal government's pyramid? And, where are our children and grandchildren? Perhaps in the impossibly unsustainable level? Awesome!
What sent Ken Lay and his Enron minions to prison pales in comparison to the fraud regularly being perpetrated on the American people by our public servants. Yet instead of languishing in prison, the politicians and the preferred political interests who defraud the taxpayer in the name of “green jobs,” “affordable housing,” “social justice” and whatnot are handsomely rewarded.
President Obama likes to talk about crumbling bridges and a deteriorating infrastructure to justify more drunken, crack-smoking sailor spending. These days, the problem is that when the federal government gets involved with building bridges and other infrastructure, every project is forced through the intestines of a vast regulatory, money-skimming bureaucracy that puts the completion date somewhere in the far-distant future at a price tag umpteen times higher than if the locals got together and made it themselves.
Never mind Social Security, big government as a whole has become a vast Ponzi scheme. It has been set up to reward itself on the backs of the average citizen. It is sold to us as an “investment in the future,” but whose future, exactly? Certainly not mine nor my kids’ future, nor any future generations that will follow me. As Mark Steyn puts it, we’re looting the future to bribe the present.
And that’s essentially what these various so-called jobs, stimulus, health care, financial reform and other bills are all about: bribing specific constituencies to build political power. These constituencies are given preference over others, violating one of the bedrock ideas of America’s founding philosophy, equality before the law. Those who are being treated unequally – the average hard-working American who wants nor expects anything from the federal government – sees much of what they pay in taxes go into the black hole of political favoritism.
Black holes are formed from stars that collapse from their own weight, and that is the future of America as so vividly illustrated by solar-collapsing Solyandra. We said goodbye to half a billion of our taxpayer dollars and yet in today’s surreal, hyper-inflated atmosphere it seems a mere drop in the bucket when your average “stimulus” bill is reckoned in the trillions.
Just as we’ve become used to buying gas for more than $3 a gallon, the political class has desensitized us to the concept of trillions of dollars as a reasonable amount for the government to regularly outlay to those whom it favors. And you better believe that politicians and bureaucrats tend to favor themselves over any others, followed closely by those who help them ensure they stay in office so they can continue to favor themselves.
James Madison wrote that “power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” Unfortunately, we have strayed quite far from that philosophy, and have allowed a remote central government to operate almost completely unrestrained. One need only read the Constitution to see how far astray we’ve really gone.
What do Americans really want? Is it a nation of do-nothing slackers who expect that all of their problems will be solved by Sugar Daddy Uncle Sam? Or, is it a nation of independent innovators who welcome risk and the consequences of failure?
I’m afraid the answer is increasingly the former, and as Americans purposely shackle themselves to this dependent model they will find they have fewer real liberties as their political betters grow in wealth and power. The pyramid in the world’s largest pyramid scheme ever is being assembled as we speak, write and read. Where are you in the pyramid?
Gossip Girl or serious journalist? After watching the Republican debate on MSNBC last night I'm leaning toward Gossip Girl.
As usual, Henshaw made some good points about last night’s Republican debate, though I’m not sure I agree with his winners and losers. Alas, it is quite difficult to come up with an objective list of winners and losers since a debate isn’t quite as easy to score as, say, a boxing match. And even boxing matches that declare a winner without a KO are sometimes controversial.
Even so, here’s my list of winners, losers and those who fought to a draw… Winners: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. Losers: Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. Draw: Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.
Part of my problem scoring and declaring a winner is that these debates don’t allow for much explanation by any one candidate, thus they tend to stick to rhetoric and key words. Even when it’s narrowed down to two candidates during the Presidential race, debates don’t offer much substance.
Still, the candidates could make a move away from the pack by better articulating core principles. In the case of a conservative candidate, one of these core principles, and what is perhaps the most important one, is the role of the Federal government.
Ron Paul and Herman Cain came closest to hitting the mark on this, though no one’s really listening to them. The others danced around it and the moderators probably don’t know the difference between Federalism and oligarchy, though they certainly know how to gossip (“A friend of your campaign manager said that Rick Perry is a wussie. Why is he a wussie?”)
There was a golden opportunity at this debate to point out that the governors in the debate did the best they could with the circumstances specific to their states and the needs of their constituents. And that’s the point. Who best to make decisions for the welfare of its citizens than local and state government? And, who is more accountable to their voters than local and state government?
You can yammer on and on about this and that you did as governor, or that this governor had this much or this little job growth in his state, but it’s just a waste of time. Just once I’d like to see a candidate point out that an ever-encroaching Federal government endangers the individual and his liberty. The growth of the Federal government is, in fact, a move toward oligarchy; rule by the few over the many. Moreover, it’s an oligarchy that favors certain people and groups over others, destroying the concept of equality before the law. The bailouts, stimulus and health care bamboozles are striking examples of this inequality created by cronyism.
Still, I don’t know how much you can blame the candidates for their shallow answers. The moderators made it quite difficult to provide any depth by purposely pitting one candidate against the other and framing the questions to make it sound as if they were defending the indefensible. “Rick Perry, Romney said or did this. Respond,” or, “Why are Republicans so heartless?” Bullshit. Ask them a real policy question.
Speaking of BS, how about that brief foray into “science”? The Charlie Crist-like Huntsman took a sideways swipe at Perry, playing the ever-so-reasonable-and-moderate Republican card. He’s pro-science because he has not an ounce of skepticism about the wild-eyed lunatic-fringe claims of a madman (Al Gore)?
Meanwhile, Perry’s response was less than adequate. Once again, a golden opportunity to put the nail in the coffin of the climate change debate wasted. Will anyone rise to the occasion and point out simple logic? As a reminder, logical and thought-provoking arguments Perry could have made include:
- The sun may have something to do with our climate, given that it accounts for 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system
- The climate has been changing for more than four billion years; it always has and it always will. This would mark the first time in the history of earth that a species was willfully unable to adapt to a changing climate. Who’s more stupid, the dinosaurs who simply didn’t know they needed to adapt, or human beings who drown in extremely slow-rising water because they thought the government was going to do something about it?
- Do Climate Changelings/Global Warmongers really believe that we have the power to regulate the earth’s thermostat, and if we did, what is the proper setting?
- Further, if we had the power to regulate the climate, who makes the decision about where to set the thermostat and who benefits from the settings? Will the entire earth be like San Diego, or will only those parts the enviro-nitwits care about live eternally in San Diego’s climate?
- Global warming is far better for life on earth than is global cooling. You can look it up. But the beauty of “climate change” is that you can claim the climate’s changing no matter what’s going on globally or locally. A little warmer this year? Climate change! Unusually cold another? Climate change! No change? Climate change!
The whole thing is absurd, as is the case for a larger and more meddlesome federal government, and yet it’s nearly impossible to get a cohesive, coherent and concise answer on either subject from the candidates. Immigration? I know that Rick Santorum’s grandparents were immigrants, but that doesn’t tell me jack diddly about his plan.
Perhaps most absurd, and also the best part of the debate, was the commercial produced by Californians for Population Stabilization, which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there’s a special interest group for anything and everything these days.
Californians for Population Stabilization is against legal immigration. That’s right, legal immigrants are taking jobs away from Californians and Californians for Population Stabilization wants to end this travesty. What’s next? Californians against Seeing Eye Dogs and other Working Dogs?
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryd1-xco9cg
In a geocentric universe the sun has nothing whatsoever to do with earth's climate.
That’s right. I’m waging a personal war on science at home and abroad. It is, nonetheless, a limited war whose prosecution is not aimed at destroying science. The aims of my war are simply to hold “science” accountable for its claims.
Progressives love to “question authority,” but only when the authority in question that’s being questioned does not toe the Progressive line. Those authorities that do, however, are not in line for questioning; they are to be believed without question.
And, if you do question Progressive authorities you will be smeared as a racist, a homophobe, anti-science or even as the clichéd and worn-out Nazi Holocaust denier. There will be no debate, since debate would expose the single-minded, irrational totalitarianism of Progressive ideology.
There are various areas where this applies, but I’ll tackle two of the most recent and newsworthy battles: Evolution and global warming/climate change. Recently, someone asked Rick Perry about evolution, to which he replied that it’s a theory with “gaps” in it. He also mentioned that he’s not sure how old the earth is.
Inevitably, the Progressive priesthood cried foul and began to brand Perry as an ignoramus who is waging a war on science. To add insult to injury, Perry is skeptical of man-caused climate change, or global warming, or whatever. This was too much for Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell, who opined:
Never mind that larger droughts in the southwestern U.S. have long been predicted by scientists who model the changes we are likely to face due to ever-rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Never mind that Texas dumps more carbon pollution into the atmosphere than any other state in the nation – higher than California and Pennsylvania combined. Were it a separate country, Texas would be the seventh largest carbon polluter in the world.
Never mind that, during his first term, Perry signed legislation to speed construction of 11 new coal plants for the state. Or that he has lead [sic] the charge to undermine the EPA’s right to limit greenhouse gas pollution.
None of this matters. Because as Perry wrote in his new book, global warming is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.” Still, the earth’s climate is changing, and so we must pray.
God help us.
Note that Goodell does not address scientific skepticism about global warming (climate change, whatever), of which there is plenty out there. Rather, his evidence is that there’s weather, Texas is trying to generate energy for its citizens and Perry believes in God. This is the typical line of reasoning on the Progressive left, since those who have completely bought into evolution and global warming have bought into a religion.
Also note Goodell’s contempt for the Constitution. Goodell says that Perry seeks to undermine the EPA’s “right” to limit greenhouse gas pollution. Under the Constitution, the EPA has no “right” to do so. That “right” is restricted to Congress and well it should be since members of Congress were duly elected by the people. Where do I go to vote out the EPA? That’s right. I can’t.
Just as Galileo’s inquisitors were fully invested in a geocentric universe, Progressives have morphed theory into dogma. Progressives are philosophically wedded to both theories – evolution and global warming – because they both degrade the individual as a polluter and cosmic accident.
Rather than a special creation with basic rights endowed by the Creator, the individual is of very little worth and should be subservient to the so-called “public” good. As a polluter and contributor to global warming, the individual needs to be restricted and restrained by those who know better, because the planet is more important than the individual. As the Apostle Paul put it: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen.”
Please note that “those who know better” are exempt from the rules they create to restrict, restrain and regulate the masses. This brings to mind a passage from my favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis:
“Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you,” said Digory.
“Rotten?” said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. “Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I’m sure, and I’m very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys – and servants – and women – and even people in general can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy is a high and lonely destiny.”
As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle’s face the moment before Polly had vanished: and all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew’s grand words. “All it means,” he said to himself, “Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”
If you treat people like animals, there’s a good chance they’ll reciprocate in kind. The latest example of de-evolutionary regression can be found in the UK rioting. It is a microcosm of a bigger problem wrought by years of leftist policy nonsense.
The entire leftist ideology is predicated on an assumption that people cannot be trusted with liberty and freedom. While it is not stated quite so starkly by leftist ideologues, if you dig beneath the façade you’re left with the left’s contempt for the individual.
This contempt is papered over with euphemisms like “choice, social justice and fair share,” all meaning that our betters know better than us how to conduct our lives. In other words, the Average Joe is too stupid to make good choices, choices that lead to the success that comes from individual application and achievement.
Once the incentives for enterprise and virtue are stripped away from the individual, vis-a-vis the nanny state, the number of productive people necessarily shrinks. There are fewer people producing the means by which the unproductive live.
Moreover, less production means less output and less jobs. In turn, the unproductive riot and protest the fact that the productive aren’t providing them with the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. Coupled to this is the left’s insistence on moral relativism, which promotes vice over virtue as a virtue in itself, leaving behind a vast wasteland of children left behind by parents who selfishly foist a mixed, dysfunctional family structure on their offspring.
John Adams prophetically warned: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
The left, in fact, celebrates the wholesale destruction of the family. For some reason, this is seen as “progressive,” since it deconstructs what’s perceived as the patriarchal nature of the family. Instead of finding a balance between the family of the Middle Ages and the modern family, the left prefers to bring down the entire edifice. They celebrate the “single mom,” the paragon of virtue, when in fact the single mom as a general statistical rule leaves poverty, crime and despair in her wake.
What’s left is an unruly, undisciplined, immoral class of people who wonder why the gap grows between the haves and the have-nots. This gap is not a function of American-style capitalism; it is a function of leftist economics and relativism. Where else in the world have immigrants risen from abject poverty to wealth? It’s simply not possible in any other system devised by man. Yet the left insists that we move away from this objectively successful model and toward one that has proven time and again to fail and fail miserably, at least for the average citizen.
The government-oriented model does not fail for those who run it; they make out like bandits at the expense of the citizen. A cursory glance at the abuses perpetrated by our “public servants” should tell you everything you need to know. It’s no wonder they insist on creating more dependents; it expands their wealth and power.
They see economic upheaval and rioting as an opportunity, an opportunity to inject more government, thereby increasing their power base. After all, animals are a lot easier to control than free-thinking, independent human beings.
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