Sunday, November 29, 2009
I am a Notre Dame Fan
I watched the Stanford game last night. Of course, my beloved Irish fell by seven points to the Cardinals.
I have three points for the readers....or those who may care to share my pain....
1. Notre Dame lost to Michigan, USC, Navy, Connecticut, Pittsburgh, and Stanford. With the exception of Michigan and Connecticut, all of those teams are bowl-bound. Their combined records are 33-13. Including Michigan and UConn, the record of the teams that Notre Dame lost to is 44-25.
2. There was nothing wrong with the Notre Dame offense. It was all about defense. This is Weis’ fault, of course, but give the guy credit for the offense. They scored 31 points a game and scored 43 touchdowns. Jimmy Clausen had a passer rating of 161.4.
3. The team lost 6 games by a total of 25 points, or 4.2 friggin’ points per game.
Of course, Weis is GONE. His winning percentage is less than Ty Willingham’s and Bob Davie’s, so the ND Administration and Sports Department have no choice but to get rid of him. I hope the guy they bring in to replace him is a good coach and can reclaim the echoes and thunder.
But I’m allowed to be sad about it.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving!
To all of you, take pause and give thanks for the things we have, the people we share them with, and this fine Republic.
I am going to run for a pie....there’s a 5-mile run called the Turkey Trot, here in Columbus. I’m up getting ready to drive over to the start. I’f I finish well enough, I might win myself a pie!
Either way, one thing I need to mention is that I’m thankful for Drumwaster. He allows me to come here and rant, rave, and generally make verbal mischief. Drummy, you’ve been a true friend and I can’t thank you enough.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Prophetic
Today, at Instapundit:
“I think Obama’s “charisma” was based on voter narcissism — people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that’s over, and they’re stuck just with him, and emptied of their own narcissism there’s not much there to fill out the suit.”
And...me, January 18th, 2009:
“Now, these people have exactly the person they want in the office.....a primping, self-aggrandizing, malleable whelp that ‘speaks well’ and can use large words. IN their eyes, he’s JFK with the added bonus of being a minority, a walking trophy to their self-definition of open-mindedness. He’s coming in to ‘change everything’ by being like Bill Clinton. He is their idol, plated in gold and carrying the leftist and activist past that makes them weak with giddiness. It isn’t that he’s who he is, it’s that THEY WON OVER BUSH.....finally! Now, the traditional way of their forefathers...the love of God and country, the respect for the institutions...can be replaced with someone that is more agnostic about the beauty and miracle that is America.”
Nice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Trig Palin’s Homoerotic Web Stalker
I tried to tell many of you. All of you. This guy went batty when George W. Bush came out against gay marriage. Please...search Drumwaster’s Rants by using the search window on the left of the screen. Type in “Andrew Sullivan” Look at the 77 articles that contain references to him.
Look at his website.....look at the article I linked to above. Can you say anything other than this guy’s gone off the deep end?
He’s obsessing over a little kid with Down’s Syndrome. While we are losing the War on Terror, racking up $2 trillion in debt, the self-proclaimed ‘conservative’ is going apeshit over Trig Palin. APE. SHIT. Over Trig Palin. A little guy with Down’s Syndrome.
You know what Sarah Palin’s problem actually is? She is a religious woman that loves her children and is willing to support them even if they are different. I wonder if we are seeing Andrew Sullivan’s emotional scars that were produced when his parents asked God what was wrong with their son when he told them he was gay.
Andrew Sullivan hates Christianity and Christ. He hates people that espouse those beliefs. He hates Sarah Palin, and tries to character assassinate her, because she has tried her best to live by a standard Sullivan utterly rejects.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
I’ve been saying it for years
And then Glenn Beck came along and has been saying it for many months. (Except he’s on camera, y’know.)
Then Chris Muir comes along and gives a very gentle nudge in the same direction in today’s comic.
When it is such a public concept that it appears in the comic strips, the time is ripe.
Grab the popcorn, folks, the next two years are gonna get downright interesting*. But grab some ammo while you’re at it.
* - Using the word in the same sense as in the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
Friday, November 13, 2009
There’s a book I want you all to read
Seriously. Go down to the library and borrow it, or to the bookstore and buy your own copy (if you want to keep the economy staggering along) of Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”. It provides the blueprint for how to carry out a successful cell system for revolution. He goes into detail about the How-Tos of successful insurrection. We’re going to need that kind of widespread knowledge in the years to come.
Call me crazy, but the House passed a bill earlier this week (with the “laying on the table” of a provision they all know will be eliminated in the Conference Committee - that of not using Federal funding of abortion) that has made it a Criminal Act to refuse to buy their version of health insurance. Let me repeat so that we all understand. It will become An Imprisonable Offense Against Society to refuse to buy something you may not need. But if you choose to buy and you buy too much of it (the so-called “Cadillac plans"), you will have to pay a penalty tax on it.
If you own a car and don’t want to buy auto insurance, yet still remain within the law, there are options. You can walk. Ride a bicycle. Use a Segway. Catch a bus. Hail a taxicab. Hitch a ride with friends, family, neighbors or co-workers. You still have options.
Not so with this health care initiative. In order to pay for the care of the elderly (and I do not dispute the claims that 50%+ of all medical expenses are within the last 90 days of life), they have to ensure a source of income from people who are likely to be paying into the system, yet not using any of it. The people who are healthy, and young (so that they will be paying into it for as long as possible before starting to tap the river of resources themselves), who would prefer to use that money on frivolity and fun, such as going to Cancun with the roommate and significant others. Or shopping for shoes. Or buying the latest gadgets from Fry’s Electronics.
No, that money has to be paid in, and a simple $750 fine for not having insurance is not enough to entice them into buying a policy that costs a couple of grand every year. And as long as it’s cheaper to pay the fine than to pay the premiums, it will remain that way. Thus, the penalty must be made harsh enough that it will “encourage” the recalcitrant.
So now the enforcement of this not-a-tax is going to be handled through the IRS, as a line item on your income tax forms, with noncompliance bringing down a jail term!
I think that if this passes, I am going to fire every one of my guys, and go on disability. Just go limp and start stocking away supplies and ammo. (Working “under the table” from time to time, for cash and no paperwork, just to hit Vegas every year, y’know.)
Interesting conundrum, though. They are advocating for the release of any non-violent drug offenders from prison, because “drug use is a victimless crime”. But apparently not buying health insurance isn’t.
“Hey, what are you in for?”
“I raped my father. You?”
“I didn’t buy health insurance.”
Ludicrous? You tell me…
Sunday, November 08, 2009
The Socialists just won a battle
The House passed the Pelosi/Obama/Lenin/Mao Health Care/Freedom Seizure bill 220-215, One Republican (Anh (Joseph) Cao, LA) voted for it....funny, he was the guy that replaced William “Money in my Freezer” Jefferson. Sure glad the people of New Orleans put a guy with integrity into the office. Reminds me of those clips of N.O. police officers looting during Katrina.
Either way, Now we have the more deliberative Senate, where we know Joseph Lieberman (I, Conn.) is going to vote against anything with a ‘public (aka socialist, fascist, communist) option’. He’ll offset Lindsey Graham (RINO, SC), so we need two (2..only TWO) US Senators to kill this thing.
This whole operation is why you DON’T settle for a ‘moderate’ when you need a ‘conservative’. Two conservatives in the House would have stopped a $2 TRILLION ($2,000,000,000,000) takeover of our daily lives. ALSO, remember, the people of the United States opposed this bil by a wide margin.....and the House voted AGAINST THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE THAT PUT THEM THERE.
I hope there is a voter-caused bloodletting in both bodies of the Congress...meaning that I hope every person that voted against the will of the people is unceremoniously dumped from their publicly-funded position of prestige.
However, today, the socialists won. They ignored millions of protesters, millions of phone calls and tens of millions of e-mails and letters, just for the sake of a power grab and help in getting re-elected. President Obama, rather than pushing help for the commanding general in Afghanistan, or stopping Iran from getting nukes, decided to push a government takeover of 17% of the economy. And that’s what it’s all about...not health care. Remember, when asked, most of the Democrats tell us they wouldn’t subscribe to it. POTUS wouldn’t, Pelosi wouldn’t, Harry Reid wouldn’t.....but they will FORCE you to do it.
I’m getting my concealed-carry permit in the next few weeks. Not that it’s related or anything.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Had to work the election yesterday
I got called at 9:45 pm Monday night to fill a vacancy left by a family emergency. i had been aware that there was an election, but since we weren’t going to be voting in it (it was only for a few communities in the county - ten, I think), I wasn’t paying attention. Since I was on “standby”, I didn’t even have to attend the training class, and since I’ve been a Range Inspector for the last several elections, I was fully qualified to do any job they needed. I just didn’t think they would need me in such a low-turnout election.
Well, they needed.
Blah, blah, daughter going into the hospital blah blah have to find a replacement *ringring* “Hi, we need you. Be at the precinct at 6:15 tomorrow morning.” Remember, folks, that 6:15 deadline was only 8 1/2 hours away.
I went, and did the job, and I hope I did it right. 36 voters all day, and i don’t even know what they were voting for. I think it was for the local school board or something.
God, my back hurts today.
Monday, November 02, 2009
What Would Happen If…?
What would happen if thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people simply refused to pay into this grab for freedom that is referred to as “public option health care”?
“There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law that is not supported by the People.”—Hubert Humphrey
What would they do? What could they do?
Friday, October 30, 2009
I was just sitting here
and a strange sensation came over me. I was feeling this tightness in my cheeks and wondered what it was. I actually had to feel my cheeks to realize that I was smiling at an empty room!
And it hit me.
For the first time in memory, I actually don’t hurt! I have done a full inventory of all of the standard trouble spots, and there isn’t a one of them that hurts. I can feel twinges like they’re thinking of hurting later on, but they seem to be having a staff meeting or something, and can’t be disturbed.... 
UPDATE: Well, THAT didn’t last long. 
Thursday, October 29, 2009
1,990 pages
and over 3,000 uses of the word “shall”, and they still want to call it an “option”?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Dislocation
As a small aside, the Cross Family (all four of us...two daughters, wife, and myself) have the dreaded H1N1....no worries..it’s just a flu. I felt like garbage for a couple days, and still have the chest congestion, but none the worse for wear. Don’t fear the swine, my friends. Clear liquids and rest, just like anything else.
When I read articles like this and other ones like this, it becomes increasingly apparent to me what is going on.
What we are seeing is a growing dislocation between the governing and the governed.
Now, I will tell you right now that I believe that this separation has always existed....to a point. Presidents and legislators must, at times, vote against the will of their constituents. I accept that, as a citizen of a republic, there is a trade off that must be made. The government will not always represent the will of the majority.
However, it usually does. It predominantly does. Only in times of national emergency, or when the government is privy to information the rest of us don’t have, do they act in a way contrary to the will of the governed. And for short periods of time. If our government rules against the will of the people without reason, we tend to correct it.....the Congressional Election of 1994 comes to mind.
So.....what do I mean by the title of the post?
There are two national political parties in this country....the Republican and Democrat parties. As their names suggest, they originally represented two schools of thought. The ‘Republicans’ were dedicated to the idea of the Republic.....the governed choose their federal representatives to represent them, and more emphasis is put on the more representative local governments. The ‘Democrat’ party were more inclined to support the rule of the majority on all levels of government...that the federal government should be broader and more directly involved in the lives of the citizens. More succinctly, the Republicans were more supportive of smaller federal government/stronger state government, and the Democrats were for larger federal government/weaker state government.
Before one looks at Lincoln and starts talking about the 14th Amendment...that was proposed before the ‘Radical Republicans’ took control of the Congress and ratified under a Democratic President...Andrew Johnson. Also, like I stated above, there was an emergency during Lincoln’s Presidency. If you aren’t sure what that was, I’d take a minute and look it up.
So...back to dislocation. I can’t tell you when the two parties started moving away from their original core principles....probably before I was born (1969), but it wasn’t all at once. It is just reached a sort of apex at this time, driven by the elections of the past three years.
In 2006, America was tired of the war....this happens. We’ve had war fatigue before as a nation, and elections occur that show the national mood. In addition, the Republicans weren’t acting like the Republicans the electorate put into office in 1994. The voices of fiscal responsibility were buried. The drive to give the states power over their own affairs was nonexistent. The Republicans, elected because they were fiscally conservative, had ceased being so. The Democrats, who were in opposition to the Republicans, stood to gain. They ran on a platform that was thin on substance, but big on being ‘anti-Bush’. They won handily, and the Congress passed into the control of the Democrats.
In 2008, this sentiment continued, and was furthered by the fact that the Republicans ran a candidate that exemplified the reason they lost the Congress in 2006. They found a fiscally moderate candidate to run against then-candidate Obama. For his part, Obama was enabled to play his cards close to his vest. He said those things that would appeal to the most voters.....no tax increases on the middle class, pull troops out of Iraq, win the war in Afghanistan, make health care affordable....and he let McCain be himself. McCain was dislocated from the people that viewed themselves as Republicans, and he lost because of it. The ‘voter’ Republicans were apathetic because the ‘governing’ Republicans were not representative of their political values anymore.
Though it may have started with the Republicans (at least in my example), this dislocation is now visible in the Democrat Party. The fact that Obama has managed to turn hard left and attempted to push through his quasi-fascist agenda during an economic downturn has raised the flags of concern. His inability to make a decision in Afghanistan (breaking a campaign vow), and his work with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid against the will of the majority of the American people to force socialized health care on Americans has, to quote the article I linked to above, fired ‘a warning flare’. The Democrat Party does not represent the majority of the people that vote Democrat. They are experiencing dislocation as well.
What happens when there is a dislocation between the government and the governed? Drummy’s revolution is one option, though I don’t believe that is the end-all situation here. I think that we will see elections like the Senatorial election of Joe Lieberman in 2006, and this year’s NY-23 House election. In each election, the ‘established’ Republican and Democrat candidates faced off against a candidate that was more representative of the will of the governed.
Now, in these examples, Lieberman won, and Hoffman, by some measures, is leading in NY-23. This won’t always be the case.....candidates that are more representative of the governed won’t win each time they are on the ballot. Why? Apathy and the desire of the political parties to remain in power. There are, however, consequences when a candidate like Hoffman runs a good race and loses.
This election, win, lose, or draw, will force the ‘Beltway’ Republican Party to look at what it is doing and how it governs when in power. This is what happened in 1994, to a certain extent. They had to figure out why they were a minority, and change it. The Republicans will have to move back towards the right in order to earn the trust of people that hold the ‘Republican’ belief set. As for the Democrats, they have governed so far to the left that their only option is to move back towards the center. The disapproval we see for President Obama and Congress proves this out....only the hard Left supports the actions they have taken to this point. The Democrat Party is dislocated from it’s base as well.
In my estimation, what we call ‘moderates’ are actually the base of the Democrat Party, and ‘conservatives’ are the base of the Republican Party. The hard Leftists and Rightists are the fringe 15% of each side. However, the 15% of the Democrat Party has fueled them to their recent electoral success....the rest of the voters have been apathetic enough to let it happen. That includes us conservatives, too. Garden-variety conservatives outnumber the hard Left 2-1 on a bad day. We could have stood Pelosi down in 2008, but we didn’t. We allowed the dislocation to continue.
Since I’m a comment whore, I want you to put your solutions in the comment area. Am I off base, the victim of a fever-induced hallucination? Am I right-on, as usual? Decide and comment on this. I WANNA HEAR IT!!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
OK….if anyone here listens to Rush….
...and gets Rush, you know that this article is a win. A HUGE win.
Rush has brought up ‘fake but accurate’ before...because that was what was said about the Dan Rather memos, right? No matter how Rush stumbled upon this situation, he has proven a point to everyone that dares look at it.
How long did it take the media to jump on the Rather Memogate scandal? It took Charles Johnson to point it out. Now, Rush does the same thing, and it’s a huge problem with his credibility?
Shut up.
You don’t think Rush knew what he was doing? If you think he was blindsided by this, and that he said “…we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway” in a vacuum, you’re not remembering who Rush is, and how he’s changed the metric in the broadcast industry.
Go on, Rush. Carry on.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Who spends the money?
That’s a great question.
“It’s Bush’s fault!” It’s Obama’s fault!”
No, squirrel bait, it’s not.
Oh, they didn’t help too much. President Bush loved spending money. President Obama is trying to take over the US economy (no doubt). However, neither of them are the ones that are spending all of our money. In the whole scheme of things, they are high-end lobbyists.
The people that spend the money are in Congress. To be specific, the House.
Can we look at something....just a little something? Please?
I am going to go back 30 years. 1979-2009. Is that good? Is that fair? OK.
Who was in control of the House? Well, let’s see.....
The 96th Congress was in power in 1979. The House was controlled by the Democrats. In fact, the House was controlled by the Democrats during the 96th, 97th, 98th, 99th, 100th, 101st, 102nd, and 103rd Congresses. The Republicans won control of the House in 1994 (the 104th Congress) and held it until the 110th Congress (2007), when the Democratic Party took it over again.
So, Democrats ran the House from 1979 until 1994, and from 2007 until now. The GOP ran the House from 1995 until 2006. The following numbers are in millions of dollars, so add SIX zeros to the numbers shown:
Let’s look at the deficits of the approved budgets during that time. Remember, Articles 7 and 9 of the United States Constitution show that the House decides how the money is spent...not the President. The years the GOP controlled the House are in BOLD. The following numbers are in millions of dollars, so add SIX zeros to the numbers shown:
1979: -40,726
1980: -73,830
1981: -78,968
1982: -127,977
1983: -207,802
1984: -185,367
1985: -212,308
1986: -221,227
1987: -149,730
1988: -155,178
1989: -152,639
1990: -221,036
1991: -269,238
1992: -290,321
1993: -255,051
1994: -203,186
1995: -163,952
1996: -107,431
1997: -21,884
1998: 69,270
1999: 125,610
2000: 236,241
2001: 128,236
2002: -157,758
2003: -377,585
2004: -412,727
2005: -318,346
2006: -248,181
2007: -160,701
2008: -458,555
2009: -1,841,188
Using my quick addition skills, that adds up to $6,553,535,000,000. Of that amount, Democrats are responsible for $5,305,028,000,000, and Republicans $1,248,507,000,000. Or, in other words, 81% of the debt run up since 1979 was during the Democrat’s watch.
“Oh,” the liberals in the audience say. “You asshole! The Democrats were in office a lot longer than the Republicans! It’s not a fair comparison!”
Ah, good point. So, I took the numbers and averaged them by year. Seems that the Democrats averaged a $295 billion deficit for the years they were in power, and the Republicans averaged a $105 billion deficit. So, for every $1 dollar in deficit spending by a Republican House, the Democratic-controlled House managed $2.83.
“Hey, fascist,” comes back the response. “That isn’t in constant dollars! It still isn’t fair!”
OK...in constant (year 2000) dollars, the average deficit of a Democratic House was $303 billion, the average for the GOP was $105 billion. Should have kept your mouth shut.
“Listen, you warmonger Christianist,” Andy Sullivan screeches, “It isn’t the Democrat’s fault that the deficit is so high! There’s a recession!”
Ah, true, I tell you. However, there were recessions in 1981, 1992, and 2000 as well. And remember that there was a war (I say ‘was’ because this Administration and Congress have decided that they’re done with it...) that was started with an attack in 2001. There were plenty of reasons to spend money, and a lot more reasons to save money and balance the budget.
About that balanced budget. There were four budgets in the last thirty that were balanced. The Republicans controlled the house for all of them.
Remember...the POTUS spends NO money without the consent of the House. As Mark Watson says, it’s the Pelosi deficit.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
This is the kind of thing I was talking about
Finland had just voted to offer broadband Internet access to every citizen as a “legal right”. Good thing that bandwidth doesn’t cost the providers anything, electricity has become free and technical support loves the job (I shouldn’t call it a “job” any more, because that implies financial remuneration) SO MUCH, that they were willing to do it for nothing but the complimentary hot chocolate provided by Red Cross workers.
Oh, wait. Since none of those things are even remotely true, this new “right” is going to have to be paid for in some other way, and that means either a “broadband tax” similar to the medical insurance tax paid in countries with “free” health care (paying for health care with every paycheck whether you use it or not), or an even more opaque method of hiding the expense inside the cost of living in Finland. Such things as a higher tax on say, natural gas or coffee, or lung fish (or whatever those Scandi luxuries might be).
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if it costs another person anything to bring you a product or service (such as the cost of putting up telephone poles out to Ma and Pa Kettle’s new place, so as to support the telephone lines, which also cost quite a bit), it is a COMMODITY, not a right. And commodities should be bought and sold on the open market, with prices determined solely by the Law of Supply and Demand. That is the only way to ensure the lowest prices and the highest quality. (First Law of the Marketplace: Faster, Better, Cheaper. Pick any two.)
I also think that we should sell drugs to foreign countries for exactly the same price that we get charged for them here in the US. That would immediately cripple all of those “free” health care systems, exposing them for the taxpayer supported whorehouses they have become, and lower our drug prices here by a healthy margin. Since I pay those higher prices as a means of subsidizing those “free” health care systems by paying for the R&D costs that countries like Canada and the UK simply don’t pay.
As the saying goes, the second pill may only cost a dollar, but the first pill cost $25,000,000.
Back to our original topic, what happens when someone’s broadband fails because some lutefisk farmer got plastered on fermented reindeer milk and hits one of those telephone poles, wiping out access for the whole village? Does he get arrested on war crimes charges, for violating the “rights” of so many people? If not, then it isn’t a “right”, no matter how many guys named “Sven” think so.