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.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Opinion?
Olympia Snowe.....publicity hound or dedicated ‘Moderate’?
I know what I think. What do you think?
And, were you surprised she voted for the Baucus plan?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
An unusual snack choice
My wife is currently snacking on Cheetos Puffs, using them to scoop tuna fish. Now, I’ve eaten potted meat and crackers, but this is a little bizarre, even for me.
What are your weird snack choices?
What a crock of shit
I am so fed up with people claiming that this thing or that condition is a “right”, and there are a couple of reasons why.
Cliff Notes version: it isn’t a “right” if it takes the labor of anyone else to make it happen and you can’t have “rights” without “responsibilities”.
There are rights that are part of the human condition, including, but not limited to:
- the right to defend oneself with the means at one’s disposal (you don’t have the “right to bear arms” if all you have is a rock)
- the right to hold an opinion (even if one is not legally permitted to express that opinion)
- the right to pursue happiness (even if you don’t have the actual right to catch any)
- the right to worship a Higher Power (or not, as one’s conscience dictates)
These things cannot be taken away, no matter how abject one’s condition or condition of poverty. They are an indelible part of the human condition, that tyrants cannot remove nor patriots restore.
Then there are rights that are guaranteed by the government, including, but not limited to:
- the right to express an opinion, even if it is offensive, without criminal penalties
- the right to use potentially deadly force to defend oneself, one’s family, or even random strangers without criminal penalties (under specific conditions)
- the right to equal treatment under the law, with one set of rules applying to everyone, regardless of personal choice variables that may cause sub-cultures sprouting up within the general culture
- the right to not be forced to incriminate oneself, placing the burden of proof on the government to prove a case before disinterested juries (with the default condition being “freedom” at every stage)
- the right to meet with others for any purpose or no purpose whatsoever
These can be taken away, either by legislative whim, judicial determination or executive decree.
Then there are the so-called “rights” that can never, ever be enforced, except at the point of a gun and at someone else’s cost and labor, yet are being forced upon an increasingly unwilling public to pay those particular bills:
- health care
- food
- housing (as opposed to shelter)
- entertainment
As I said above, if it takes the labor of anyone else - whether it is just the guy who goes and picks the fruit off the tree or a cardio-thoracic surgeon and complete OR team - it is NOT a “right”. You have the right to seek out a tree or cave in which to live. You do NOT have the “right” to have someone build you a house. You have the right to try and cure yourself. (I hear that a tea made of willowfine works just like aspirin.) You do NOT have the “right” to force an expensively-trained specialist to cure you without compensating him at the rates HE chooses. You and your buds can sit around, amusing yourself however you wish, but you do NOT have the right to force someone to come in and amuse you without compensating them at the rates THEY choose.
And second, Rights and Responsibilities are opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other.
Here in the US, we have gained several rights guaranteed by the government, at the cost of assuming certain responsibilities. We have the responsibility to:
- Vote in every election
- serve on juries when it is our turn
- obey the laws of our city, State and nation
- pay the taxes that we owe (financing the “general goods”, such as police and fire, military and the roads, etc.)
And many others. Having a right to something is a form of AUTHORITY. Authority without Responsibility - also known as “the backseat driver syndrome” - is destructive to the morale of any group, whether it is just a family or an entire nation. And Responsibility without Authority is oppression, pure and simple.
This brings us to this piece of crap - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It starts out okay - right to life (which isn’t actually a right), right to an opinion, right to presumption of innocence, etc. - but soon devolves into a progressive litany of things that end up costing others:
- right to work at a “minimum standard of living” (to be supplemented by government as needed) (Article 23)
- right to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” (Article 25)
- right to an education, both free and compulsory (Article 26)
Isn’t it nice that employers don’t have the right to not hire people? Or that doctors and farmers and construction workers don’t have the right to work and charge for their labor? (So much for the right to work, eh?) And finally, isn’t it nice that there are so many people willing and capable of teaching critical skills that they can do it for free?
The “right to work” requires an employer to pay wages for that work. The “right to a standard of living” requires that someone pay for that standard of living (in addition to his or her own, let us remember), and the right to an education requires that the teacher spend his or her valuable time (which is the only asset we have that cannot be replaced) to teach those hard-won learning, not to mention any efforts of printing books, manufacturing supplies (such as paper, pencils, etc.), and constructing shelter in which to hold classes.
Those things are NOT “rights”. And how can education be a “right” when it is compulsory? If the right to worship were similarly compulsory, the ACLU would be setting bonfires on every street corner.
We need to have this conversation every day until people quit thinking that they have what they cannot ever own.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Yeah, Mr. Peace Prize?
Can I just call you “Nobel”?
Listen, it’s all been set up. What you gotta do is climb on this here motorcycle, get it up to about 50 mph and jump that there tank of live sharks. Okay?
What, you’ve already jumped the shark back in 2002? And again in 2007? And you just did it again today?
Well, damn. maybe I can get that kid Levi Johnston to do it. I hear he’s big news…
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Are we not surprised?
The same group that insulted soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital and protested the U.S. Marines in Berkekey has decided to support the war in Afghanistan:
While the group hasn’t dropped its call for a pullout, the visit convinced them that setting a deadline isn’t in Afghanistan’s interests, say Ms. Benjamin and fellow cofounder Jodie Evans.
“We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline,” says Benjamin. “That’s where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, ‘If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We’d go into civil war.’ A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that.”
Allahpundit over at Hot Air reminds us that these are the same things the Iraqis said in 2006 or so, when there was a palpable sense that we were losing ground in Iraq. Where was Code Pink back then? At ‘Camp Casey’ and dragging around pairs of shoes to preach about the horrors of war.
Well, we’re still In Iraq, and still in Afghanistan. What changed? The women? No. The effect of war on women? No. The chance that Islamofascist extremists would treat women like cattle....maybe worse? NO.
No, none of that.
What changed is the President.
There is no President Bush to harp on, insult, compare to Hitler, or worse. Now, there is President Obama, who must be supported.
Hypocrites. They are defending the leftist while hating the centrist, even though both did the same thing. Proof that Code Pink is nothing but a leftist-leaning political group, and an anti-Bush group, like the World Worker’s Party and International Answer.
They aren’t anti-war. Get that idea out of your mind. They are anti-American, anti-Bush, and anti-Conservative.
Eight years in
We started the invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago today.
And Obama is “searching for options”?
There are only TWO, President Gumdrop - Win or Lose. Figure that one out FIRST.
Once you pick one, then let the experts figure out what they need to make than option happen, give them what they ask for and STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THEIR WAY.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Would you like to play a game?
I’ve heard it called several things, but it works best to fill long hours of conversation where several people have to stay awake. We played a version on board ship on those midwatches over the sound-powered phones.
The rules are simple. You have to come up with a way to describe three people - yourself, the person you are talking to and a third party, in such terms as to cast the appropriate connotation. An example would be, “I’m tenacious, you’re stubborn, they’re pig-headed” or “I’m eccentric, you’re strange, they’re just weird”.
Anyone interested?
Saturday, October 03, 2009
The Olympian
Never saw that one coming.
A small part of me is laughing (on the inside) when the so-called most powerful, most well liked, most respected, and most important man in the world can’t get the 2016 Olympics to his hometown of Chicago.
I’m just sayin’ that it’s kinda/sorta funny. In a kinda/sorta funny and ironic way. Maybe everyone doesn’t bow down to him like we’re lead to believe, huh?
Thursday, October 01, 2009
I may have asked this before
But what happens when law enforcement doesn’t bother to enforce the laws?
Lemme ‘splain. No, there is no time. Lemme sum up. (Bonus points for getting the reference.)
There exists a piece of Federal Law that has been long since passed into Law and signed by the President (John Adams in this case, although it has been amended as recently as 1994) known as the Logan Act.
§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
Now that we have reviewed the relevant Federal statute, let me explain the act under discussion - a city council signing Treaties with the United Nations. It’s just Berkeley, of course, but when is enough finally going to be enough? Hell, even Wikipedia notes this troublesome detail:
However, there is no record of any convictions or even prosecutions under the Logan Act.
Then why not repeal or just delete it? What purpose is served by having Federal law that is never enforced? Not even a single indictment in more than 200 years!
You wanna know the funny part? Berkeley may be in violation of the Human Rights Treaty they just signed!
They have used as examples Berkeley’s record on homelessness, achievement gaps in the public schools and John Yoo, the author of the Bush administration’s justification for torture who teaches at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and lives in Berkeley.
I say we should start bombing to bring them into compliance right away! One or two nukes into Berkeley (maybe a “slip” could take out San Francisco, too) and Libya and Syria would certainly clean up their act, and I do mean right the fuck away, donchathink?