Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
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.
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.
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For the record:
I am officiallyregistered as “Independent” in New Hampshire.
Not only because it affords me the opportunity to vote in ANY political party’s primary, for whatever purpose, but also
so I will NOT be “counted” as choosing to be associated with -<em?the middle of the road just to “get along”- like many that call themselves Republicans, or any other justification for RINO.
I’m registered as “Independent” because, while there ARE individuals so inclined, AND have the fortitude to espouse integrity, there’s no “Conservative” or “Constitutionist”
check box option in the current GOP.
And yes, truth be told, the “party” with fundamentals CLOSEST to my actual practice in life is called Libertarian.
Yep, I too was one of many others AMAZED that 90 minutes had passed in the brief time Mr. Limbaugh orated at the recent CPAC event.
- CaptDMO | 03/05/2009 @ 11:55Ah… the one true thing about being a moderate: you get shit from BOTH sides. I didn’t vote for The One, but I DO consider myself a moderate. And I DO pay attention. Rabid ideologues piss me off, I don’t care if they’re Lefty-Socialists or Righty-Fascists. I’m speaking specifically of the “my way or the highway” types.
Screw Ms. Melissa. In an entirely non-sexual way, of course. 😉
- bpenni | 03/05/2009 @ 12:30All I ask of moderates is that they internalize their perception of where the extremism is, on both sides, and why they find it necessary to stay away from it.
Too much of the time, “moderation” comes from externalizing everything. Whatever this guy said, added together with whatever that guy over there said, divide by two…that’s my position because I’m “moderate.” That is how we ended up in this mess. Besides, “externalizing everything” contains the word “everything,” therefore, it is impossible for it to be truly moderate. Such foolish moderates are endeavoring toward a zero, and are failing to achieve even that.
One example we’ve been known to use quite often: A guy says humans breath air. Another guy says humans breath water. The moderate would say you stick your face in the toilet bowl half the time.
Another example: You have a hundred dollars. A robber robs you and wants you to give him the hundred dollars. You don’t want to give it to him. The moderate would want you to give him fifty.
Surely this is not the kind of moderation you’re advocating Buck?
And how come — so often in human history, when we aim the most “moderate” policies, we end up with the most extremist implementations? This stimulus nonsense, isn’t that a wonderful example of what I’m talking about?
- mkfreeberg | 03/05/2009 @ 14:20Worse yet are the folks who fancy themselves as “moderates” yet are nothing but.
Seems to me the only people who are proud of who they are and hold their head up high when declaring it are Conservatives. I’ve never witnessed a Liberal or a Moderate proudly proclaim their allegiance. (OK that one socialist guy but he was drunk so…) Now why is that?
- tim | 03/05/2009 @ 15:37Thanks for the love, Morgan.
I think the bedrock problem is that conservatism has splintered. We have our social cons, neo-cons, paleo’s and libertarian sections. Add in the fundamentally confused, loud ignoramuses whose hearts are in the right place but make the whole look like a batch of inbred idiots and you’ve got an incomprehensible mess that can’t articulate a clear, compelling message.
We haven’t been helped by the GOP hypocrites we elect. These so called conservative representatives spend like drunken sailors, load up on self-serving new government programs and can’t keep their pants zipped or hands out of scandalous cookie jars. They make us look like fools at every turn. We elect shit, funded by special interest, and whine when the house stinks.
The GOP needs to be tanked. We need maybe two separate parties, the social and neo conservatives might be able to form one unit, the libertarian and paleos could house the others. I can’t stand conservatives who push social legislation or advocate for democracy building abroad. They look like another form of big government under a different guise to me, not much different than their liberal counterparts who live in la la utopia, we can fix everything, land. You can’t fix everything, stop fucking trying.
I want government hemmed in by constitutional restraints and made as small as humanly possible to see the state’s business well done. I want the Feds out of our lives, out of our states and out of our pockets – I want D.C. put on a starvation diet and living under the boot of vigilant, penny pinching, freedom loving voters.
*Okay, that was more rant than pithy. Blame the beer.
- Daphne | 03/05/2009 @ 19:39Surely this is not the kind of moderation you’re advocating Buck?
No, it’s not. I thought I was clear in saying I object to, and refuse to identify with, rabid ideologues. There’s nothing wrong with having convictions and everything right about having good ones. But life is a series of compromises… and the ability to forge working compromises is the essence of politics. I say that with full knowledge that there ARE times when one must draw a line in the sand… but those times are relatively rare. Unless you’re an ideologue of the rabid type.
My $0.02.
- bpenni | 03/06/2009 @ 15:10Well, you already know from my “moderates” post that there is a point to be made about seeking a non-extreme, middle ground versus simply having a poor memory. When one extols the virtues of “moderation” that is actually a convenient forgetfulness about bad policy, one confuses moderation with extremism.
The Laffer Curve is a good example. What is it? It says that if you collect more taxes, eventually you might pass a zenith beyond which, when you ratchet up taxes further still, you collect less revenue. There is, therefore, an optimal point. It advocates neither high taxes or low taxes; it simply points out there is such a thing as point-of-diminishing returns. The Laffer Curve is practically the very definition of true, sensible moderation.
But in our quest for “moderation” we’ve discarded it. It’s looked upon as an “extremist” viewpoint to even hint that there might be something to it, that it might be anything but “the discredited Laffer curve.” And so eventually, to defend some cosmetic “moderate” credentials, you have to end up taking on rather extremist doctrines…such as, that the answer to a revenue shortfall is ALWAYS a tax increase. Logically, that is extreme. But, right after an election in which the “moderates” won, it is viewed as a moderate solution.
- mkfreeberg | 03/06/2009 @ 16:36