iPandora

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

Lax credit and easy spending policies are products of both Democrat and Republican leaderships in years past. The conservative movement has recognized the failures of this more so than their compatriots in the liberal movement. Calls for the privatization of Fannie and Freddie, two of the main contributors to the whole system of easy credit, are not likely to be heeded by the current elected leadership in Washington D.C. And Fed Chairman Bernanke believes such easy credit is the best policy, despite it’s contribution to the economic failures of the last several years.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

Political correctness is losing favor across the ideological aisles. This false equality of outcome which relies on enforced restrictions on true equality, that is, the equality of potential, has been a pernicious evil in our country. But other perniciously evil policies continue to thrive here. Policies that drag down those who have achieved in order to not unnecessarily burden those who will not achieve with that natural and good desire to become something other than the abject failures. Except that’s not right, you can only fail if you’ve started at something. Many of these haven’t started anything and therefore aren’t failures but worse. Any system that encourages people in any way to remain nothings is evil for it robs them of their humanity as surely as Nazi extermination program robbed so many of their humanity.

You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

In that iconic moment when Joe the Plumber’s question drew out then Senator Obama’s statement that we need to spread the wealth around, it revealed a misunderstanding of economic systems that time has not changed. If you want to grow jobs, you make it easier for companies to make and keep money. If you take what they make for your own wealth redistribution programs and to “spread it around” you hurt not just the business you wanted to stick it to, but all its employees and potential employees as well. This isn’t rocket science.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.

Ever since FDR, liberal leaders have been adept at pitting class against class. There is no inherent nobility in the individual man whose mind and heart must be won. There is only the group, the LGBT, the blacks, the whites, the lower class, the middle class, the upper class, the “them”, the “us”, the hispanics, the wage earners, the corporations, the haves, the have-nots. Targeted fiscal policy meant to assuage the ire of a particular class are unconstitutional as they do not benefit every American equally, which is a requirement of federal policy. It’s vote-buying and favor peddling. And the result is a torn and fragmented society beset by such tensions within it cannot unify to address situations without.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

The poor will always be among us. This doesn’t free us from a responsibility to assist them. Instead it requires we develop consistent and repeatable patterns of assistance with several criteria. There must be a filter that prevents moochers and freeloaders from taking resources that would be better appreciated and taken advantage of by those deserving poor. And the money for such charity must be given willingly, not taken without recourse. A rich man who does not give to charity only illumines the shallowness of his own soul. He does not deserve theft of his goods, only the scorn of society.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

This is a failure of nearly everybody in leadership in Washington D.C. and a result of an uncareful electorate who do not take real pains to determine the true character of the candidate or who believe that character doesn’t matter.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

Just as by helping a butterfly escape it’s chrysalid prison you doom it to a short, painful life and quick, ugly death, by taking away the responsibilities of a person or natural societal group, you end up with stunted and immature people who will continue all the ills aformentioned.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

There are few things more evil than to do for someone else what they are capable of doing themselves. Particularly when they are not in dire need and what they need to accomplish is a task that would encourage or build in them traits of character not already full-fledged in their being.

Run away!

Vowing to “reverse the overall erosion in middle class security” President Obama is trying to reconnect with us poor plebes left out in the cold with all this uncertainty.

Probably because he’s had his pants handed to him more often than he’s done the handing this year, and mostly because of massive levels of policy-specific disapproval in the middle class, he’s trying to make good enough to not have it handed to him again in upcoming elections.

His pet projects to engender warm fuzzies in my quivering breast (Ok, that sounded a little weird): use my money to pay for every other poor schmucks child care, retirement, student loans, and elderly parents.

In other words, if you’re living outside your means such that you need more than one parent can make, if your primary retirement plan is to play the lottery, if you’re attending a college you can’t afford, and if your parents had the same problems, you get my money to square your books.

Yup. I’ve got all kinds of warm fuzzies here for you, Mr. President.

This is what’s called a buy out. President Roosevelt (Franklin Delano, to be exact) was master at this, pitting party against party, class against class.

The problem here is that I’m middle class and I’m not going to be taking advantage of any of these programs, which means, by default, I’ll be getting taken advantage of.

See where all these warm fuzzies are coming from? They’re certainly not Tribbles.

Here’s my (unsolicited) suggestions, Mr. President. Back off. Stay away. Shut my pocket book. Quit meddling.

Why don’t I like being meddled with?

People don’t like to be meddled with.
We tell them what to do, what to think.
Don’t run, don’t walk.
We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right.
We’re meddlesome.

Line 4 there folks, “we haven’t the right” (Thanks to River Tam and Serenity for the above wisdom).

I’m most comfortable when I’m left alone (by the government) to do as I ought. That is an important distinction from doing as I like. The government does have responsibility to constrain those who do as they like to the detriment of those who haven’t liked what was done to them. Government has no right to do as they like to those who’d rather be left to do as they ought.

Thankfully, I don’t believe Mr. President, for all his awesome rhetorical ability, is former President Clinton. He’ll not be able to communicate this program in any way that will make it appear less than it is to those who care.

President Clinton actually changed his policies when he say how the chips fell against him. He became downright conservative in his fiscal policies and beguiled enough to remain in power.

President Obama has too much blood in the game, is too invested in his Marxist ideology to change his policies, and so he is left only to dress them up. Which is something he can only do to himself with any success.

The New York Times highlights, of course, that this is nowhere near the levels of rainbows and unicorns promised during the campaign:

Mr. Biden rejected criticism that the proposals Mr. Obama was unveiling were relatively small-bore compared with the vast and sweeping measures he pushed during his first year in office. �They�re big-deal things if you�re just able to give some respite for a husband and wife, both working, to give a little bit of help,� Mr. Biden said.

So no one is happy with President Obama now.

Darn.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on how he’s concerned about the middle class. What about the lower class? What about the upper class? Aren’t they all American’s too? The middle class must be the biggest, most homogeneous voting bloc.

Charles' Scartlett Letter

YaVaughnie Wilkins posted the signs after she learned that her lover, Charles E. Phillips � president and director of the tech conglomerate Oracle Corporation and a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board � had reconciled with his wife, the New York Post reported.

Charles E. Phillips has a 10 year old son, has had an 8-1/2 year “serious relationship” with Wilkins, and is a “family man”.

That means he’s “loved” this woman almost as long as he’s had a son. Consider the implications of that.

He’s a creep, untrustworthy, etc.

Well, he’s worthy of something, social disapprobation and shaming.

Which is exactly what YaVaughnie did. For the wrong reasons, yea. But I’m begging and not feeling particularly choosie.

Read about her billboards.

It all comes from our pockets anyways

They’re getting what they deserve.

The latest in a long line of missteps and failures, cop-outs and poor choices that is the multiple bank failures and bankruptcies and bailouts and now the payback.

President Obama is looking to recoup the cost of the banking bailouts from those few banks that haven’t yet repaid what they’d taken from us.

Can’t say I blame him in this case. I’d want my money back too, especially if my shopping list was as long as his.

Unfortunately, the bailout money was taken from me, you, and all the other productive members of this society to pay for the failures of the financial flops. And now the recouping fees will come from us too.

That sock under the mattress is looking better by the minute.

Sexual Shamelessness

Andrew Klavan on PJTV has an excellent video skewering our culture’s libertine sexual shamelessness. Klavan tends to fall on the libertarian side of things, but I have to agree with the gist of his arguments here. After successfully lampooning Letterman and Polansky, showing them for the shameful cad and the predator they are, respectively, Klavan points out the real result of sexual shamelessness:

A world without sexual shame soon becomes a world not, unfortunately, of endless physical pleasure, but of unrestrained predators, victims without recourse, and children without hope or support.

But why read my description? See it for yourself (Caution: this does deal with mature topics and current events and uses some slight innuendo):

Why can’t we have more men in the media spotlight of the caliber of Paul Newman?

Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?

Psychology and an increased understanding of human nature and design supports the fact that the best relationships, sexual or otherwise, always occur when there is the most trust. When there is not an expectation and trust in fidelity, in honest and open communication, in the primacy of this relationship before others in a natural and acceptable order of hierarchy, there cannot be true intimacy.

In other words: the more we know, the more we can trust what we’ve always known.

Experiencing wonderful intimacy inside my marriage with the wonderful and amazing Grace, I can only feel sorry for those who deceive themselves and cheat themselves out of the wonderful possibilities.

ACORNs Still Falling

ACORN claimed the reporting duo who brought the monstrous organization to it’s knees last month would never release the tape from their encounter in Philadelphia. The MSM carried their water, as usual.

And yet. And yet. And yet…

This video was not necessary for the slaying of the ACORN dragon. It was necessary for the further delegitimatizing of the MSM. ACORN is already discredited, defeated, and, short of some miraculous event, dead for all intents and purposes. But the MSM was caught with their pants down, their hands in the cookie jar, and with egg on their face in this video.

In Bill Whittle’s assessment of the original take down, he likened the assault on ACORN to a battle where the scrappy underdog takes out the monolithic giant using feints and parries to draw him into a vulnerable position, and then destroying him.

This latest video is yet another blow to an enemy already weakened and yet too full of it’s own self, too invested in it’s own lies, and too spiteful to recognize their own death knell.

See how the mighty have fallen.

In Other News

Mark Steyn points out that when Rush Limbaugh does not say something racist, he’s a racist and ought to be vilified and and run out of town on a rail, but when Anita Dunn, the President’s Media Czar, says something insane and dangerous to free people everywhere, it’s a non-story.

Rush Limbaugh’s remarks are “divisive”; Anita Dunn’s are entirely normal. But don’t worry, the new Fairness Doctrine will take care of the problem.

Read Limbaugh Bad, Mao Good.

Cal Thomas, in World Magazine writes:

The administration’s primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies.

Read “Radio Free America”.

Neil Simpson, always a reasoned and reasonable man ready and willing to do verbal ambassadorship with those with illogical or incorrect views, is dealing with a fresh source of readers and their questions (let’s see if he picks up a hint from the choice of words above…):

The moral: Look to the reasons behind the beliefs.  If you have good reason to question the motives of the person in question, that is different.

Read this week’s Roundup.

Wintery Knight, spoiling for a good debate, points out the transcript of Hugh Hewitt’s (the best talk show host, period.) radio debate with Richard Dawkins. The good bits:

HH: Well, you repeatedly use the analogy of a detective at a crime scene throughout The Greatest Show On Earth. But detectives simply can’t dismiss evidence they don’t want to see. There’s a lot of evidence for the miracles, in terms of eyewitness…

RD: No, there isn’t. What there is, is written stories which were written decades after the alleged events were supposed to happen. No historian would take that seriously.

HH: Well, that’s why I’m conflicted, because in your book, you talk about the Latin teacher who is stymied at every turn, and yet Latin teachers routinely rely on things like Tacitus and Pliny, and histories that were written centuries after the events in which they are recording occur.

RD: There’s massive archaeological evidence, there’s massive evidence of all kinds. It’s just not comparable. No…if you talk to any ancient historian of the period, they will agree that it is not good historical evidence.

HH: Oh, that’s simply not true. Dr. Mark Roberts, double PhD and undergraduate at Harvard, has written a very persuasive book upon this. I mean, that’s an astounding statement. Are you unfamiliar with him?

RD: All right, then there may be some, but a very large number of ancient historians would say…

HH: Well, you just said there were none. So there are some that you are choosing not to confront.

RD: You sound like a lawyer.

HH: I am a lawyer.

Read Wintery Knights analysis.

Where’re the headlines?

Interesting

Reason.org reports on a study published in October 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association which busts the balloon of “common knowledge” regarding who clogs emergency rooms and doesn’t pay.

Show of hands: who believes it is the uninsured who use a disproportionately high amount of medical care in US emergency rooms while paying a disproportionately low amount of their bills?

I did. In the face of a lack of public evidence to the contrary and because it sounds plausible. It passed the “stink” test.

Well, it’s deodorant is wearing out and the reek of the rotted corpse is becoming harder and harder to conceal.

(R)esearchers at the University of Michigan … concluded that “available data do not support assumptions that uninsured patients are a primary cause of overcrowding, present with less acute conditions than insured patients, or seek [emergency room] care primarily for convenience.”

(P)atients with public insurance, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are more likely to crowd into emergency rooms for minor complaints than are the uninsured. Only about 17 percent of E.R. visits in the United States in the last year studied were by uninsured patients, about the same as their share of the population.

Additionally:

A 2007 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine looked at charges and payments for 43,128 emergency department visits between 1996 and 2004. “What surprised us was that uninsured patients actually pay a higher proportion of their emergency department charges than Medicaid does,” reported co-author Reneé Hsia, a specialist in emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “In fact, 35 percent of charges for uninsured visits were paid in 2004, compared with 33 percent for Medicaid visits.”

Read the whole story here.

In other words, it’s the people already on that paradigm of balanced care, the public option, that are the dead weight on the system. They are leeches. They suck eagerly at the public teat like so many thirty-year-old, basement dwelling, XBox playing nerds living off their own mother’s inability to to force their children to grow up.

In nature the parent birds push their own children out of their nest in a fly or fall choice.

We humans have compassion and a sign of a healthy society is more likely found in their care for their poor rather than the lack of the poor. But to forcibly take from the productive members of society and play the enabler to the myriad sponges found around every willing and leaky faucet is not to help but to kill.

“Where are the headlines?”  a friend asked.

With the wonder of the internet and the example of Big Government and the slaying of the beast ACORN in recent weeks, we must embrace this truth about a fundamental change in our society: we are the 4th estate.

Each and every one of us have the power, through viral spreading of messages through the networks of facebook and youtube and twitter, myspace and orkut, blogs and the wider web, to build a story, however under-reported in the mainstream media, into a tsunami which cannot be ignored by those we’ve sent to do our bidding in DC and statehouses across this nation.

Are you doing your part in this brave new world?

Government Is Big

Bringing home the glory in the Duh! category today, the Washington Post, reporting on Obama’s Executive Order mandating federal agencies monitor and decrease their greenhouse emissions and environmental footprint, noted the government is big.

Administration officials said they could not estimate the federal government’s carbon footprint, since it has never been measured before, but the government ranks as the nation’s largest energy consumer. It occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles and employs more than 1.8 million civilian workers.

Read the whole story here.

Very big.

500,000 buildings?

Five Hundred-Thousand buildings?

What in heaven’s name have we allowed the government to do in order to meet our needs for an accountable system of government?

I feel like Frankenstein’s creator: “It’s ALIIIIVE!”.

And well I should. After all, as an involved member of this greatest nation on God’s green earth I’m one who votes and talks, exercising the rights guaranteed by a Constitution won with the blood of thousands and defended by the blood of millions. And therefore I’m responsible, maybe not for the problem directly, but for the solution certainly.

I’m not one to get into the whole green thing. The clerk at Bed, Bath & Beyond said she wanted to use the bamboo kitchen utensils I was checking out because she’d heard they were more environmentally friendly. I told her I used them because they work better than regular wood utensils, nothing green about it.

But here’s something real greens and conservatives and concerned citizens across the country can all get behind: cut back on the footprint of the government by cutting back on the government.

In a galaxy far, far away…

…where President Obama lives. He was joined recently by the members of the Nobel Prize Committee.  It’s probably more true to say they’ve been there all along, considering who they like to reward.

But breaking information regarding the nature of that world has come to light courtesy of a small, fuzzy friend”

The Real Winner

Ironic Surrealism has the lowdown on the real winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:

The real Peace Prize winner.

Why so sad, Mr. President?

Dear Mr. President,

Today is probably not your best day. After the rush of the election, the thrill of victory, the surge of support, and the adulation of the petty tyrants at the UN, your poll numbers have begun falling, your policies are gaining little traction, your adoring masses are getting disillusioned with the continuing economic problems and high unemployment, and today you lost the Olympics.

Failed in the first round, no less.

Booted.

Kicked out.

Epic fail.

But buck up, Mr President. Welcome to the club of people not everybody likes.

Most of the rest of us have been here for quite a while. My own tale of arriving in this party is a tale of my growing up. The main differences are that I learned it by getting lost in Italy at the age of 25, and I’m now content to stay with this group.

You’re in your 40’s now and have had little in your past to prepare you for this rejection. You’ve been adored and coddled and had plenty of friends to pad your parties for far longer than I ever did.

Fair weather friends are pretty nice when fair weather has followed you for 40 years. But the clouds blow in, and today you found yourself out on your butt.

Too bad your pal Ahmedinejad wasn’t heading the IOC today.

Except he wouldn’t have been any nicer.

The point is, Mr. President, you must accept the fact that not everybody can and will like you. And you can’t follow the simpleton notion that those who disagree with your or don’t vote for you are evil.

I’m neither evil, racist, nor a pygmy. But we  disagree in more ways than not.

So what is to be done?

Once you accept, as I have, that some people just don’t want to be part of your crowd, you must move on. You find the people who do want to hang out with you, and you hang out with them.

Or you put away the megalomaniac glasses, and you find a group that you want to be a part of, not because they like you, but because they are worthwhile.

If you find a group that likes you, they are most likely fakers and liars.

But when you find a group that, regardless of their feelings for you, are worth being a part of, you’ve joined yourself to something bigger than yourself and found your identity in something outside yourself.

Champions are quickly forgotten who fight for themselves and their own name and honor. The ones we remember fought for something bigger and more worthwhile.

After all, you’ll be here on this earth probably not much more than 40 more years. At the most. And if you were only fighting for yourself, who will care at that point. We’ll put you 6 feet under just like everybody else.

Now, the important thing is to decide who to join yourself to. I’d submit that the fact that America’s Exceptionalism is a mighty fine thing to champion. I’d cheer you on for that. And hell would probably freeze over.

I labor under no assumptions you’ll change, though I hope God will see fit to direct your heart in such a way.

So welcome to the club, Mr. President. Enjoy your stay.

I hope you’re not planning on leaving soon.

UPDATE: Morgen from Verum Serum quotes BBC News’ Adam Brookes:

(Obama’s) legendary powers of persuasion will be said to have failed him, though in reality it will be Chicago’s bid that failed him.

And VelvetHammer from Ironic Surrealism gets snarky:

The entire planet rejects Obama

Tis a pity, the Obama, his bitter half Michelle and the Oprah shilled, sacrificed and begged for the Chicago Olympics bid to no avail.

Obama's Health Care - You're going to get screwed

Socialized healthcare is just such a big target.

A good friend of mine a few weeks ago said his main argument against it is the historical argument: what programs has the United States government run successfully in the past that can serve as a model for the successful management of the entire healthcare system of the US?

It’s a good question.

I get echoes of “Bueller… Bueller… Bueller…?” in my head just thinking about it.

United States Senator Tom Coburn thinks it’s a very relevant question to, as he uses it to correct a lady who is asking for his support of socialized medicine in the US.

UPDATE: Neil from 4Simpsons says the health care bill does contain funding for abortion. His logic is the same we use to find black holes. If  you don’t find something you expected to find, there’s probably a good reason.

Big Plans: Obama and Pelosi

Jack Ryan, hero of most of the books penned by author Tom Clancy, is given words which President Obama and most, if not all, of the leadership in Washington DC and state capitols across this great nation would do well to hear and heed.

In The Sum Of All Fears Jack Ryan encounters a powerful member of the current administration and gives them a reality check on what they’d been considering:

(T)he most dangerous trap in government service. You start to think that your wishes to make the world a better place supersede the principles under which our government is support to operate.

The government of the United States of America operates under the constraints and the controls of the Constitution of the United States of America.

The strength of the United States of America is that we believe that no man is above the law. No member of the government, no matter how high or powerful, can escape this.

That’s why former President Clinton was impeached, he broke the law by lying before a Grand Jury.

That’s why there are governors and legislators and mayors and bureaucrats of all types in prison, because their position does not free them from the constraints of the law.

The Constitution, a document of purpose and power, is the real strength behind this American Experiment. And to the extent we ignore the conditions of the Constitution, we weaken it. And to the extent we weaken it, we weaken our nation. And to the extent we weaken our nation, we’re traitors.

Dreamers can be leaders, but we remain a strong nation only when our leaders stay within the bounds of their responsibility.

Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech

President Obama is still hoping he gets health care socialized before fall gets much underway and the Democrat leadership is anxious to deliver their messiah something palatable (to him and them) before he spurns them and finds a new set of disciples.

The fight waged on through the summer in the halls of our elected representatives and the screens of our TVs as it seems nearly the entirety of the elite class of America seems to want this.

The idea of class and elitism is an entirely different rant for an entirely different day. However, suffice it to say, America as a whole has been enablers at the very least in this creation of a super class. A group of people who, contrary to the very bedrock ideas and ideals of American idealism, are listened to and admired for reasons not much different than the aristocracy and royalty of those whose chains we sloughed off many years ago. Because they’re glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives and are adulated and congratulated by a fawning and feeding media pandering to a fawning and frenzied populace.

But Congress has let out for the summer and those we’ve employed to carry out the duties layed before them by the Constitution and with the admonition to remain constrained by the same, are coming home for their brief stint in what little of real life they must put up with prior to returning to the insular Washington D.C. And in these times at home, in order to breath new life into the flagging support for their beloved leader’s socialized health care initiatives, they are having what are being laughingly called townhall meetings.

Seeking to conjure up visions of colonial American citizens coming together in their meeting houses while ignoring the fact those meeting houses were usually churches and usually presided over by their pastors, they are creating what they hope to be media ready events with lots of weepy sob stories about how insurance carriers have shafted and cheated and dropped and left people with insurmountable bills.

But they read wrong.

The events are being taken over by citizens concerned, not that insurers are cheating them, but that government will fail and this failure will hurt far too many people than can be forgiven.

In video after video, we’re seeing soldiers and seniors and wives and mothers, fathers and sons standing up and demanding their representatives show them where in the Constitution they find the justification to perform what will be an abominable failure. Demanding reasons why if we can’t trust to government to run even the boondoggled “Cash for Clunkers” program, why we’re to trust them with our health care.

And those citizens, spending they’re own time and money and effort to attend these media events, are being called “plants” of the insurance companies, trained goons of the Republican party.

If the idea of socializing health care is such a valid and reasonable and good idea, why won’t we accept and allow discussion, alternate ideas, and even criticism of this so perfect program?

We have a democratic republic as our form of government and society in America and there is great weight and significance in the acceptance and even promotion of alternate ideas and opinions different from our own. The divergence of ideas even insures the strength of the positions eventually taken, as they’ve had to bear the strain of testing against all comers.

To provoke dissent and accept criticism is a proud tradition in America. It is perhaps our greatest strength.

To stifle protest and dismiss digressing opinions is becoming scarily commonplace in this administration.

Yes, it was “unpatriotic” to protest the Patriot act. But there wasn’t a talking point memo being read by every major network anchor stating they were planned plants of the evil Democrat leadership. And even that suppression was for the most part unwarranted, unnecessary, and un-American.

And so I ask, where is the decency? Where is the acceptance of those truly American ideals of protest and dissent? Where is the reason surrounding what is becoming a most messy muddle of he-said’s and she-said’s.

It’s like the butter battle all over again.

Start dissenting, before it’s not just unappreciated.