America has a big problem. Democrats, or Progressives if that is what they prefer, are in charge of the country's agenda. Apparently these folks think they are the intellectual elite who have the answers to solve every problem. First of all, they do not understand what the real problems are as evidenced by their focus on secondary issues (gun control, gay rights, abortion); issues that no longer exist (racism); that are misguided (immigration, where they favor immigrants that add to the welfare roles rather than educated entrepreneurs); that are not sufficiently understood (climate change); and that are not the business of federal government (health care). Meanwhile, they ignore the real issues that are the responsibility of federal government (national security, sustainable economic growth, generational theft through entitlements).
Second, the politicians solution to every problem is bigger government, meaning to throw more of someone else's money at it. Of course the exception is national security, where reseach and development is not only needed to stay ahead of potential adversaries, but the funding also provides essential jobs and productive innovation that transfers to the private sector. Unfortunately, those in political power continue to ignore the clear evidence that government solutions to non-defense issues don't work. Avoiding the real problems and spending all their time on issues that have little to do with our survival, prosperity and most significant social crisis is inexcusable dereliction of duty. Only politicians, college professors, media pundits and complete morons (redundant?) could be so out of touch with reality.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Holier Than Thou
The gun control issue encompasses everything that is polarizing the United States of America today. The media's disdain for responsible reporting was in full display last week following the defeat in the Senate (Democratic Party controlled Senate, by the way) of the newest attempt at gun control legislation. Headlines raged "Public Opinion Defeated", "Congressmen Bullied By The NRA And Radical Conservatives". Such words and phrases as "cowardice", "disgust", "grossly unfair", "disregard for the children" were used by guests on CBS and other news shows.
Reaching new peaks of arrogance, hubris, and holier than thou condescension, our president added to the conflagration by continuing his incessant slandering of opponents and impugning their motives. "A pretty shameful day for Washington", "The Senators who voted against it are cowardly", "It came down to politics", and "a minority was able to block it from moving forward" were a few of the president's inflammatory comments. Media pundits attributed the defeat to the rural states, as if people living in fly-over country aren't allowed to have a voice.
Obama also asserted that "the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill", saying that the villainous fiends claimed expanded background checks would open the door for universal registration of guns so government would have a record of gun owners. Well, why wouldn't that be an issue of concern? Four months ago Obama got his tax increase on the wealthy and within days was demanding another one to avoid the sequester. Why would anyone believe that he would stop his gun control quest after passing the bill? It would only be a first step, and everyone knows it. Unfortunately, his small steps turn into giant leaps. Expanded gun control will be one of the first items of business if Obama gets to select a new Supreme Court Justice.
There were actually three different gun control bills the Senate voted on. One was a ban on assault weapons, which lost by 60 votes against and 40 for. The second was a ban on magazine capacity greater than ten, which also lost with a majority against, 54 to 46. The third, and the one Obama apparently expected to pass, was the expanded background checks for sales by private citizens online and at gun shows (licensed gun dealers already are required to do background checks). The bill needed 60 votes to pass and only got 54. Opponents said they made their decision based on logic and that passions had no place in the making of momentous policy. What a concept! One Senator said "criminals do not submit to background checks now. They will not submit to expanded background checks." It was a rare moment of sanity in the insane asylum known as Congress.
Never-the-less, the Obama propaganda machine gathered children and gun crime victims to create another p. r. opportunity for the Drama King in Chief. Honestly, aren't we all getting sick and tired of the Hollywood productions and the incendiary accusations of evil intentions of opponents designed to create mass hysteria. Would it be too much to ask to start arguing issues on the merits? Obama emoted that even if this gun control legislation saved only one child it would be worth it, ignoring the fact that dozens of people, including children, could be saved if anyone near a developing tragedy had a gun and knew how to use it. He didn't seem to have anyone at his news conference who is alive today because a gun was used to save them from a predator. There are plenty of potential victims whose lives have been saved because someone with a gun prevented an assailant from murdering innocent people. How come that never comes up in Obama's lectures to us peons?
Personally, I don't think it is a bad idea to do background checks on gun sales on the internet and at gun shows. But I am at a loss to understand how that could be enforced. There are over 300 million people in the United States, and it would be impossible to monitor every person to person transaction. Criminals and terrorists are going to get guns or whatever weapon they want to commit crimes. Why is it that so many liberals think they live in a fantasy world where planned or random violence won't occur if government just enacts some worthless law? Why are they so shocked when violence occurs? Violence does not only happen in America, and it certainly doesn't happen only in places that don't have strict gun controls. If guns are strictly controlled then the bullies win, whether that bully is a next door neighbor or an oppressive government. No country can legislate utopia or the elimination of violent crime within its borders until they implement total mind control over the people. Maybe that is what the liberals want, as long as they get to determine the programming. Welcome to Orwell's 1984.
All Americans should be tired by now of the news media always producing one sided reports from commentators and interviews with private citizens of how they are disgusted and appalled by conservatives who won't give in to the passions of the moment that defy logic and rationality in order to pass rapidly composed legislation that will solve nothing. Acting on emotion is generally what causes lethal events in the first place. Doing something stupid or irrational in response to a tragedy does not solve the problem. Politically correct feel good measures that don't serve the intended purpose are a waste of everyone's time at best and a huge mistake at worst. And the gun control legislation rejected by the Senate would have served no useful purpose.
Sane people understand that we have to deal with the reality that bad people exist and will do bad things. Bad people who want to use guns will have guns, regardless of any new law. Is it really a good idea for them to be the only people who have guns? Of course not. Would the new law have prevented law abiding citizens from owning guns? No, not yet, but it would make it harder for some of them to own a gun, and that could be the difference between life and death. This was a law that would make it easier for the bad guys to do their evil deeds while preventing the decent from defending themselves. It would clearly have had the opposite effect of what presumably was intended. One can only wonder what is going on inside the mind of our president. It is very sad when an amoeba has more common sense, integrity and class than the charlatan sitting in the oval office.
p.s. - notice that I didn't even have to bring up the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which as far as some of us are concerned is still the law of the land.
Reaching new peaks of arrogance, hubris, and holier than thou condescension, our president added to the conflagration by continuing his incessant slandering of opponents and impugning their motives. "A pretty shameful day for Washington", "The Senators who voted against it are cowardly", "It came down to politics", and "a minority was able to block it from moving forward" were a few of the president's inflammatory comments. Media pundits attributed the defeat to the rural states, as if people living in fly-over country aren't allowed to have a voice.
Obama also asserted that "the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill", saying that the villainous fiends claimed expanded background checks would open the door for universal registration of guns so government would have a record of gun owners. Well, why wouldn't that be an issue of concern? Four months ago Obama got his tax increase on the wealthy and within days was demanding another one to avoid the sequester. Why would anyone believe that he would stop his gun control quest after passing the bill? It would only be a first step, and everyone knows it. Unfortunately, his small steps turn into giant leaps. Expanded gun control will be one of the first items of business if Obama gets to select a new Supreme Court Justice.
There were actually three different gun control bills the Senate voted on. One was a ban on assault weapons, which lost by 60 votes against and 40 for. The second was a ban on magazine capacity greater than ten, which also lost with a majority against, 54 to 46. The third, and the one Obama apparently expected to pass, was the expanded background checks for sales by private citizens online and at gun shows (licensed gun dealers already are required to do background checks). The bill needed 60 votes to pass and only got 54. Opponents said they made their decision based on logic and that passions had no place in the making of momentous policy. What a concept! One Senator said "criminals do not submit to background checks now. They will not submit to expanded background checks." It was a rare moment of sanity in the insane asylum known as Congress.
Never-the-less, the Obama propaganda machine gathered children and gun crime victims to create another p. r. opportunity for the Drama King in Chief. Honestly, aren't we all getting sick and tired of the Hollywood productions and the incendiary accusations of evil intentions of opponents designed to create mass hysteria. Would it be too much to ask to start arguing issues on the merits? Obama emoted that even if this gun control legislation saved only one child it would be worth it, ignoring the fact that dozens of people, including children, could be saved if anyone near a developing tragedy had a gun and knew how to use it. He didn't seem to have anyone at his news conference who is alive today because a gun was used to save them from a predator. There are plenty of potential victims whose lives have been saved because someone with a gun prevented an assailant from murdering innocent people. How come that never comes up in Obama's lectures to us peons?
Personally, I don't think it is a bad idea to do background checks on gun sales on the internet and at gun shows. But I am at a loss to understand how that could be enforced. There are over 300 million people in the United States, and it would be impossible to monitor every person to person transaction. Criminals and terrorists are going to get guns or whatever weapon they want to commit crimes. Why is it that so many liberals think they live in a fantasy world where planned or random violence won't occur if government just enacts some worthless law? Why are they so shocked when violence occurs? Violence does not only happen in America, and it certainly doesn't happen only in places that don't have strict gun controls. If guns are strictly controlled then the bullies win, whether that bully is a next door neighbor or an oppressive government. No country can legislate utopia or the elimination of violent crime within its borders until they implement total mind control over the people. Maybe that is what the liberals want, as long as they get to determine the programming. Welcome to Orwell's 1984.
All Americans should be tired by now of the news media always producing one sided reports from commentators and interviews with private citizens of how they are disgusted and appalled by conservatives who won't give in to the passions of the moment that defy logic and rationality in order to pass rapidly composed legislation that will solve nothing. Acting on emotion is generally what causes lethal events in the first place. Doing something stupid or irrational in response to a tragedy does not solve the problem. Politically correct feel good measures that don't serve the intended purpose are a waste of everyone's time at best and a huge mistake at worst. And the gun control legislation rejected by the Senate would have served no useful purpose.
Sane people understand that we have to deal with the reality that bad people exist and will do bad things. Bad people who want to use guns will have guns, regardless of any new law. Is it really a good idea for them to be the only people who have guns? Of course not. Would the new law have prevented law abiding citizens from owning guns? No, not yet, but it would make it harder for some of them to own a gun, and that could be the difference between life and death. This was a law that would make it easier for the bad guys to do their evil deeds while preventing the decent from defending themselves. It would clearly have had the opposite effect of what presumably was intended. One can only wonder what is going on inside the mind of our president. It is very sad when an amoeba has more common sense, integrity and class than the charlatan sitting in the oval office.
p.s. - notice that I didn't even have to bring up the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which as far as some of us are concerned is still the law of the land.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
The Silent Revolution
Barack Obama said when he was elected to the presidency in 2008 that change has come to America. That may be the last time he told the truth. Today we certainly do live in a new world. Today a vast number of Americans believe they have to buy guns to protect themselves from our own government. Who would have thought in four years it would come to that.
Obama's activist background, radical friends and association with the corrupt Chicago political machine was bad enough. But since he has been president, everything he has done seems designed to weaken and divide us from within. Unilateral disarmament. Foreign policies alienating our friends and favoring our adversaries. Economic policies of market regulation, income redistribution, and central government directed capital allocation, all resulting in declining family income, disappearing individual opportunities, and vanishing personal freedom while at the same time creating a debt bomb sending us down the road to economic collapse.
Perhaps even worse is Obama's deliberate polarization of society into diametrically opposed factions, with demonization and character assassination of those who disagree with him. He is fomenting absolute and irreconcilable hatred of one side against the other, a dangerous game that could have devastating consequences. The disturbing thing is that the American media is enabling and complicit in all of this.
It is well known among those who take the time to learn about Obama's background that he spent his early years being indoctrinated with third world, anti-colonialist, anti-Western bullshit. His father, who Obama barely knew but worshipped as his idol, was a leading anti-colonialist agitator in Kenya. There is much conjecture and confusion about the politics of his mother and grandparents, who were involved in raising young Barack Obama during his formative years. But they must have been quite a bit left of center since they actively sought out noted communist activist and rabid anti-American journalist Franklin Marshall Davis to mentor "Barry" in Hawaii.
It doesn't stop there. His association with other radical America haters is also well known. There is Bill Ayers, the SDS and Weather Underground founder who planned and participated in bombings of the New York City police department in 1970, the US Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972, and lived at the Greenwich Village townhouse where a nail bomb being constructed to explode at a Fort Dix, New Jersey party blew up and killed two members of the Weather Underground. There is Edward Said, a prominent pro-Arab, anti-Israel and PLO representative who was a professor at Columbia University; Roberto Unger, a self-declared Marxist Harvard University professor; and of course, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the America hating, race baiting preacher and leading advocate of World Liberation Theology whose church Obama attended for over twenty years. This is all public knowledge. Does anyone care? Apparently not enough people who vote.
Given that background, Obama's historical perspective seems to reflect the common belief among most developing countries and left wing activists that the developed countries are all imperial colonialists, invading and taking control of weaker countries to extract their resources for profit. That opinion is perfectly understable because, in reality, that is pretty much what the British, Spanish, French and Dutch did. The United States itself was a colony of one of those great powers, and was born through a revolution that threw off the yoke of colonialism. But those days effectively came to a close with the end of the Second World War. The British must have been doing something right since their Empire evolved into the British Commonwealth of present day independent and prosperous countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, etc. The only empire that existed after the middle of the twentieth century was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the oppressive communist empire the left wingers of the world desire to emulate.
Never-the-less, the third world still argues the West plunders the small and the weak for resources, with the US being one of the main culprits in its quest for oil. The radical progressives in America believe it. That is the indoctrination Obama received, and perhaps explains why he is doing everything he can to diminish our global power and influence. In fact it can be argued that every place American oil companies have gone to develop energy resources they have been instrumental in improving the living standards of those countries. That is not the definition of exploitation. That is helping third world countries to benefit from developing their resources and joining the 21st century.
The radical progressives also believe the US arrogantly projects its influence and power around the world, sometimes in places it is not wanted. Guilty as charged, but only when it is needed to preserve order (at least until recently when our president has decided to let the rest of the world go to hell). In the real world, unless there is a responsible superpower using its influence to maintain global order, the world breaks down into chaos, violent warfare, subjugation, oppression, and even state sponsored genocide. That is the history of mankind.
Yet Barack Obama believes we are the bad guys. That is why he is gutting our armed forces to levels that severely limit our ability to protect ourselves from foreign adversaries. His often stated national security goal is zero nukes, to set an example for the rest of the world in order to get them to respond in kind. No rational person could possibly believe that would ever happen. Russia, China, Pakistan, Israel, etc. are not going to give up their nukes. That would be suicidal. Never-the-less, Obama is reducing our nuclear strategic forces, as well as our anti-ballistic missile system capabilities. If he succeeds with this goal, we all die miserable deaths or surrender to the threat of annihilation and become subjects of an oppressive conqueror. When it comes to nukes the only rational policy is to have the most and the best. In nuclear war there is no proportionality. The only response to a nuclear attack is to obliterate the aggressor from the face of the earth to prevent them from ever doing it again.
So the question becomes, why is Barack Obama pursuing the policies that lead to the death of traditional American culture, our hard earned prosperity, and our national identity? Is he a Communist ideologue intent on extinguishing democracy and capitalism in America and establishing a Marxist society? One could certainly get that impression. Everything he does points in that direction. Redistribution of income. Raging against the greed of capitalism. Nationalizing health care. But communism has many definitions, most having to do with the elimination of private property and the means of production owned collectively by all or by the state. Socialism and Marxism mean pretty much the same thing. Suggesting that is what Obama has in mind for America is probably a bit too extreme.
It is my personal opinion Obama is doing what he does because his constant indoctrination since childhood with anti-capitalist, America hating bullshit by his mentors, college professors, associates and friends has brainwashed him into believing it. The 'America is a force of evil' ideology is all he has ever been taught. He truly believes it his duty to be the agent of change. His goal is to turn America into a society controlled and managed by the "enlightened intellectual elite", i.e., himself and his co-conspirators, because he truly believes that is the best type of government. He will never recognize or acknowledge that his beliefs are pure fantasy. And he will lie, deceive, misrepresent, promise anything and vilify anyone who stands in his way, as we have all witnessed, to achieve his objective because the end justifies the means.
In just four years Barack Obama has turned America upside down. Our capitalist economy has been transformed into a welfare state that gives away free money, free food, free phones, and guarantees mortgages that people can't pay - not because so many people need the assistance but to buy votes. Our traditions of private enterprise, free markets, self-reliance, hard work, and individual initiative is being destroyed. Limited government is giving way to big government that controls everything.
Democrats should ask themselves if they really believe America is an evil empire, raping and plundering the world because of capitalist greed. That is what their president thinks. Democrats need to ask themselves if our traditional culture is so grossly misguided and inappropriate that it needs to be totally changed. That is what Obama's legions in his bureaucracy are working to do. Apparently none of them have read the history books regarding the world wars we have fought to preserve freedom and democracy in the world, and how US aid was instrumental in rebuilding the savaged countries following the wars. They also must be unfamiliar of how America's capitalist economic engine has helped countries around the world in building global prosperity.
Whether Obama is pursuing socialism, Marxism, communism, progressivism, fascism (look up the definition of fascism and you might be surprised) or just Obamaism is irrelevant. They are all steps in the wrong direction, the direction in which Obama is taking great leaps. Has American society gone so far off track that any of these ism's are now acceptable options? It appears that a lot of people think so. But I would bet that a majority of the people who voted for Obama just don't give a shit about political ideology. They like the something for nothing that he promises, apparently believing the gravy train will last forever. They are all in for a very unpleasant surprise. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is right about one thing. American is not an exceptional country. Not anymore.
Obama's activist background, radical friends and association with the corrupt Chicago political machine was bad enough. But since he has been president, everything he has done seems designed to weaken and divide us from within. Unilateral disarmament. Foreign policies alienating our friends and favoring our adversaries. Economic policies of market regulation, income redistribution, and central government directed capital allocation, all resulting in declining family income, disappearing individual opportunities, and vanishing personal freedom while at the same time creating a debt bomb sending us down the road to economic collapse.
Perhaps even worse is Obama's deliberate polarization of society into diametrically opposed factions, with demonization and character assassination of those who disagree with him. He is fomenting absolute and irreconcilable hatred of one side against the other, a dangerous game that could have devastating consequences. The disturbing thing is that the American media is enabling and complicit in all of this.
It is well known among those who take the time to learn about Obama's background that he spent his early years being indoctrinated with third world, anti-colonialist, anti-Western bullshit. His father, who Obama barely knew but worshipped as his idol, was a leading anti-colonialist agitator in Kenya. There is much conjecture and confusion about the politics of his mother and grandparents, who were involved in raising young Barack Obama during his formative years. But they must have been quite a bit left of center since they actively sought out noted communist activist and rabid anti-American journalist Franklin Marshall Davis to mentor "Barry" in Hawaii.
It doesn't stop there. His association with other radical America haters is also well known. There is Bill Ayers, the SDS and Weather Underground founder who planned and participated in bombings of the New York City police department in 1970, the US Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972, and lived at the Greenwich Village townhouse where a nail bomb being constructed to explode at a Fort Dix, New Jersey party blew up and killed two members of the Weather Underground. There is Edward Said, a prominent pro-Arab, anti-Israel and PLO representative who was a professor at Columbia University; Roberto Unger, a self-declared Marxist Harvard University professor; and of course, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the America hating, race baiting preacher and leading advocate of World Liberation Theology whose church Obama attended for over twenty years. This is all public knowledge. Does anyone care? Apparently not enough people who vote.
Given that background, Obama's historical perspective seems to reflect the common belief among most developing countries and left wing activists that the developed countries are all imperial colonialists, invading and taking control of weaker countries to extract their resources for profit. That opinion is perfectly understable because, in reality, that is pretty much what the British, Spanish, French and Dutch did. The United States itself was a colony of one of those great powers, and was born through a revolution that threw off the yoke of colonialism. But those days effectively came to a close with the end of the Second World War. The British must have been doing something right since their Empire evolved into the British Commonwealth of present day independent and prosperous countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, etc. The only empire that existed after the middle of the twentieth century was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the oppressive communist empire the left wingers of the world desire to emulate.
Never-the-less, the third world still argues the West plunders the small and the weak for resources, with the US being one of the main culprits in its quest for oil. The radical progressives in America believe it. That is the indoctrination Obama received, and perhaps explains why he is doing everything he can to diminish our global power and influence. In fact it can be argued that every place American oil companies have gone to develop energy resources they have been instrumental in improving the living standards of those countries. That is not the definition of exploitation. That is helping third world countries to benefit from developing their resources and joining the 21st century.
The radical progressives also believe the US arrogantly projects its influence and power around the world, sometimes in places it is not wanted. Guilty as charged, but only when it is needed to preserve order (at least until recently when our president has decided to let the rest of the world go to hell). In the real world, unless there is a responsible superpower using its influence to maintain global order, the world breaks down into chaos, violent warfare, subjugation, oppression, and even state sponsored genocide. That is the history of mankind.
Yet Barack Obama believes we are the bad guys. That is why he is gutting our armed forces to levels that severely limit our ability to protect ourselves from foreign adversaries. His often stated national security goal is zero nukes, to set an example for the rest of the world in order to get them to respond in kind. No rational person could possibly believe that would ever happen. Russia, China, Pakistan, Israel, etc. are not going to give up their nukes. That would be suicidal. Never-the-less, Obama is reducing our nuclear strategic forces, as well as our anti-ballistic missile system capabilities. If he succeeds with this goal, we all die miserable deaths or surrender to the threat of annihilation and become subjects of an oppressive conqueror. When it comes to nukes the only rational policy is to have the most and the best. In nuclear war there is no proportionality. The only response to a nuclear attack is to obliterate the aggressor from the face of the earth to prevent them from ever doing it again.
So the question becomes, why is Barack Obama pursuing the policies that lead to the death of traditional American culture, our hard earned prosperity, and our national identity? Is he a Communist ideologue intent on extinguishing democracy and capitalism in America and establishing a Marxist society? One could certainly get that impression. Everything he does points in that direction. Redistribution of income. Raging against the greed of capitalism. Nationalizing health care. But communism has many definitions, most having to do with the elimination of private property and the means of production owned collectively by all or by the state. Socialism and Marxism mean pretty much the same thing. Suggesting that is what Obama has in mind for America is probably a bit too extreme.
It is my personal opinion Obama is doing what he does because his constant indoctrination since childhood with anti-capitalist, America hating bullshit by his mentors, college professors, associates and friends has brainwashed him into believing it. The 'America is a force of evil' ideology is all he has ever been taught. He truly believes it his duty to be the agent of change. His goal is to turn America into a society controlled and managed by the "enlightened intellectual elite", i.e., himself and his co-conspirators, because he truly believes that is the best type of government. He will never recognize or acknowledge that his beliefs are pure fantasy. And he will lie, deceive, misrepresent, promise anything and vilify anyone who stands in his way, as we have all witnessed, to achieve his objective because the end justifies the means.
In just four years Barack Obama has turned America upside down. Our capitalist economy has been transformed into a welfare state that gives away free money, free food, free phones, and guarantees mortgages that people can't pay - not because so many people need the assistance but to buy votes. Our traditions of private enterprise, free markets, self-reliance, hard work, and individual initiative is being destroyed. Limited government is giving way to big government that controls everything.
Democrats should ask themselves if they really believe America is an evil empire, raping and plundering the world because of capitalist greed. That is what their president thinks. Democrats need to ask themselves if our traditional culture is so grossly misguided and inappropriate that it needs to be totally changed. That is what Obama's legions in his bureaucracy are working to do. Apparently none of them have read the history books regarding the world wars we have fought to preserve freedom and democracy in the world, and how US aid was instrumental in rebuilding the savaged countries following the wars. They also must be unfamiliar of how America's capitalist economic engine has helped countries around the world in building global prosperity.
Whether Obama is pursuing socialism, Marxism, communism, progressivism, fascism (look up the definition of fascism and you might be surprised) or just Obamaism is irrelevant. They are all steps in the wrong direction, the direction in which Obama is taking great leaps. Has American society gone so far off track that any of these ism's are now acceptable options? It appears that a lot of people think so. But I would bet that a majority of the people who voted for Obama just don't give a shit about political ideology. They like the something for nothing that he promises, apparently believing the gravy train will last forever. They are all in for a very unpleasant surprise. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is right about one thing. American is not an exceptional country. Not anymore.
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