Archive for the ‘Slow Poison’ Category

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Is Fedex Shrugging?

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Cancel that order.

FedEx Corp. is threatening to cancel the purchase of billions of dollars worth of new Boeing Co. cargo planes if Congress passes a law that would make it easier for unions to organize at the package-delivery company.

A company spokesman said Tuesday that FedEx may cancel plans to buy as many as 30 new Boeing planes should Congress pass a bill that would remove truck drivers, couriers and other employees at FedEx’s Express unit from the jurisdiction of the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926, the law which today also governs labor organizing at U.S. airlines.

FedEx’s actions raise the stakes in an increasingly bitter battle involving chief rival, United Parcel Service Inc., and the Teamsters union, which has been trying for years to organize FedEx. Ken Hall, international vice president and director of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters package division, accused FedEx of “blackmailing Congress” and “threatening to fire yet another torpedo through an already weak American economy.”

Yeah, blame the company. Labor unions are headed the way of the Dodo Bird — because they keep getting themselves backed into this corner. Their next argument always boils down to “so-and-so is just an awful terrible company/person, unless & until he finds some money under a couch cushion somewhere.”

Hat tip: Dr. Helen.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 1 Comment »

Mike Rowe Wonders If It’s Really About The Bonuses

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

That’s your Dirty Jobs guy, there. This is one of my favorite shows. And his words are wise; you know this, for they echo my own.

Because these “bonuses” are not guaranteed, they are a reflection of an individual’s willingness to assume a certain level of risk that most salaried workers would go out of their way to avoid. Likewise, “bonuses” are the only way for highly competitive corporations to attract and compensate “top talent.” Arguing over whether the money in question is gross or exorbitant is beside the point and after the fact, in my opinion. So too, is the exact manner in which it’s earned. That’s between the employer and the employee, and governed by the terms of the deal. What really matters, is the workers conscious willingness to forgo a big guarantee, in favor of a potentially larger payout based on his or her performance. It’s an entirely different form of risk, that is the opposite of a weekly or monthly paycheck.
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This “bonus rage” would not be happening in a world that respected consequences, because in that world, those companies who can not afford to pay their bills would simply fail, the way they’re supposed to. Likewise, all citizens would live the lifestyle they can afford, the way they’re supposed to. Of course, that is not the world we live in. In fact, companies like AIG have prospered exactly because so many people now live beyond their means. The hard truth is, those big bonuses were earned because AIG got rich saying “yes” to millions of people who should have been told “no.” And because we’re all connected, we all get hurt.

Isn’t this a profound irony? What we now, today, call “liberal” — in terms of ideas, I mean — is supposed to spring forward from a conviction that we are all connected. And yet, what we now, today, call “liberal” either a) presumes we’re not all sharing, at least to some extent, the same fate; b) is seemingly determined to make sure that where our interests may be united or simply overlapping, they are violently separated along class lines; or c) shows a childish, peevish hostility to anyone or anything suggesting maybe, just maybe, we are indeed all in this together. What helps whites has to hurt blacks, what’s good for management has to be bad for labor, and there’s no way you can do anything that’s good for both homosexuals and heteros.

Everything liberalism suggests ought to be done, seems to have to do with identifying some DRCJ (dirty rotten creepy jerk) and showing him what-for. Today it’s the AIG bonus execs. Tomorrow, who knows. But it’ll be someone. The target changes; the meme stays the same.

Hat tip to Gerard, via Anchoress, via Rick.

Now for the AIG exec’s viewpoint. If you can stand to read it…which, if you’re a pinhead liberal, you probably can’t…get ready for one hell of a paradigm shift. In fact I’ll not even excerpt it, but quote it in full. It’s that good.

You will see Mr. Rowe has an admirably healthy and enviable attachment to reality.

The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.

At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,

Jake DeSantis

That’d be your AIG exec “who was responsible for this whole mess.” Now that you’re giving it another think-er-three, it’s been awhile since anyone presented you with some firm, or even mildly persuasive, evidence of that…right?

Posted in Eat The Rich, Poisoning Capitalism | 2 Comments »

Memo For File LXXXIV

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

I noticed last night that President Obama received high marks from democrats all around during His press conference last night, particularly when He accused His opponents of failing to come up with any alternatives when criticizing the President’s budget. My memory suggests that Bob Shrum, appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s show, called it Obama’s finest moment; it certainly is emerging as a consensus viewpoint.

And there’s an interesting reason why some of these critics haven’t put out their own budget. I mean, we haven’t seen an alternative budget out of them.

And the reason is because they know that, in fact, the biggest driver of long-term deficits are the huge health care costs that we’ve got out here that we’re going to have to tackle and we — that if we don’t deal with some of the structural problems in our deficit, ones that were here long before I got here, then we’re going to continue to see some of the problems in those out-years.

It has, I notice, lately been defined as a favorited defense, from a party that is becoming increasingly defensive. Where’s your idea, Mister Big Shot?

I hope this continues. This impresses me as an argument that has the potential to persuade lots of people at first, but wear thin rather quickly. Hey, don’t throw gasoline on a burning house; it won’t extinguish the flames it’ll just make them burn faster. Well you don’t have any better ideas do ya?

It’s one thing to use the “got any better ideas?” argument when questions have been raised as to whether you’re helping. It’s an entirely different situation when someone has pointed out you may be doing harm. And I suspect the democrats understand that is starting to apply here. They’re arguing that the government should bear more and more of the responsibility, and therefore the cost, of America’s healthcare system, and here’s President Obama saying “the biggest driver of long-term deficits are the huge health care costs.”

How much longer before the Main Street voter looks around at our largest American cities, the ones that have been laboring along under democrat management for generations, and notices: Hey, that’s all they ever do over there. Bellyache about costs. And their costs for everything — parking, apartment rents, jars of mayonnaise, calling in a city electrician to change a light bulb over my desk that I’m not allowed to change — are vastly exorbitant compared to an equivalent expense somewhere else…and that seems to be because democrats have been running things. This is the future of the whole country now?

With that realization, “Where’s Your Idea?” starts to wear out its welcome. My idea? Go through things line by line, and compare each item to the equivalent cost in a locality that hasn’t been run by democrats. How’s that for an idea?

Aside from being so much more effectively applied to a sprint than to a marathon, the “I don’t see any better ideas outta you guys” argument, here, is blatantly hypocritical. The democrat party had seven whole years to come up with a more effective, alternative method for extracting information from detainees at Guantanamo, for example. Now, did you hear anything from them about this? I didn’t. Throughout the entire time it was the exact opposite of offering an alternative idea; it was “stop it,” and “because of this, we’re no better than they are,” and “it does no good to defend the country if this is what it takes,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Evidently it would have been far better to surrender; after all, that way nobody would be hurt!

There are a lot of other problems with relying overly much on this argument. But the only other one I think demands mention here is the legal one: Submitting a budget to the Congress is the President’s job. As the democrats like to tell us, often, they won the election and nobody else’s opinion should count on anything. Logically, you can’t hammer away on that one, and then swivel around and start in with the “Where’s Your Idea?” argument. You either got the job or you didn’t.

People can criticize the way you do it, without stepping up and offering to do it for you. That’s one of the many things that make it tough, I guess.

I wonder if Obama, or any other democrat, is really up for it?

Posted in Obamamania, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

The Toxic Assets We Elected

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

George Will sees something amiss:

With the braying of 328 yahoos — members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group — still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

Hat tip to The View From 1776, which (as I’ve already indicated) speaks for me on this whole phony bonus flap:

Whatever you may think about the propriety of large bonuses paid to AIG employees, whether you like it or not, the bonuses were paid in accordance with legal contracts executed before AIG received bailout money. Those individuals had a legal right to the money. If the company or the Federal government wished to abrogate the contracts, the spirit infusing the Bill of Rights required them to adjudicate the matter in the courts of law.

This is, I would argue, where the center of gravity swings out over the side of the cliff. Mob rule says you’ve got money you don’t deserve to have and you have to give it back. Yes I’m using the word “you” to describe those AIG execs. It applies. The differential is simply a matter of time, nothing more.

You’re just not that wonderful a person. Not if the distinction depends on a total stranger seeing you that way. The rights of the AIG executive, are the rights of all his countrymen. It’s just a fact.

And it sounds like the shredding of the Constitution, because that’s precisely what it is.

Posted in Eat The Rich, Poisoning Capitalism | No Comments »

Senate to be Undecided About Whether Money is Evil

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

The last several posts have been about The Holy One at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It looks like I have an obsession, until you stop to ponder all the driftwood I’ve been allowing to float on by…and there’s been a lot. Can’t pronounce Orion. Thinks Chiraq is still President of France. That’s today’s bumper crop, there was another one yesterday, another one the day before…

To the other end of the boulevard. The Senate is delaying action on this magical wonderful House bill, the one that taxes away those evil awful bonuses…

Jarred by a cool reception from the White House and fears of unintended consequences across the financial world, Senate leaders are likely to delay until late next month legislation to punitively tax bonuses at banks and investment firms that receive federal aid.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced last week that the Senate would move ahead with the legislation as soon as possible, and he attempted to bring the bill to the floor Thursday night. But he revised that timetable yesterday, saying that the chamber will spend this week debating a national-service bill before turning to a long-scheduled showdown over the budget for fiscal 2010. With just two weeks to go until Congress departs for a spring recess, action on the tax measure would be unlikely before late April.

For those who still think this is the right way to go…let’s just cut out all the delays and other crap, okay? Let’s see what message we have left.

The economy’s in the dumper because of FaPoBuAd (Failed Policies of the Bush Administration!)…and we’ve elected this hopey-changey-guy with a friendly Congress to fix it for us. We all desperately hope He succeeds at this, except for Rush Limbaugh who’s just a big fat stinker.

The economy is stopped and we all want it to go.

If anyone makes money doing that, we’re going to take it away from them because that’s just wrong. Oh sure, today it’s about AIG execs and AIG is receiving bailout money, so we’re just acting today as guardians of the taxpayer’s purse. B-u-u-t…that’s today. In fact, we’re already getting some plans together to do the same thing to non-bailout-subsidized corporations. Add to that the fact that, in AIG’s case, the bonuses amount to less than a tenth of a percent of this bailout money…so the idea that we’re trying to recoup “our” taxpayer money from those greedy executives looks a little silly.

So no. We’re not looking out for the taxpayer. We’re trying to make sure nobody makes a personal profit from this noble, noble effort of getting an economy revived.

We want the economy revived.

Nobody’s supposed to make any money. No quantity of it that “everyone” is going to find obscene, anyway…and that can only mean…nobody can make any more than anybody else. Just ordinary amounts. Nobody’s supposed to work to improve their personal livelihood too much.

What in the (expletive deleted) do you think an economy is, exactly?

Seriously.

The Senate is right to delay. It needs time for the rest of us to get our thoughts together on this one.

While we’re trying to figure out what we’re all about, may I submit a humble suggestion of what’s going on here? We want to get together and make this thing work. Each of us wants our personal standard of living to improve as much as possible. Our individual standard of living.

The other guy isn’t allowed to improve his.

Folks…my world is different from yours. You pretend to have a definition for “greed” but, as I’ve pointed out before, you don’t really have one. Planet Morgan has a definition of greed; and that is it right there. You are allowed to realize the benefits of a free market, and the guy to the left of you, and to the right of you, and all around you, are not. They’re just supposed to clock in, clock out, grab a paycheck and spend it, saving nothing, achieving nothing long-term. He buys a house you can’t buy, you’ve got a beef with it. So yeah, “greed caused all our problems,” but not quite in the way people think they mean when they toss this phrase around.

Posted in Eat The Rich, Poisoning Capitalism | 3 Comments »

Money for the Needy, Not for the Greedy

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

So, we’re to allow the pitchfork-and-torch-bearing mob to make decisions we’d never allow our legislators, judges and executives to make? Like how much money each man, woman and child is supposed to have in the bank?

No no, that’s not it; silly me. We just want to have some “common sense” going on with these “bonuses.” Well tell me please, where’s the line drawn? AIG execs can’t just earn money, or receive money pursuant to a contract signed a whole year ago…which means they earned it. Can’t have that. We have to see if the hoi polloi smiles upon the contractually obligated payment, and if they don’t, it’s gotta be yanked back. While that’s going on — the mob takes to the streets.

This is different from the obscene bonuses I’ve earned…how?

A busload of activists representing working- and middle-class families paid visits Saturday to the lavish homes of American International Group executives to protest the tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded by the struggling insurance company after it received a massive federal bailout.

About 40 protesters sought to urge AIG executives who received a portion of the $165 million in bonuses to do more to help families.

“We think $165 million could be used in a more appropriate way to keep people in their homes, create more jobs and health care,” said Emeline Bravo-Blackport, a gardener.

She marveled at AIG executive James Haas’ colonial house, which has stunning views of a golf course and the Long Island Sound. The Fairfield house is “another part of the world” from her life in nearby Bridgeport, which flirted with bankruptcy in the 1990s and still struggles with foreclosures and unemployment.”

“Lord, I wonder what it’s like to live in a house that size,” she said.

Another protester, Claire Jeffery, of Bloomfield, said she’s on the verge of foreclosure. She works as a housekeeper; her husband, a truck driver, can’t find work.

“I love my home,” she said. “I really want people to help us.”

I love a Bugatti Veyron, Ms. Jeffery. Help me get one. And if you can’t, or won’t, spare the time or trouble to help me in that effort, then screw you. I mean it. I have things she doesn’t have, you say? Well, she has things I don’t have…like a home. And I’m not bothering anybody about it. I’m just a humble blogger. You don’t see me arriving in a bus as part of bug-eyed mob spoiling for a fight, gazing wistfully at her things and mumbling a bunch of stuff & nonsense to the effect that it oughta be mine. That’s because I understand when you point a finger at something, three other fingers curl around and point back at you. I can figure this out, why can’t she?

Greedy (adj.):
An undefined word. If it does have a meaning at all, the closest one we’ve been able to extrapolate from the pattern of the word’s actual usage, is: Someone who manifests a desire to keep his property when someone else comes along wanting to take it away. A wealthy person who wants to stay that way.

Commandment X: (Exodus 20:17)
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Posted in Eat The Rich, Poisoning Capitalism | No Comments »

The Thought That Counts

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Doug Ross at Director Blue:

The modern Democrat Party, controlled by George Soros, is infected with a sickness.

And they don’t — that’s right, I said it — they don’t support the troops. In fact, Democrats hate the troops.

And Barack Obama proved it with his outrageous proposal to charge veterans for their own health care while preparing to offer citizenship and free health care for illegal immigrants. And I don’t care if he retracted his demands. It’s the thought that counts.

It seems like a thought every civilized mind must prepare to reject, even before gathering the information needed to substantiate it or place it into doubt, just as a matter of social protocol.

But it is the thought that counts.

With a decent command of recent history, a capable conciousness must anticipate that questions could bubble up to the surface regarding…how to synchronize traffic lights at an intersection…how to schedule recycling or garbage pickup…should we cook something from scratch tonight, or microwave a pizza…rocky road or plain vanilla…the next move to make in a game of checkers…

…and Soros’ democrat-party would instantly leap to the pro-chaos, anti-order, pro-bad-guy, anti-justice, pro-terrorist, anti-American position.

I mean, why would you think it’d work out any other way? Seriously?

Posted in Poisoning Justice, Poisoning Western Civilization | 1 Comment »

More Obama Poor-Man’s Photoshop Bumper Stickers

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

This one is for Gerard…

…and this one is for me, based on a thought I got in my li’l ol’ head when I read a comment from Larry:

Background on that one, for those who desire or require it, here.

Posted in Ayn Rand Spins, Obamamania, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Strength | 1 Comment »

Obama to Provide More Oversight on Executive Compensation

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

New York Times:

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.

The outlines of the plan are expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for President Obama’s first foreign summit meeting in early April.

Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.

The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could range beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.

We are victims of that ancient Chinese curse about living in interesting times. We are living in whiplash times.

Remember, just last week? Just a tiny handful of days ago? What was the defense to accusations that the administration was attacking capitalism by removing the profit motive? What was it? How did it go? “Oh, you need to remember, these are taxpayer dollars…AIG has received bailout money…this is only about firms that received bailout money…”

Here we are in the middle of a weekend. The very next weekend. Woopsie, it’s no longer about firms that received bailout money.

These people are on crack. Their solution to the government being out of money, is that it should spend a whole lot more of it, and their solution to the economy’s anemic state, is to remove the incentive some of us might have to possibly earn a profit.

They seem to live out their entire lives, personally and professionally, in defiance of Will Rogers’ famous advice that when you find yourself in a hole the thing to do is stop digging.

Their personal fortunes are rather disconnected from the consequences of such a worldview, so for them, it certainly seems to be working out okay. And it will continue to.

Posted in Eat The Rich, Poisoning Capitalism | 6 Comments »

Taking Responsibility, Obama-Style

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

Neo-neocon, always perceptive and always astute, here borders on genius.

Some little boys denied taking the cookie; others, caught with their hands in the jar, insisted they were actually putting it back in. And got away with it. When the man from Hope, Arkansas showed us how that was done, we were impressed. The one who sits in our White House right now, though can change the subject around mouthfuls of cookie. You just stand there and think “damn, I can’t remember what I wanted to talk to him about, but what he’s talking about sure sounds important…wish I hadn’t bothered him while he was in the middle of eating something.”

Note that nowhere does he admit any wrongdoing or culpability. The clues are in the little details of language; do not think for a moment that they are accidental. Obama’s ability to craft his balancing act is so precise that it has me in awe. Almost every word he utters is there for a careful strategic reason, to induce a particular psychological effect in the listener.

What happens when a fine surgical instrument is taken to one of Obama’s evasions? When the post-mortem is conducted with such care, such attention to detail, with every single layer peeled back, every single organ and gland meticulously removed, catalogued, photographed, inspected and slipped back in place? Click and find out.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Obamamania, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 1 Comment »

Bonus Tax

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Talk show host from a whole other region of the country Neal Boortz, whom we follow frequently here, a former lawyer, says it’s going nowhere. I hope not.

Anyone not following this needs to wake the hell up. Your elected representatives just caught wind of a valid contract between two private and freely-acting entities being exercised, decided it would make fine political cover for them, and voted to tax the exchanged money away after-the-fact. The precedent would be that you can still pay for goods and services, and get paid for them, but you’d better make sure this payment would be popular with a bunch of total strangers you’ll never actually meet…or else expect the money to be taken away. If you call that a free market, I see no reason for you to continue voting at all and you probably don’t want to anyway. Just open a jar of paste, grab a spoon, and watch teevee. You’ve done enough damage.

Yesterday’s vote in the House was completely expected. Overwhelmingly, your representatives in Washington voted huge taxes on bonuses for AIG employees. Nancy Pelosi said, “We want our money back and we want our money back now for the taxpayers.” Funny .. after recently passing a bill with more than 8,000 earmarks worth over $400 billion, the hollow-eyed hippy from Haight-Ashbury and her flying monkeys are suddenly worried about the taxpayers.

First point. It is not “their” money. The money, whether you like it or not, belongs to the people to whom they were paid. Those bonuses were paid pursuant to a valid contract and are not the rightful and legal property of the payees. Let’s us also remember that the amount paid in those bonuses was less than one-tenth of one percent of the bailout money received by AIG. Remember, though … politicians believe that ever penny you earn actually belongs to the government. In the official language of Washington any money from your paycheck that these political hacks allow you to keep is a “tax expenditure.” You earned it … but if you’re allowed to keep it they treat it as a government expenditure. To the Democrat mind, and in the mind of all too many Republicans, all wealth is owned by government. Produced by the people, but owned by government.

Second point. This is absolutely unconstitutional. Con su permisio I’ll explain.

So the House succeeded in passing a 90% tax on bonuses given to employees of AIG and any company receiving at least $5 billion in bailout money. But only with those evil rich employees whose family income is above $250,000 a year will have to pay this 90% tax.

You just cannot like what you’re seeing here. These politicians are targeting specific individuals out there who have received some money that the politicians, for political purposes, just do not want them to have. So they pass a law allowing the government to seize that money. Can you imagine where this goes from here? How about Ann Coulter? She delights in writing books that just irritate the ever-luvin’ puddin’ out of Democrats and liberals. Let’s say that one of Nancy Pelosi’s flying monkeys reports to the Princess that Coulter made $1.5 million from her last book. This money was legally paid to Coulter pursuant to a contract. Sound familiar? But Pelosi feels that Coulter has made this money by promoting divisiveness in the population, so she decides that punishment is in order. She then has her minions pass a bill establishing a 90% tax on the royalties from all books and writings that promote political dissention and defame public servants in the Congress of the United States. Come on now, you tell me the big huge difference between a confiscatory tax on legally earned bonuses and one on legally received book royalties.

This is going nowhere folks. It will never make it through the Senate. If the members of the House had any appreciation at all for the Constitution it wouldn’t have gone this far. And why, pray tell, would that be? That would be because of one pesky little clause found in our (once) supreme law of the land.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 5 – United States Constitution

“No bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.”

Do you know what that means? The key is the word “attainder.” Let’s go to Websters: It’s a 15th century word meaning “extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person upon sentence of death or outlawry usually after a conviction of treason.” A definition, this one from the Catholic Encyclopedia, describes “bill of attainder” thusly: “A bill of attainder may be defined to be an Act of Parliament for putting a man to death or for otherwise punishing him without trial in the usual form. Thus by a legislative act a man is put in the same position as if he had been convicted after a regular trial.”

Well, in this case the Congress isn’t trying to put anyone to death … they’re just trying to steal some money. They are trying to deprive some individuals of property that is rightfully and lawfully theirs without accusing them of a crime and without the benefit of any trial … except, that is, for this trial that has been taking place in the media for the last week. Well, there’s that pesky little Constitution again. A man cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process, and in our country due process means a trial before a jury of one’s peers. Barney Frank et al are trying to take these people’s money through legislative action without a trial. I would truly hope there isn’t a federal judge in this country that wouldn’t smack this idiocy down at the earliest opportunity.

This isn’t about whether or not those people deserved those bonuses. Perhaps not. But the bonuses were paid pursuant to a legally enforceable contract. The property is there’s. Now we have politicians who are trying to take it away just because they’re unhappy and embarrassed because they didn’t take care of this little problem before the bailout money was paid.

On to the Senate. Let’s hope someone over there has read the Constitution.

Score. I was talking about Bills of Attainder already…sadly, not in these parts…Neal hadn’t said anything about ’em just yet. Neither had any other legal professional.

See, to my way of thinking, a Bill of Attainder is a legislative body acting as a judicial one. By which I mean, saying “that guy, over there, needs to be punished” and not “this deed shall henceforth be punished.” In America, applying a code to a person is a task requiring judicial authority, and nothing outside of judicial authority shall make that possible. It’s a separation-of-powers issue. And it’s been completely trampled-on here. The associated trampling of basic rights is palpable; your elected leaders get to say you’re not entitled to money you earned? Nevermind what kind of rhetoric they can stir up against the contract that was honored. Just nevermind that. This isn’t how free people live.

If you want to argue that, then let’s hold a vote on your last…oh…five paychecks. No wait, make it twenty. See if a majority among us like the fact that you got ’em. See if it made any of us cranky. If the point still doesn’t sink in — well then, you’re beyond hope. Back to the paste and the spoon.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 1 Comment »

Dodd in Trouble

Friday, March 20th, 2009

He just became The One To Watch. Good thing it’s Friday!

Democrats may want to start thinking about a bailout for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, whose political stock has slipped amid the financial meltdown.

As a five-term Democrat who blew out his last two opponents by 2-1 margins in a blue state that President Barack Obama won handily, Dodd, D-Conn., should be cruising to re-election in 2010. Instead, he’s feeling heat from a Republican challenger eager to make him a poster boy for the tumult in the housing and financial markets.

A recent poll showed former Rep. Rob Simmons running about even with Dodd, a former national Democratic Party chairman.

As head of the banking panel, Dodd, 64, has become a convenient target for voter anger over the economic crisis.

“The fact that we have been beaten up, beaten around the head for the last eight or nine months on a regular basis has contributed to it as well,” Dodd said.

Some of the worst blows came amid the furor over $165 million in bonuses American International Group Inc. paid some of its employees while receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money. After first denying it, Dodd admitted he agreed to a request by Treasury Department officials to dilute an executive bonus restriction in the big economic stimulus bill that Congress passed last month. The change to Dodd’s amendment allowed AIG to hand out the bonuses and sparked a blame game between Dodd and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Dodd was guarded Thursday when asked about Geithner.

“This is obviously a matter that obviously should have been dealt with differently, but we are where we are,” he said.

Republicans branded Dodd’s reversal “astonishing and alarming” and fingered Dodd as the top recipient of campaign cash from AIG employees over the years.

The GOP is slamming Dodd, claiming he is cozying up to Wall Street insiders, raking in bundles of their campaign cash, shirking his banking panel duties and running for president as the economic crisis erupted in 2007.

This whole AIG bonus flap has me thinking of that scene in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex first gets out, right after she gobbles down that poor li’l goat. Remember when she’s tearing apart that little car with the kids in it, and Sam Neil comes at her with a lit flare. He trains her eyes on it by moving it back and forth, and then throws it off in the bushes, which makes her forget all about the kids and about him.

Road FlareThen Jeff Goldblum does the same thing, only not as well, and the T-Rex starts chasing off after him. Goldblum was playing Dr. Ian Malcolm, the “Life Will Find A Way” guy. Yeah. Life found a way to pay attention to what it wanted to, not what you told it to.

The T-Rex is you and me. The situation with these tasty humans running around, is the attempt to save capitalism by destroying it; we could say the tasty little boy is the auto bailout, the tasty little girl is the wave of tax increases that is surely coming, Sam Neil is the global warming scam and Jeff Goldblum is the government takeover of the banks. The lawyer that gets bitten in half would be any one of the number of other techniques being rolled out…the giveaways to the unions, the tinkering with the interests rates and wages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Personally, I’d like to think of that lawyer as Rahm “Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste” Emmanuel. Or Sen. Dodd, that works for me as well.

The important thing, though, is the flares. The flares are the bonus payments to the AIG execs. If eaten, they wouldn’t keep a T-Rex fed for very long, which is appropriate because the payments to the AIG execs really don’t amount to anything. Nor are they symbolic of anything that should excite us in any sort of pejorative way; they symbolize free people making free choices to earn money competently disbursed for services honestly rendered, which was supposed to be our country’s primary reason for existing in the first place. The services weren’t honestly rendered, you say? They were retention bonuses. The service contracted was to stick around. Shenanigans may have been going on with AIG, but these aren’t them.

It doesn’t make any sense for the T-Rex to be chasing after those flares. We shouldn’t be wasting half a second on ’em. It’s just a primal instinct at work.

The first time the flare is used it works, and the second time, it doesn’t. I find that encouraging. It seems prophetic. Our current leadership, in spite of His fame as a charismatic speaker, does seem to have a success rate of about fifty percent when it comes to manipulating people. Using tools to manipulate people. Executive bonuses, road flares, teleprompters, DVD collections encoded for Region 1…on this issue, His chosen technique seems rather painfully obvious, and one wonders if the T-Rex is savage enough to fall for it. People are fed up with the bailout bonanza, so He’s going to wave around this flare — hey, look at those awful executives and their bonuses! — and we’ll go chasing after that, while he proceeds with bailout-this and stimulate-that, the very things that really pissed us off in the first place. I mean, look at the headlines on these stories about voter/taxpayer “anger.” And then when they interview the man-in-the-street about how cranky he’s getting, listen to what these guys are saying. Really listen. It isn’t that AIG people are getting bonuses that’s got them upset; it’s that their taxes are going up so that people they’ll never meet, people who took out mortgages they never intended to pay, can keep living in four-bedroom houses. It’s that hard work, personal sacrifice and good decisions don’t count for pig-squeeze anymore. That’s what has the T-Rex mad. It doesn’t want a road flare, it wants some tasty long-pig.

Well, I hope the AIG bonus-tactic ends up as a colossal Malcolm Maneuver.

But back to Dodd. This is probably the most important story of the whole week, because now a prominent democrat has been ensnared in this thing in such a way that he can’t get out of it. I’m hoping this is where the voters start to get it. This idea that the Washington crowd is going to ride in on a white horse and fix everything, that they can do no wrong now that we have such good, decent people in charge…it’s been dealt a serious blow. Well, good.

That really is a primary flaw in our democratic-republic workings, you know. The voters. It’s the way our brains are wired, somehow. Our noble public “servants” roll up their sleeves to fix our problems, and somehow, we believe that’s what they’re going to do. You’re just supposed to stand back, give ’em room, let ’em work, and if you so much as let out a peep of “Hey let’s think about it for a second or two” you’re almost dealt with as a traitor.

Said public “servants” could have made the problem under discussion, as recently as yesterday morning, maybe. And we don’t remember. We somehow keep thinking they’re a force for good.

Especially when it comes to dealing with money. That one…that one…really puzzles me. If there’s something I’m missing that explains it, please leave it in the comments below. I’d be grateful.

Posted in Bailouts, Poisoning Capitalism | 1 Comment »

“I Guess Rush Limbaugh Was Busy”

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Glib Gibbs:

Question: “One quick followup: Former Vice President Cheney was on State of the Union yesterday. He had a lot — a lot of criticism of this White House.

“To boil it down, on national security, he said the president’s policies were making the country less safe. And on the economy, he was charging that the president is taking advantage of the financial crisis to vastly expand the government in all kinds of ways — health, education, energy.

“How do you respond to those kind of allegations from the former vice president?”

Gibbs: “Well, I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy … so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal.

“I would say that the president has made quite clear that keeping the American people safe and secure is the job — is the most serious job that he has each and every day. I think the president saw over the past seven plus years the delay in bringing the very people to justice that committed terrorist acts on this soil and on foreign soil.

What was the point of that snide little snippet, I wonder? Limbaugh and Cheney aren’t polling well, so any questions they might have to raise, shouldn’t count?

You know, there comes a time that the administration also has to remember that they won the election. People like me who aren’t quite sold on the product just yet, have it intoned, rather indignantly, to them all the time that “Obama won and you need to get over it.” Well, yeah — He won and that has some ramifications. And one of those ramifications is that He needs to stop whining about the last insignificant residues of resistance not quite having been stamped out yet.

I remember a place where the popular folks didn’t have to answer for anything, even the very worst of their ideas, just because they were popular. If memory serves, I think it was called high school. Is that what Gibbs thinks his boss is running here? Because, really, if someone attacks you with an idea and you have a robust defense to offer against it, and you’ve really got a lot of confidence in this defense…it doesn’t matter worth a damn who’s doing the attacking. It isn’t something you need to mention.

Obviously, Glib doesn’t feel this way.

Posted in Obamamania, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Strength | 1 Comment »

On the Bonus Furor

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Forgive me, but I’ve become calloused on the subject of politicians expressing outrage. I think if they’re truly outraged about something, they stop it if they can, and if they can’t then they move on to the next thing without uttering a peep.

I’m not taking this one bit seriously. Not at face value, anyway:

The Obama administration says it’s trying to put strict limits on the next $30 billion installment in taxpayers’ money for insurance giant AIG amid questions about whether it responded fiercely enough to executive bonus payments.

President Barack Obama and his top aides expressed outrage at reports that American International Group Inc. went ahead with $165 million in bonuses even though the company received more than $170 billion in federal rescue money. Obama directed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to see whether there was any way to retrieve or stop the bonus money — a move designed as much for public relations as for public policy.

“I mean, how do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” Obama said Monday, in announcing a plan to help small businesses.

The financial bailout program remains politically unpopular and has been a drag on Obama’s new presidency, even though the plan began under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. The White House is aware of the nation’s bailout fatigue; hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have gone to prop up financial institutions that made poor decisions, while many others who have done no wrong have paid the price.
:
Expressions of outrage across the political spectrum reached a new crescendo Monday when Sen. Charles Grassley suggested in an Iowa City radio interview that AIG executives should take a Japanese approach toward accepting responsibility for the collapse of the insurance giant by resigning or killing themselves.

“Obviously, maybe they ought to be removed,” the Iowa Republican said. “But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

Bailout fatigue; hah, that’s rich. President Obama thinks going after the bonuses will cut through some of the public’s bailout fatigue. I hope not. If so, may your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget you were once my countrymen.

The outrage has two inspirations, the way I see it: One realistic, and one political. The realistic one is phony, and the political one is just plain stupid.

I’ve received bonuses. My bonuses were items on a contract on which things were expected both of the company, and from myself. Usually, the things expected from me had to do with staying with the company during a term. So realistically, if the company is in this contract, and the other party (the executive) has fulfilled the terms of the contract, the obligation is binding.

But there are politics to be considered. Shouldn’t the executives making the actual payout of the bonus money be able to anticipate the public’s fury over this, the hay that our President will be making out of it, and perhaps just put the kibosh on it? This is more realistic. It’s also expressly stupid.

How many people want to live in a world like this? You enter into a contract and fulfill your part of it. Before you can be paid for your performance someone needs to do a temperature check on the political ramifications involved in paying you your entitlement, and then if that’s found to be tempestuous, give you a big fat “Sorry.” What’s that you say? You’re a more sympathetic figure than some “fat cat” AIG executive? Really? In whose eyes?

Hey, do I have to report that phantom income to the IRS? If I’ve earned it but “everybody” would be mad if I got paid, so I get a big F*ck-You instead?

This is the camel’s nose in the tent. There’s no line drawn; nothing to stop this from reaching an absurd extreme, a situation in which nobody can be paid for anything, until some wise, politically-in-tune savant steps in and anticipates how “everybody” is going to feel about it.

Watch what they say about these fat cat executives. They’re talking about YOU. I know it doesn’t seem like it…that’s why they do it this way. You have to be crafty when you kill capitalism in a society that historically owes as much to it, as ours does. Crafty, sneaky and sly.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 3 Comments »

Exhausted the Use of Rush Limbaugh as an Attention Getter

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

You know what they say about sausage and the law — never watch either one being made.

On ABC’s “This Week,” White House economic adviser Larry Summers said the president had proposed a “strategic budget” that “will let us have a sound economic expansion” through a combination of “substantial cuts” and new spending on education, health, energy and environment.

The president himself plans to carry that message in the coming week, “engaging directly with Congress more, and speaking more forcefully on behalf of his budget,” a top adviser said.

And officials throughout the party plan to hammer the idea that Republicans are just saying “no” to the president’s budget plans without offering their own alternative.

Vice President Cheney, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” articulated the harshest conservative case against the president’s plans, accused the Obama administration of “using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector.”

“I think the programs that he has recommended and pursuing in health care, in energy, and so forth, constitute probably the biggest or one of the biggest expansions of federal authority over the private economy in the history of the republic,” Cheney said.

The Democrats’ new plan follows the private complaints of some Democrats that Obama let the GOP get the better of him during the debate over pork in the budget bill he just signed, and growing concerns among some Democrats that charges of big spending could stick to the president.

A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.

David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.
:
Democratic strategists explain that the message is designed to accomplish three things:

—First, it could deflect attention from the size of Obama’s budget and blunt attacks on the ambition of his agenda.

“It helps change the conversation from their criticism of the president’s plan,” a top Democratic official said. “If they want to say he’s going to raise taxes in the middle of a recession or he’s got socialist tendencies—none of which we agree with—one of the easy things for us to come back with is: We have tough choices to make right now, and you have nothing to offer.”

—Second, by painting Republicans as politically motivated, the conservative House Democrats known as Blue Dogs may be less likely to side with the GOP.

“As long as they’re seen as reflexively political—saying ‘no’ to everything—the Blue Dog Democrats can say, ‘I don’t agree with everything the president proposes, but at least he has a plan, an outline of what we should be working on,’” the official said.

—Third, Republicans could look like they’re playing politics in a time of crisis, rather than disagreeing based on substance.

The DNC on Saturday issued a “Party of ‘No’ Update” accusing House Republican leaders of “obstructionist rhetoric.”

Left-wing bloggers are already following suit. It isn’t an ideology, it’s a way of life.

Oh me oh my, how in the world are Republicans going to reply to such a devastating assault?

Republican public-relations dudes and dudettes: Do you really need me to do all your work for you? Really? C’mon…come on. The democrat party wants to be the party of ideas, huh. They wanna be idea-people. They’re the only ones who have any ideas — oh, let me guess the next three words — “on the table.” They’re going to jack up our public debt to $23 trillion in the next ten years and they want to defend this with “well look, it’s not like anybody else has an idea about what to do.”

By 2019, that will have made eighty-seven years of the democrat party coming up with one idea after another after another…all of which have to do with spending loot. That’s the only idea they’ve had for better part of a century by now. “Which party has the ideas”…I do not think this is a discussion they want to get going. Especially not when the question is “we’re all out of money and our economy is grinding to a halt, what are we to do?” You want to be the guy that says — Spend Faster?

One of the reasons the democrat party is not fit for leadership, although there are many, is that they have incorporated into their party philosophy one of the tell-tale signs that a complete stranger is probably a clueless turd. It’s Number Seven on my list of such indicators…

Speaking of a tax cut as something that “costs” money.

I think I’ve found a compromise that will make everybody happy. The strange fools on Planet Liberal think that tax cuts costs money…okay. And, they won the election, we have to let them run everything now — besides of which, they’re the only ones with any ideas. And for eighty years or so all their ideas have had to do with spending money. They think tax cuts are a part of that. They are committed to the idea that tax cuts constitute a form of money-spending.

See where I’m going with this?

No, I won’t complete the thought. Let some young upstart up-and-coming guy in the Republican spin machine, think it was his idea. Take it and run with it. Better yet, let the democrat party take it and run with it. They like to spend money, they’ve got this bizarre idea of what that is, and like Rahm Emmanuel said, you never want to let a good crisis go to waste.

Posted in Nanny State Crap, Poisoning Capitalism | 3 Comments »

Cheney Says We’re Being Made Less Safe

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

In my mind, it wasn’t exactly the election of Barack Obama that did it.

It was this notion that anything that might be called “torture” is an extreme thing, therefore anyone who argues against it is being a moderate. That just isn’t right. For one thing, if things are being called “torture” when there’s nothing torturous about them other than the fact they’re uncomfortable, then you can call anything torture that isn’t fun. Secondly, the argument’s been used that our fighting men and women are exposed to danger if we continue these practices…which doesn’t mean anything. And that isn’t my opinion, it’s the opinion of people arguing this way. Just ask ’em “So if we put a stop to these practices that makes our troops safer?” Just take the argument seriously. And you’ll be called a big ol’ dummy. Okay, so we’re not after results here when we stop this “torture.” It’s just a thing to do to make some unnamed people happy with us; and the people we’re fighting are not the people we’re supposed to be making happy.

Thirdly, it is a skewed representation of what we should be calling “civilized.” In this sense, a yawning gulf is defined between red America and blue America. Someone threatens or injures someone else who is entirely innocent. We’re going to do something meaningful about this, or we’ll do something ritualistic about it. This demonstrates our civilization, or lack thereof — but which is which? Is it more civilized to conduct some ritual and then allow the danger to continue walking among us, unabated?

This stuff starts on the playground, really. Who among us hasn’t been hauled to the principal’s office after hitting back at the school bully — and then told, gosh darn it, he’s here all the time but you’re supposed to be better! It’s the tactic of the thoroughly cowardly bureaucrat.

Some of us want punishment for whoever started the fight; some of us want punishment for whoever finished it.

This is why so many wars have been started under democrat Presidents. It’s also why, the wars our country fought that finished with a lasting, enduring, durable peace, were fought before we had the United Nations. Since then, every wildfire around the globe, rather than being altogether extinguished, just subsides into a smoldering slow burn ready to erupt into an inferno at any time.

The reason is simple. When your policy is opposed to the true eradication of bad guys, you’re always going to be up to your eyeballs in bad guys. Being liberal means there’s always another excuse for a little bit more chaos the next day.

Posted in Poisoning Justice | 4 Comments »

Memo For File LXXXIII

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

A rather abundant number of years ago, I became aware of a whole subculture of humanity that I suspect exists within all societies that get things done. I shall call it, until such time as a better phrasing comes along, the “All Those Not Volunteering Take One Step Back” culture. A task arises, executive in nature, one that cannot be achieved by a committee or even by a trio or duo; it demands a singular pair of hands and an investment of effort and energy that may or may not be significant. And out come the excuses: I don’t know how, that’s not my field, I’m not authorized, I’m dyslexic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The disability varies — the outcome remains the same. No action forthcoming from this quadrant; look elsewhere. One cannot help but wonder how they would respond to a real crisis. The house must burn all the way to the ground, because no hose is available and your wrists are too feeble to carry a bucket even half-full?

There is some military humor to the effect that this is a long-standing tradition in certain branches of our armed forces. I reckon there must be some truth in it, but it certainly cannot be completely so. How in the world could my nation ever have become a superpower, with the troops responsible for the killing-of-people and breaking-of-things all waiting around for the next fella to deal out the mayhem? That would be like having no military at all, and countries with no military at all, do not become countries like the United States. And from even just a cursory reading of our history, to say nothing of our present headlines, I know better than that.

I’m not so sure of our future, though. Hours ago I mused on what I suppose I can call — again, until a better phrasing presents itself — the Matthews Mindset, after Chris Matthews. Mr. Matthews seems to think it’s vitriolic to recognize so much as the possibility of a difference between what President Obama wants, and what’s good for the country. Just a fistful of hours before becoming aware of Matthews’ childish tantrum, coincidentally, I had opined about a nominally different, but strongly related, issue. And that would be the one that involes the fans of Barack Obama who gauge our society’s health by the yardstick of nationwide, unanimous fidelity to His vision, without bothering themselves to learn anything about what His vision might be:

Just realized something about these folks. You’d think, as much attention as I’m forced to pay to them, and as much attention as I continue to pay to them when I’m no longer forced to, there would eventually be a point of complete saturation. But it would seem if I am indeed bright enough to reach that point, it’s taking me awhile to get there.

They don’t give a rat’s ass what policies are implemented. The One could invade Iran tomorrow at noon, and Planet Obamafan would be erupting into a standing ovation.

They don’t care about what consequences, good or bad, result from the policies. Dow is tumbling, as Buck points out — is it alright with them if the rest of us notice it? NO! We should look the other way.

So they don’t care about the goals, they don’t care about the methods implemented to reach the goals…it logically follows, any one point between those two ends, likewise, they don’t care about it.

They care about who’s running things. Obama won, they say, and He won by something decisive. Therefore, let’s all get behind Him…the important thing is to be unified.

If it was a valid claim that The One was victorious to some extent that equates to virtual unanimity, it would be a silly, useless and redundant exercise to dish out instructions to show some sense of unity that is already there. But the real point here, is, these people do not want the economy fixed. They just want everyone to be on the same page — that is how they do their thinking, through a process of sanitization. They’re exercising a gut-instinct…seek out whoever might be from a rival village, and “fix” the situation until there are no rival villages. How they really intend to do that fixing, perhaps if they thought that through a little bit more, made some commitments to what they are & are not willing to do, they’d be a little bit less frightening.

This is the danger involved in the “All Those Not Volunteering Take One Step Back” culture. In engaging some of the Obamatons in what they laughingly call a “spirited debate,” I have come to be surprised, and almost shocked, at how little they know about what exactly is being done by The Chosen One for whom they’ll go to such great lengths to provide a passionate defense. There seems to be a link between this dogged determination to hide whatever individual ability might be tapped by a community, and in being so tapped, might demand some inconveniently-timed effort; and, this parallel dogged determination to force all others in proximity, to agree to the wisdom and beneficiality involved in policies of which the advocate isn’t even aware, even at a generalized, abstract level. To put it another way: The folks who can’t be relied-upon to do anything to help out, and seem so adamant at perpetually insisting they cannot be so relied-upon, have it in mind that all others around them should say things and do things exactly the same way.

To put it more concisely still: Those who insist on giving up all the time, suddenly are determined to win, when the contest becomes one of convincing others to give up.

It kind of overlaps with Everything I Know About People, Minus What I Was Told When I Was A Child, Items 4, 11, 14, 15, 21, 24 and 25.

People who don’t work hard, don’t want anyone else to work hard either.
People who don’t exercise their right to free speech, don’t want anyone else speaking freely either.
People who don’t make a material success of themselves and their efforts, don’t want anyone else to prosper either.
People who have been duped by something and have come to realize it, want everyone else to be duped in the same way.
People who won’t take the initiative to see what needs doing and do it, don’t want anyone else to take the initiative either.
People who imagine themselves as part of a group, with no individual identity, don’t want anyone else to have an individual identity either.
People who can’t solve problems because they don’t think rationally, work pretty hard to avoid acknowledging that someone else solved a problem.

These traits defy theories of both Intelligent Design, and Evolution, alike. If we acquired them during Creation, surely they must have come from the snake and the apple. But if we acquired them through evolution, it must have been a ripple. It certainly isn’t a case of survival-of-the-fittest!

And yet, we do have these ugly traits. Or some folks do. We’ve all seen ’em. This job comes up, that job comes up, that other job over there comes up…and…oh, I’m too stupid. I don’t know how. I have a phobia. I’m too weak. Don’t count on me. I need special instruction.

Every single time the teacher needs the erasers cleaned, they avoid eye contact. Perhaps that is where it germinates; perhaps it is this notion that any & all work an individual must do, that all others don’t have to do, is some sort of punishment.

At any rate, it just flabbergasts me that we can have so many people walking around cheering President Obama along like some demigod, while He tosses around a few words here and there about “personal responsibility” — aren’t they listening? And then they treat any disagreement with His policies almost as some sort of crime. While showing, at times, a spellbinding level of ignorance about what exactly those policies are.

Perhaps, for them, it is a chance to feel involved with something, like you’re making an individual contribution to something and, through this individual action or these individual actions, are altering the outcome. Perhaps, for them, this is a precious feeling. Precious because, as the years roll on by, it comes up so infrequently.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Harry Reid Says Don’t Worry About the Fairness Doctrine

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

Wow, that’s a huge relief.

The Fairness Doctrine is a “ghost that doesn’t exist” and neither Democrats nor Republicans are interested in seeing it restored, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning.

“The Fairness Doctrine – what a ghost that doesn’t exist,” said Reid. “None of us want to go back to the way it was before. It is an issue they brought up to talk about. No one wants to re-establish the Fairness Doctrine – Democrats or Republicans.”

Okay, Senator. I’ll quit worrying about it. Thanks so much for clearing that up.

Article goes on to say…

On Feb. 26 Sen. Jim DeMint (D-Calif.) proposed an amendment to the D.C. Voting Rights Act that would permanently ban reimplementation of the Fairness Doctrine. The amendment passed 87-11. Reid voted for the amendment.

Minutes before the amendment passed the Senate, however, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) proposed a separate amendment that says “certain affirmative actions” are “required” of the FCC, including “actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.” This amendment also passed, on a vote of 57-41.

Reid also voted for the Durbin amendment.

Mmmm, hmmmm. Well, it’s the Officer Barbrady rule — move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Western Civilization | 3 Comments »

Obama Presses for Longer School Year

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

Yup, I can get behind this one. I can’t fully support his motives, but his position, and his stated reason for it, make perfect sense to me.

President Obama said Tuesday that American children should go to school longer — either stay later in the day or into the summer — if they’re going to have any chance of competing for jobs and paychecks against foreign kids.

“We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day,” Obama said, adding U.S. education to his already-crowded list of top priorities.

“That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy.

“I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas, not with Malia and Sasha,” Obama said, referring to his daughters, as the crowd laughed.

“But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.

“If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America.”

“Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us,” Obama said. “In eighth-grade math, we’ve fallen to ninth place. Singapore’s middle-schoolers outperform ours 3-to-1. Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should.”

Among his proposals: extra pay for better teachers, something opposed by teachers unions.

“It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones,” he said in a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Teachers groups applauded Obama’s speech, largely sidestepping the thorny question of merit pay.

“Teachers want to make a difference in kids’ lives, and they appreciate a president who shares that goal and will spend his political capital to provide the resources to make it happen,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers.

Of course, once they’re spending that extra time, what’re they doing?

I can think of two things that would have been of tremendous value to me if they’d taken place in the public school system; one of which would also apply to many others, the other of which, maybe, not so much.

Reconciling a checkbook. I point that out because it’s such an easy exercise that there’s really no excuse for the school not walking the kids through this. You certainly can’t raise the time-honored question “aw c’mon, when am I ever gonna need to do that?”

And, using a binary editor to hack a file. Because whether you grow up into the exciting field of software engineering or network engineering or computer forensics…or not…computer users, I maintain, really should understand what computer files are and how they’re put together. Just like, before you loan your keys to the teenager, they really should have gone through the exercise of pulling the jack out of the trunk and changing the tire, just to show they can do it and to demonstrate a working knowledge of how the parts fit together.

When people talk about having skills to compete in the 21st century, that’s what it means to me. Admittedly, I’m bringing a strong personal bias in to that, but it’s an idea that has some merit. You learn how to work something by understanding how it’s put together, or by understanding how it behaves. If you work with a thing by understanding only how it behaves, you’re working from a script, and that is not competing. That’s “when I press this button, that light is supposed to come on, and…whoops…why won’t it come on??”

And I humbly submit that if education involves something besides enabling self-sufficiency in a little dilemma like that, then a question needs to be opened up as to what kind of education that is, and how it’s supposed to help anyone.

Posted in Certifikayshuns, Skewels and Kawledges, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Science, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | 13 Comments »

Stand Up For Capitalism!

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

Boortz says he might’ve run this before, but if so, it’s worth running again.

I agree.

By the sheer size of the budget they are pushing, Obama/Pelosi/Reid are increasing the share of the American economy that will be controlled by the government. Government spending accounts for more than 50 percent of the economies of France and Sweden and more than 45 percent of the GDPs of Germany and Italy. As recently as 2006, the federal government’s share of America’s GDP was 21 percent (with another 11 percent for state and local governments). Now it is approaching 40 percent and likely to grow significantly beyond that if Obama and Co. have their way on health care reform, universal pre-K to college education, and other programs.
:
Per capita economic output has been much higher in the United States than in the European Union. Our growth rates have been consistently higher since the Second World War. Until this recession began, America’s unemployment rate was half of Europe’s, and our unemployed spent less time jobless than did Europe’s. European industry has certainly contributed to world prosperity, but cannot match the United States for innovation, dynamism, freedom, or wealth creation. And the Europeans are failing the most basic test of vitality — they are demographically disappearing. That’s one reason why the term “once-great” applies to places like Great Britain and France.
:
It didn’t seem possible six months ago that capitalism in the United States could be in danger. If Obama/Pelosi/Reid have their way, the U.S. too will bear the prefix “once-great.”

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | No Comments »

One More Snippet on the Limbaugh Obama Thing

Monday, March 9th, 2009

…and, really, in spite of all the talking and kibitzing on both sides, it really just comes down to this.

Is it possible to make liberal ideas look good, without misrepresenting something?

Posted in Obamamania, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 3 Comments »

You’re Hurting Frum’s Feelings

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

David Frum’s feelings are hurt:

…I’ve received a great deal of e-mail. Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don’t agree with Rush [Limbaugh], quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There’s the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don’t care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That’s not the language of politics. It’s the language of a cult.

Yeah, I think I know why they’re saying that to you, and it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with cults. It has to do with some of the outlandish things you’re saying:

Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach. Forty-one percent of independents have an unfavorable opinion of him, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: his audience is 72 percent male, according to Pew Research. Limbaugh himself acknowledges his unpopularity among women. On his Feb. 24 broadcast, he said with a chuckle: “Thirty-one-point gender gaps don’t come along all that often … Given this massive gender gap in my personal approval numbers … it seems reasonable for me to convene a summit.”

Limbaugh was kidding about the summit. But his quip acknowledged something that eludes many of those who would make him the arbiter of Republican authenticity: from a political point of view, Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally. No Republican official will say that; Limbaugh demands absolute deference from the conservative world, and he generally gets it. When offended, he can extract apologies from Republican members of Congress, even the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

So people like Frum don’t get any of that sweet, sweet deference that is so regularly plied upon the unpopular Limbaugh. How unfair.

Frum goes on…

Look at America’s public-policy problems, look at voting trends, and it’s inescapably obvious that the Republican Party needs to evolve. We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message. It’s health-care costs that are crushing middle-class incomes. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount that employers paid for labor rose substantially. Employees got none of that money; all of it was absorbed by rising health-care costs. Meanwhile, the income-tax cuts offered by Republicans interest fewer and fewer people: before the recession, two thirds of American workers paid more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.

We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison—modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain’s only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania’s most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he’s pro-choice.

Frum is undecided about whether he wants to bellyache about people not being liked because they make too much sense, or about people not making enough sense because they’re too busy trying to be liked. To him, it seems, likability trumps reason and logic if, and only if, you’re talking about the right people doing the liking or not-liking: Non-conservatives.

Mr. Frum, I think that might be why you’re getting the mail. Your core message is that conservative principles don’t count.

Here’s an idea. Why don’t you publish a brand-new article called “I Told You So,” pointing back to this one, to be put into print once we have a chance to see which policies work? Zowee! Is that a paradigm shift or what? That would involve educating oneself on reality, rather than fixating on personalities and popularity contests like some smitten fifteen-year-old girl.

Do you realize how many times, just in the twentieth century, conservatives lost the affections of the electorate in a big, big way? Lessee…I think we should go ahead and count William Jennings Bryan, although he never did actually triumph…we should give it to Wilson even though he got a decisive benefit from the vote-splitting in 1912…Roosevelt in 1932…Camelot…Watergate…Iran-Contra…The Man From Hope.

It seems escape velocity from Planet Conservative is never quite reached. Something keeps pulling us back in. What would you think that is? Is it that conservatives are so seductive, so smooth and silky, such good speakers, so freakin’ fun? Or could it be the Diebold machines?

Heh. It is to laugh.

Nope, it’s reality. To see what I’m talking about, just catch a plane ticket to any big city run by a solid majority of democrats. Walk around in the seedier sections of that town for awhile. Buy some coffee. Buy some groceries. Buy some gas. Bend the rules a little, fire off a pellet gun in your backyard, throw some batteries in the garbage and tell people about it. Get a job without belonging to a union.

Live there long enough to be on both sides of the law. Get mugged. Have your car keyed.

You vote for a solution that sounds good, but isn’t…you vote for another one, and another one…you watch all these things get implemented and then turn to crap. You watch your government go into debt, and then step into the money-lending market as the 800-pound gorilla on the consuming side of that counter…inflation skyrockets. Crime skyrockets too. Women violated, kids abducted, old people mugged — people get tired of this after awhile.

Limbaugh is unpolished and unappealing because he can afford to be. After living in a crime-infested, over-inflationed, crude-oil-deprived fantasy land for awhile, people don’t care what other people look like. They start to care more about ideas and reality.

So conservatives don’t need to change a damn thing.

They just need to identify, and reject, people like you. Good for them.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 21 Comments »

Morgan’s Rules of Government

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Morgan’s First Rule of Government: Life thrives in order but matures toward chaos. Government has a role as long as order and life serve the same purpose; where their paths diverge, government must yield.

We know what governments look like when they champion order over life. This is exactly the government from which the Founding Fathers defected. Don’t take my word for it, read the Declaration of Independence. Why can’t conservatives and moderates be consistent in the life-versus-absolute-order dichotomy? The hardcore, extreme liberals who now run everything, are: Abortion, global warming, federalism, higher taxes, allowing “sovereign” tyrants to run roughshod over God’s children unfortunate enough to live under them…gun-grabbing even in the aftermath of the Heller decision…the list goes on and on. They are consistent in championing order over life. Why can’t the rest of us be consistent in opposing them?

Morgan’s Second Rule of Government: Consensus thrives in logic but develops toward nonsense. Government has a role in deriving its policies from consensus, as long as the consensus is rational; when consensus becomes silly, government must remain logical.

It’s not that I see the global warming movement as being synonymous with Hitler’s Final Solution — but they ARE driven by the same energies. Raw, passionate populism. Mob rule. “Everybody knowing” things that aren’t really true. Now, look at what global warming is: A tax on progress, designed to deliberately stop things from happening, not to collect revenue. It declares “human activity” illegal. By human activity, they mean life, but they won’t talk about it that way. It would become immediately unpopular if talked about that way. It’s too accurate.

Posted in ManBearPig, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | 6 Comments »

Smitten

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

I’m tired, tired, tired of the negative crap about Obama. But there’s very little else to which to link, other than maybe an occasional beer commercial — some ninety percent of what’s on the innerwebs today, is either “I told you so” from people like me who never liked Obama, or “Omigawd what the f*** was I thinking?” from the folks who were supposed to be so much smarter than us, like Paul Krugman.

That’s ninety percent of what’s out there. All toxic sludge.

Time to tap into the other ten. Via Twisted Spinster, “My Crush on Michelle Obama“. Get your puke-bucket ready; but you knew that already, from the title, right?

I think I am developing a crush on America’s first lady. Michelle Obama is more compelling than her husband. He’s good, but she’s utterly fascinating.

Mrs. Obama has blown away the stale air in a White House musty from eight years of the Bushes. It’s like the sun came out and a fresh spring breeze began wafting through the open windows.

It’s the people’s house, and Michelle Obama totally gets it. So much so that she has taken to inviting people in from the streets to see her home. Nice touch — one completely lacking in her recent predecessors.

He even managed to slip in one of my least favorite words. Hittin’ all the stops, tonight, Mr. Cafferty is. That’s a real work of art in its own way, Jack.

It goes downhill from there, folks. Grab the Dramamine; wolf ’em down.

Posted in Obamamania, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 11 Comments »

Not Moderates…Idea Pack-Rats

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Dr. Melissa has yet another delicious rant up about the moderates and all the damage they dealt to this fine nation four months ago. Not that we needed it, she already had us thinking long and hard about what it means to be, what in this day and age, we call a “moderate.”

I had already put together a little list. It’s in David-Letterman format — the reason why I did this, probably won’t become clear until you get all the way through it.

TOP TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO DO TO BE, WHAT IN THIS DAY AND AGE, WE CALL A “MODERATE”:

10. Consistently reject anything extreme, for that is the essence of moderation. It is, isn’t it?
9. Keep current with what other people think is extreme, for if you are adhering only to your own notions of what’s moderate, you aren’t a true moderate.
8. Only extremists will dismiss an idea because of a bleak outcome. So be an idea packrat. Use the failed ideas, as if they worked. Use them over and over again. In fact, the only idea you should ever reject, is the idea that sometimes an idea has earned rejection.
7. Hear from all sides before deciding anything. That includes gathering opinions from the ignorant.
6. That also includes gathering opinions from the insane. Treat these opinions as if they came from sane people.
5. That even includes gathering opinions from sworn enemies, or anyone with interests contrary to yours. Treat these opinions as if they came from friends. Also, gather opinions from agenda-driven zealots who don’t agree with you about the virtues of moderation.
4. Give equal weight and merit, deserved or not, to everything you hear. Moderation-versus-extremism must be your *only* litmus test for ideas, and those who profer them.
3. Don’t concern yourself with facts. Moderation demands only a working knowledge of what others are thinking. Facts occasionally persuade people to reject some things, and there’s nothing moderate about that.
2. There is a “blue line” among moderates. An attack upon a moderate — or someone simply calling himself one — is an attack on YOU. Fight!

AND THE NUMBER ONE THING YOU NEED TO DO TO BE WHAT, IN THIS DAY AND AGE, WE CALL A “MODERATE”…

1. Be an extremist. As ardent, as dedicated, as pugnacious, as hot-blooded, impetuous, slobbering and foolish as there has ever been. In all of human history.

Now, think on this long and hard — vis a vis some of the “moderates” you know. It’s true, isn’t it? Moderates do not reject…anything. Ever. Even when they voted against McCain/Palin, they didn’t even reject that. It was more of a…mmm, well, there’s a certain amount of coolness involved in the Hockey Mom and the old guy…there’s a certain surplus amount of coolness involved in those two lawyers over there, so I’ll vote for the lawyers.

Moderates cannot, will not, won’t ever, never did, reject something. They are incapable of forming the words, on the tongue or in the noggin — “That there is a dumbass idea that’s been given a lot of chances, we’re all done gambling things on it fer good.” They can’t do this. They’re like really old men living in houses with all manner of worthless crap in the attic and basement. Can’t pitch anything out.

That would be far too extreme.

And so they end up being extremists without knowing it. They end up re-defining their goal in life to be nothing but a big fat zero; then, tragedy of tragedies, they fail at even that.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 5 Comments »

Rance!

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

I’m going to have to make this a regular feature…which is going to make it as boring as hell, to everyone, myself included. But it’s gotta be done. Might as well spice things up by spelling it wrong.

Daphne:

We pay our mortgage and debts, live within our means and try to save responsibly for our future needs. We provide health coverage, food, housing and clothes for our children without assistance. We pay our taxes and fees in full and on time, never dreaming to ask any agency we fund for a handout or exception. My husband keeps tens of people fully employed, at high pay, by his hard efforts. We volunteer our time and money to worthy causes. Our bill to the city, state and feds well exceeds the poverty line for a family of four. Why are we suffering the price for everyone else’s mistakes? We haven’t made any.

I am unapologetically conservative. I don’t believe another man has any right to the fruits of my labor. I do not believe that I am beholden, on any terms, to provide for another man’s housing, food, children, medical care, education or the thousand other items on the endless list of needs demanded of my money in the name of social responsibility. I have an obligation to abide by the law and be a productive citizen who honors his own responsibilities, the state does not have the right to mandate that I bailout its negligent mistakes or support its unproductive members. I don’t owe your destitute grandma or ill conceived child a damn dime. My children certainly shouldn’t be expected to pay for current lawmakers ignorant legislative blunders or Joe Blow’s lackadaisical take on mortgage payments or unaffordable procreation.

Save me the arguments that my money funds the betterment of society. It obviously doesn’t when 1 in 30 of our citizens are in the criminal justice system, as much as forty percent of our high schoolers drop out before graduation, a scandalous number of non-performing public schools, warehousing ignorant children, are still in existence and we have up to 70% out of wedlock birth rates standing alongside the total disintegration of normal family units in significant segments of society. My money hasn’t done diddley shit for the generations of shiftless idiots unable to carry their own water, except exacerbate the growth of disgustingly useless government programs that induced these ills to epidemic heights.

The ranting turns toward the Republicans, with a rant found at Right Coast by Tom Smith, against Chairman Michael Steele. Like Daphne above, Mr. Smith speaks for me…

The left wing of the Democratic Party is in power now and it looks like they will pass their budget and their agenda for the next year or two or four. There’s every reason to think it will be a disaster for the country. It’s not looking so great so far and the disaster may arrive ahead of schedule. I’d say there’s a nontrivial chance the country will be irreparably harmed by our American mid-life crisis. It’s going to suck, big time. All Republicans can do is be the party that says, this is a bad idea and we should return to what we really believe in. We should wear the label the Party of No as a badge of honor. No to higher taxes. No to soaking the rich. No to nationalizing health care. No to abadoning Israel (just wait — that’s coming). There will be a lot to say no to. No to tyranny. This whole country is founded on a No.

I love that last line. It’s true. We say “yes” when we imagine what we can do. We do not have a tradition of saying “yes” when others tell us what to do. There are enough other countries that can carry on that tradition.

The best for last: Melissa lets the moderates have it with both barrels. These are the folks who were not fainting at Obama rallies, holding Him aloft like some kind of rock star or movie actor, wanting “to be a part of this thing”…they had nothing to say, nothing at all. They just didn’t want to take a stand, and by standing in the middle of the road hoped to be thought-of as super-duper smart. They figured voting for The Holy One was just the thing everyone was doing last fall, so they want-along to get along.

May your chains rest lightly on you and may posterity forget you were our countrymen…

Moderates, as usual, are stupid. They play along with the administration’s games. They’re useful dupes. Rather than help shape an alternative argument, they trash the people who pay attention. Independents and moderates don’t pay attention–they hope for a middle, gentle, “nice” way. That way lead to the Obama administration to begin with.

Have you written your postcard to let Congress and the administration know your feelings? You don’t even need to leave the house…or the computer you’re using right this very second. One click away. Do it, do it, do it.

I just did…

People working hard to succeed, are being made to fail through taxes and government-sponsored debt.

People who bought more house than they can afford, are being given a perverse “guarantee” from that government that they can stay where they are.

So people who don’t try, are set up to succeed, and people who do try, are set up to fail.

Our President, who’s supposed to be the best ever, is blowing unprecedented amounts of money while telling us we must not burden our children with “a debt they cannot pay.” He’s telling us, when you’re out of money and neck-deep in debt from spending money you do not have, the thing to do is to spend it a whole lot faster. Congress seems to be in agreement.

The Dow is tumbling down like a lawn dart. It can’t be reasonably expected to do anything else.

Our President sees this and comments on how good he is at his job. I suppose, if you define that job just “right,” it must be true.

This is the delivery of what, half a year ago, I was told was “hope.”

It truly is an upside-down world.

Posted in Bailouts, Eat The Rich, Nanny State Crap, Obamamania, Poisoning Capitalism | 7 Comments »

Can’t Blame Republicans; There Aren’t Any

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

The title of this post could have been a handy, six-word summary applied to any one of a number of metropolitan areas throughout the country last year: San Francisco, the Chicago From Whence Our White House Messiah Cometh, Detroit, DC, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, it applies to the nation as a whole. The left-wing talking point, even, has nothing whatsoever to do with the time-honored “aw, things aren’t nearly that bad”…rather, it’s the equally time-honored “Failed policies of that other guy who came before us.”

Say it loud, say it proud: Liberal policies don’t work. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t. Stop being inquisitive about it. Stop being open-minded. Yes, sometimes that is good advice, and right now’s the time. All things in life are not necessarily open-ended questions.

Cassy Fiano notes what housing prices are doing in Detroit. Can’t blame Republicans, there aren’t any.

This is really sad:

It may be tough to get financing for a new car these days, but in Detroit you can buy a house with a credit card.

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.

Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it’s seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people.

:
It’s not too late for Detroit to be saved. However, the rest of us should take notice. This is what happens when liberals are allowed to make all of their dreams a reality (well, maybe combine Detroit and San Francisco). Once great cities are reduced to a shell of their former brilliance.

Do we want this to happen on a larger scale?

Precisely.

Awhile ago I had put out a story about the sailor with the pet duck who was given his choice of which sister to marry, out of three: the oldest one, History; the middle one, Logic; and the baby of the family who had to have everyone’s attention all the time, Rhetoric. The sailor had a pet duck named hope — and, noticing Rhetoric got along best with Hope (she never once stopped talking about that damn duck), he turned his back on the two older sisters and married Rhetoric.

Hope ended up dead. Logic came by afterward and pointed out to him what an unusual and exceptional thing it was that History and Logic went in one direction and Rhetoric went in the other…it should have told him something about what’s the right thing to do.

I was asked what I would change about that story if I had to write it again. Two things. One, the duck named Hope should’ve been a pelican. Ducks are freshwater fowl. I don’t understand what a sailor would be doing with a pet duck. Even if he lost his memory and washed up on an island somewhere. What’s a duck doing there? Anyway, while ducks are funny, pelicans are funny too. Should’ve gone with the pelican.

The other thing: I should’ve had some kind of rant by History about all the things Rhetoric said she said, that she never really said.

That would have been another smashing uppercut, one that, again, runs parallel to real life. There’s lots of rhetoric out there about what history says, that history doesn’t really say. Reaganomics didn’t work, Roosevelt saved us from the Depression, Nixon started the Vietnam War, Saddam Hussein was a lovable harmless old teddy bear.

Rhetoric speaks for history. History said nothing close to what rhetoric says she said. And always, liberal ideas are made to look good.

They aren’t.

I’ll go even further. They aren’t even designed to do good. Listen to the talking points sometime; listen close. What are our liberals going to do for us here…something to do with making the economy work for everyone, right? What’s that mean? How come the goal is never expressed as anything with meaning. Like, get the Dow back up above 10,000 again. Isn’t it odd, that this is what normal people have in mind when they hear about “fixing the economy” — but you’ll never hear a liberal come out and say it in those words?

That’s because this isn’t what their plans are supposed to do. Make the economy work for “everybody,” means making it work for those who have bet against it. It means hurting the economy.

Wow, I’m sure that sounds extremist and harsh. But let’s just keep our eyes & ears opened for a famous, luminous and respected liberal spokesman to come out and directly contradict it. Wait for it. You’ll be waiting awhile.

Meanwhile — what’re we doing? We just turned our backs on history and logic, and went with rhetoric, for the sake of our pet waterfowl named Hope. That’s why we did this. It was part of the campaign sloganeering…part of the rhetoric.

And how’s hope doing right about now? Feelin’ rather chipper? Healthy? Vibrant? Compared to November 5th? Compared to January 20?

Update 3/3/09: On that note…answering my own question, I see via Neal Boortz’s reading assignments, a new report that capitalism is on strike. Three trillion dollars missing since The Holy One was ensconced. “We’ve seen the change as the economy’s deterioration accelerated. Now where’s the hope?” Yup, that’s pretty much it.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 4 Comments »

On So-Called “Conservatives” Who Think Palin’s a Dumbass

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

This was originally an update to a post from last night, but it evolved into a post of its own.

Here’s the situation as I see it. Republicans are fated to lose elections from time to time, even under the best of circumstances, because we conservatives are Yin, by definition. That means we’re concerned with:

• Building borders around the things we do, concentrating our efforts on what takes place within the borders, and adopting a healthy, libertarian, somewhat-isolationist attitude about what takes place outside;
• Methodically linking the things we do to the inferences we have drawn, by means of a reasoned, intellectual, cognitive process;
• Methodically linking the inferences we draw to the facts from which they are drawn, also by means of a reasoned, intellectual, cognitive process;
• NOT showing off to prove what incredibly decent swell wonderful people we are, because we take the responsibility for self-assessing that as individuals.

Liberals, being Yang, are more concerned with socializing and communing…words derived from…guess what? <wink>

And so, people who live out their lives the way liberals do, tend to grow a sort of magical “antenna” that clues them in on what “everyone” thinks. They have to have this. It is their key to perceiving the world around them.

And so the temptation that arises for any conservative movement, Republican party included, is to sort of invade the enemy camp, steal the intelligence on what “everyone” is thinking, and make use of it. Presto! Palin’s a dumbass and isn’t qualified. A lot of folks who should know better, have caved in to this. From here I jump to Star, Buckley, Will, Krauthammer and Brooks.

Check ’em out, see what they have to say, and keep this one thought in mind: Joe Biden ran for exactly the same position. Joe Biden won. And that guy doesn’t even know what the Vice President is supposed to do.

Which means, all these conservatives yielding to the steal-the-Yang-intelligence temptation, have been caught. They’re just echoing talking-points; talking-points that don’t make any sense at all.

Only Krauthammer is making a logical point. But his point is about politics, not about things as they really exist. His point is purely about arguments that have been made against the Obama campaign, arguments that could & would be defeated with Palin’s selection as running-mate. It is a point with some merit to it. But, historically, I don’t think it figured into the election very much at all. We ran Will Smith against the grumpy old guy who told us to get the hell off his lawn, and made the election about who’s cooler. Wanna blame the Hockey Mom for the way things turned out? Really?

There is another danger involved in invading-the-Yang-camp-to-steal-intelligence method that is worthy of comment here. It is the central catalyst to why this is a bad idea, I think. The Yang, liberals especially, do not process information the way more productive people do..the way people who build things, do. To them, cause-and-effect merge together into a sloppy hodge-podge, neither one having been separated from the other in the first place. What that means is, you have poll-results, minutes-of-meetings, summaries of what it has been found that “most” people think…and you have talking-points designed to be pushed “out there,” and influence what “most” people think. These are one and the same. They have to be. The Yang are the bubbly, precocious, talkative toddlers all grown up. Since preschool, they haven’t had to deal with any difference between their own ideas and the “consensus” ideas. They’ve spent their lives in complete lockstep with the majority viewpoint, as they’ve perceived it, and they’ve spent those lives becoming experts at perceiving it.

They don’t voice individual opinions except as trial-balloons. And if the trial-balloons don’t float, they can be counted-on to repudiate them. To not only shoot them down, not only disclaim them, but to disclaim any association history would record between their individual identities, and that trial-balloon idea.

They are consensus-builders. That’s why this stuff works so well. That’s why you had all this slobbering admiration for the Tina-Fey-as-Palin skits on Saturday Night Live. It wasn’t because Fey was amazingly talented at what she was doing…which she was, and is…it was because the skits had such effervescent potential for producing a “consensus” that Palin said things she didn’t really say…which they did, and do.

That’s consensus-building. Now, if you want to lay a Rearden Metal railroad track so that you can ride the very first train across it at record-setting speeds, and be extra, real, damn-sure it’s all going to work as you risk your life on it — these are not the folks you want. They’re good at building things that have to do with popular opinion. They’re not that good at building things that have to do with reality. That ain’t their bag, baby.

So stop stealing their ideas. It’s rather like using two-stroke engine lubricant in your four-stroke car engine. Their ideas don’t work in our world; not built for the environment we have in mind. And, really, who’s been paying attention to what’s been going on over the last twenty years, who can dispute the following: Every single conservative who is plunged into these reverberating memes that he/she is an adorable dimwit…is at the tippy-top of the profile ladder, popular, and effective. Think back. Ronald Reagan. Dan Quayle. George W. Bush. Sarah P. Who else? There’s probably hundreds of dumbass conservatives out there. But the meme has only grown around those four, not because they were deserving of them, but because they were at the center of national campaigns — and showed real potential for for influence how those campaigns would turn out, in a positive way.

So if they weren’t dumbasses, they’d be walking incarnations of evil, like Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, Oliver North, Newt Gingrich or Jesse Helms. Whatever works.

Conservatives who tap into this wellspring of ideas that have evolved to fit what the consensus will accept, are not quite so much betraying a movement. They are doing that, but they’re doing something far worse. They’re betraying reality. This is why McCain lost, really. First time they say something everyone understands is not true, but that the phony “everyone” accepts as some kind of truthy gospel, they toss out the complete inventory of everything they have to sell. Everything. The sales pitch, then, becomes one of “see, we can tailor our reality to meet the expectations of the noisy majority, too.”

And that’s what the 2008 elections were all about. Real-fantasy-people, or phony-fantasy-people pretending to be real-fantasy-people. Nobody was peddling reality, reason, logic or common sense. So Obama got lots of cross-over votes, because the electorate was choosing as much reality as it could. They chose a genuine liberal over someone pretending to be one.

In 2012, sell what you really are. The message should be one of “our policies are based on what’s real, and if that loses the election for us, then like 2008 it’s an election we never deserved to win.” Might as well — we know what happens when you go the other way, when you say “we’ll change our reality if that’s what people demand…whatever it takes to win.” We know where that leads. It leads to sacrificing everything just for winning, and then getting your ass kicked and being left with nothing.

Why do I have to point this out? Republicans turned their backs on reality, and got clobbered. Then the nation as a whole turned its back on reality. Now it’s getting clobbered.

There comes a point where, even though it makes you feel good to do something and this has a Faustian tendency to deceive you into choices that don’t work out over the long term…after a time, ignorance is no longer a good excuse, you know?

Reality. In 2012, give it a try. We’re going to be as hungry for it. Hungry as hell.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, VPILF, Yin and Yang | No Comments »

Let’s Run a Rich White Guy

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

Dumbass…stupid…idiotic…dumbass, dumbass, dumbass…

I need to update my list.

“Republican Party Activists” choose Mitt Romney as #1 contender for 2012. Did I mention this is stupid? Stupid as in — why even bother to have an election at all?

Conservative activists on Saturday named former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the winner of a poll for best 2012 GOP presidential candidate.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won 20 percent of the vote in straw poll for presidential favorites.

The poll marked the third consecutive year Romney came out on top.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal placed second in the annual poll, conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Romney received 20 percent of the vote and Jindal got 14 percent.

Close behind were Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who each received 13 percent of the vote.

Okay, you know I want Palin. And I know “most” of you “party activists,” thinking “independently,” are going to march in lockstep and tell me she doesn’t come off well when she’s interviewed by perky Katie. And of course that means everything.

Here, let’s not have this argument. Neither mind is going to be changed. Instead, just ponder my litmus test…

Interview asks Candidate X the following: “What is your position on torturing detainees by means of waterboarding?” Candidate X can reply…

1. I think it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, although we’ve never done it.
2. It’s just terrible, and on my watch it will never happen again.
3. I don’t have a personal opinion about it but the experts tell me that’s torture, and I believe them.
4. Mister Interviewer, what the f— is your idea for getting information out of these guys?
5. When you think about it, a “civilized” society will do whatever it takes to fight these a**holes, and a “savage” society will sit around doing nothing so it can fool itself into thinking it’s “civilized.”
6. I would like you to define “torture”; we can agree, can we not, that it’s a useless word if it applies to anything you personally wouldn’t want to have done to you…right?
7. Peace is possible if we can get other nations to like us, or at least stop hating us.
8. It’s unconstitutional!
9. That question is above my pay grade.
10. I’ll have to get back to you on that, I don’t have an opinion yet.

My litmus test: Huge plus points for the candidate that answers with 4, 5 or 6 (in fact, MEGA points for the candidate that answers with 5). Enormous minus points for a candidate who answers with any of the others.

And I don’t think Romney would pick 4, 5 or 6.

As God is my witness, if there is one single thing about 21st-century American politics I simply don’t understand and simply can’t figure out, it is: Why is this such a tall fucking order? Seriously. Pardon my french, but this has long ago gotten just a little bit on the aggravating side. I want a candidate that will — for the benefit of all Americans, conservative and liberal — keep the conversation fixated on whether conservative ideas are better than liberal ideas, or vice-versa. Isn’t that what we want our elections to be about? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be about?

McCain did quite a few things right. But he did a lot of things wrong…and my confidence is sky-high that Mitt would repeat each mistake, faithfully, like he was painting-by-numbers. And those mistakes have to do with reassuring people, people who figure out what offends them before they’ve really noodled out what’s a good idea and what isn’t a good idea, that he won’t be responsible for such offense…even if, in pursuing such an implied pact, he’d be implementing a lot of bad ideas and forsaking a lot of good ones.

Granted, I don’t think Palin is going to pursue the intricacies of cause-and-effect in foreign policy, money supply, unemployment, interrogation techniques, et al, any better than Romney or McCain. But if there’s one thing the conservative movement needs right now, it is representation by someone who will not apologize for believing in it.

Example:

Tax cuts work. You can cut the tax rate and in so doing, raise more revenue. It can be done — logic says so, history says so, and when logic and history agree we need to be paying attention. And the reason logic agrees with history, is that when it’s cheaper for people to do things, they’re more likely to do ’em.

You people who want to argue that point, no matter how many letters you have after your name, can piss off. And you people who want me to apologize for believing in it, you can piss off too.

There. Like that. Clean up the language for television and so forth…but there it is. See how easy it is?

I swear to God, it’s like ordering a chocolate milkshake in a burger joint, waiting twenty minutes for it, and then finding out they forgot the order.

What in the hell is so hard about this??

This male chauvinist pig says — let’s recognize strength, and likelihood of success, in a woman when it’s really there. And this time, it’s really there. We need fidelity to principles, and unwillingness to apologize for having them, before we need ability to ingratiate with the Manhattan blue-blood crowd. We already tried the ability to ingratiate. It doesn’t fly. So stop it already. Just. Knock. It. Off. Now.

Update 3/1/09: Okay once again we’re reminded, it all depends on whom you ask. I’m all calmed down now. Cheesy YouTube clip is linked behind the screen cap below…

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization, VPILF, Yin and Yang | 1 Comment »

You Can’t Be My BFF Anymore

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

As I sail into an Obama-free weekend…one last thing. Because this really made me kind of chuckle. It’s a comment left over on Gerard’s blog from one Mike NTH.

This is trite, but the press crush on Obama is like the crushes teenage girls have, and they don’t realize that everyone else around them is sick and tired about hearing how awesome ‘Jason’ (or Jeremy, or David, whatever) is.

And then someone will tell the press they are tired of hearing about the crush.
And then the teen-queen media will go into a hissy fit about how ‘jealous’ the detractor is.
And the detractor will say they aren’t jealous, just tired of hearing about him every day.
And the teen-queen will say how they aren’t ‘BFF’ anymore.
And the detractor will say ‘fine’.

And two weeks later the crush will be over.
And in three weeks the teen-queeen will be telling the detractor what a pig ‘Jason’ (or Jeremy, or David, or whatever) is.

And the cycle will begin.

N.B.: I substitute taught for four and a half years and also worked in a youth camp. I have heard this drill before.

It brought a smile to my face because, believe it or not, I’ve seen men in their mid-thirties go through this kind of cycle. More than once on the stupid little merry-go-round. And, as our society becomes softer and softer, I’m reasonably sure the containment mechanism that confines this behavior to the pre-teen female set, will deteriorate further.

Seventy years ago men just barely old enough to drink were dropping bombs on Germany. Now they snark at each other about Obama’s awesomeness, and how you can’t be my BFF anymore.

There’s hope somewhere, right?

Posted in Obamamania, Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

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