A new pinnacle of stupidity, entertainment industry version

A month of so ago, a young female entertainer by the name of Taylor Swift won some sort of award.  I’da never know about it if another young entertainer by the name of Kanye West hadn’t barged onto her stage, grabbed the microphone from her, and gone into a wholly disrespectful and insulting rant in support of HIS favorite for the award (who, by the way, won the larger overall award in any case, without Kanye’s support).

Taylor Swift became the rightful recipient of overwhelming sympathy, support, and goodwill.  So what did she do?  She went to what seems to have been a celebrity party of some sort and proceeded to pose with her arm around a swastika-clad doofus (if it was a bad joke, far worse if not).  GG, Taylor, you have a bright future in the entertainment industry!

Being good AT something doesn’t make one a good PERSON.  You could reasonably argue the opposite.  Having a great gift or skill will more likely result in a narrow, immature, self-focused, jealous, and abusive person.  And being good at one thing is no indication of value in other things.

Okay, enough of that crap, time to go put the soup (pasta e fagiola) on.  G’nite all, scary but safe Halloween, and may God continue His blessings of America.

Stop the blame game!

It was while watching a political opinion show last night, one of the guests finally put me over the top on this topic.  Here was a Democratic apologist bitterly blaming the Republicans for not cooperating enough with the Democrat controlled House, Senate, and White House.  WTF?  One party holds all the levers of power and the opposition party are being bad guys for not happily switching sides?  It’s not enough to beat your opponent, it’s then your defeated foe’s responsibility to thank you for the beating?

Then, on another political opinion show, I heard a well known Democratic functionary state that (Afghanistan presidential candidate) Abdullah “had to stay in the game, had to make a run, had to give it a try.”  By any measure, he is bound to lose, but he somehow has a responsibility to stay in a very dangerous position, with little prospect of influence much less victory, for the sake of what?  For the sake of bolstering this Administration’s position?

Do the Democrats really think that the only option for those who disagree with their policies, and who disagree with the methods they’ve used to gain office, and who disagree with the changes they seek to bring … do these Democrats really think their vanquished opponents have an obligation to stay in the ring and continue to take a beating?  If the minority band of Republicans in Congress refuse to pay homage, or if Abdullah has better things to do than place his life at risk in a hopeless situation, that is their God given right.

These folks who opt out are not quitters, they are not taking their marbles and going home.  They are simply doing what makes sense.  They are refusing to have their few remaining marbles taken from them.

And finally, I am beyond done with Administration and Democratic officials continuing to blame the Bush administration.  I’m no Bush defender, I believe has is one of the three worst Presidents of all time.  But Obama ran for President for two years while he was in the Senate.  If he didn’t know what he was getting into, then he has no excuse.  He’s now been President for 10 months, he owns the situation.  Continuing to blame the previous administration is not responsible adult behavior, it is not respectable or admirable.  It is time for these folks to hitch up their trousers and take some responsibility.

Oh, and as long as I have the post open for edit, I may as well insert a completely unrelated rant.  What the Administration is doing in trying to coerce and control the media is an abomination.  It transgresses our core principles and it poisons the public discourse.  To use what Abraham Lincoln did vis a vis the Press is idiotic, do they not realize that Lincoln has this little thing called “The Civil War” going on and the very survival of the Union at stake?

They do not seem to realize that they are the most powerful agent in the world.  Generational power successively teaches the responsibilities of power (this is the disappointment of Gore and Bush, THEY SHOULD KNOW BETTER).  Elevating the previously powerless and unprepared to a position of great authority is a risky thing.  The unprepared will not know that with power comes the responsibility to (jokingly) let the little people complain bitterly if they must.  This group are acting like thin-skinned, childish, aggrieved and powerless underdogs, not like the most powerful agency in Earth.

Fasten your seatbelt, folks, we’re in for a few years of bumpy going here.  We will make it through.  G’day, and may God continue to bless America.

That’s it for me!

Today was my last day of work, tomorrow my last day of employment.  Effective the day after tomorrow I will be retired.  In closing, I have one piece of wisdom to offer those who follow me.

Every young rising star should remember that the time will come when you are no longer young … or rising.  And when that happens, there will be long memories to recall every foolish move you ever made.

Carry on!

A new way to look at the problem

In local government, there is constant discussion of, attention to “the tax base”.  Local governments rely on taxes that can appear and disappear.  What’s tax base here today could very well be tax base “over there” tomorrow.  So local governments have natural, market force limits placed on how much damage they can inflict on “the tax base” before that asset packs up and leaves.

The Federal government has a tax base, too, but they don’t care about it and do their best to ignore the entire subject.  The Federal government has placed the tax base under siege and the result will be inevitable.  Federal tax revenues will continue to dwindle.  What happens when Federal revenues drop and spending rises?  Not what would happen to you or I.

The Federal government either raises the debt limit and borrows more money.  Or the Government just adds some extra zeroes to the ledger.  Of course, neither of these options are available to most local governments, which is an additional force to keep them in check, yet another reason that the only good government is local government.  The farther from the town square, the worse the government.

So the Federal government has placed the crosshairs squarely on their tax base.  Nancy doesn’t care, Harry doesn’t care, Barack doesn’t care.  Don’t care, he!!, they seem to revel in it.  It’s all a big law school dorm room game of Hearts.  If they can FOOL enough people with lawyerly evasions and diversions (does anyone anywhere believe this is going to cost what they say?).  The only thing that Nancy and Harry and Barack care about is winning the debate, winning the game.  For them, success is defined by passing the law.  The actual, real world results be damned (they won’t be around to face the music).

It doesn’t matter, the end game is default on the debt.  Every time gold dips a bit, buy a bit.  Make sure your arrangements are in order.  Make sure your family is taken care of.  Because with the tax base in the crosshairs, we are the target.

G’nite all, and may God continue to bless America.

I never, but…

I never link to other sites because I don’t want a lot of traffic here.  If this is an Internet backwater, I don’t have to face any tough scrutiny.  I figure that if I link to another site, it opens the door for Trojan horses full of what, readers?, to challenge me.  I don’t want that!  But after listening to the pure knuckleheaded idiocy of Valerie Jarrett on the Campbell Brown show, I have to give you this link (please check it out, in case you’re not familiar, when Campbell asked Valerie why they chose to attack Fox, Valerie of the White House said “We only speak truth to power” the eternal refrain of the powerless underclass, but news flash Valierie, you’re the freakin’ White House!):

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/10/valerie-jarrett-truth-to-power-youre-the-wh-for-gods-sake.html

This White House staff is turning out to be a valedictorian class of buffoons.  May God help America, we now officially need the help of the Almighty.

Get ready, The Default Congress is wound up

I just finished listening to Joe Lieberman, followed by Chuck Schumer.  I’m becoming more convinced that the liberal Democratic majority intends full well to take the Nation into default.  There is no other possible explanation that is founded on reason and evidence.

Medicare has a $38 trillion unfunded liability that will bankrupt the system in 8 years.  Without any savings, or even any changes, to the system even remotely possible, doubling or tripling the size of the entitlement program will only accelerate the process.  There was a parallel in the early years of the 20th Century with the penny papers.  They lost money on every paper they sold, but their business model was to solve that by selling more papers.  They simply went broke faster.

Pelosi and Reed and the rest of the Democrats know this will lead to default, but no one is talking about this.  As I stated a few days ago, President Reagan started this with his spending war.  This President is going to finish it by taking the Nation into default (not in his term, but right afterward).  Where I believe the Democrats are miscalculating is this:  I believe they think that free universal health care will survive default on the debt.  It will not.

Nothing as we know it will survive default.  We will answer to the Chinese and the Saudis and others who hold sovereign wealth instead of sovereign debt.  Our freedom will be an illusion, we will be able to do what others tell us we can do, for they will only loan us the money on that condition.

I used to think that the magnitude of our debt would prevent default, but I am obviously wrong.  The Saudis and Chinese can afford to lose their trillion apiece.  They won’t like it, but they can replace it, and even if they can’t, their people “will find a way”.  With most of our population living on the largess of a shrinking minority, we are no longer able to generate the wealth to replace what we will lose, and we Americans can find no way that isn’t paved with borrowed money.

The health care insurance reform bills working through Congress will create a new America.  One that is far weaker, much poorer, less free, more vulnerable.  That will suit many, until they realize that the wealthy will still be wealthy.  Only the poor will suffer.  So in the process of bringing the wealthy low, only the low will be brought down.

Thank you for your time.  Please figure what to do to protect yourself and your family.  Wealth will revert to good land and good water and good luck.  So get the best revenge, come out of this well.  G’nite all and may God continue to bless America.

I despise Jimmy Carter, but…

I despise him for his mewling, whining, evasive, accusatory weakness.   But I have to give the man credit, he was the last responsible person to serve as President.  When he left office, under a self-inflicted and well-deserved cloud I might add, the Nation owed less than $1 trillion.

President Reagan came into office with an inflexible ideology and a mission.  As Governor of California, he HAD to balance the budget.  I believe that his first morning, waking up in the White House as President, a huge strobe light went off in his head and he realized that he had an apparently unlimited line of credit.  He set out to buy what he believed in, huge piles of military equipment, including more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined … what’s up with that?  I do believe that he figured that if he spent all the money, and used up the credit line, that the liberal Democrats would have no money left to fund their favored social programs.

George H.W. Bush continued in that vein, with no effort to speak of to balance the budget, and a very large and costly war intervening.

Bill Clinton came into office and set out to see how far into debt he could go before the grownups called a halt.  That was the first run at the legislative Federal approach to health care reform.  But DRAT the freakin’ luck, the Republicans won a majority in Congress in 1994.  And they set about reigning in the runaway spending.  Now I shift to clairvoyant mode: not for any responsible, adult, altruistic reason.  Newt & Co simply wanted to salvage enough of our credit line that the inevitably Republican President who would succeed Clinton would have plenty of credit left to spend on, you guessed it, Conservative priorities.

Worked pretty darn well, Bush 2 had enough of a credit line when he took office that we could spend $1,000,000 fighting terrorists for every $1 they spent fighting us.  And leave the Nation on the verge of the Great Recession and quite broke, to boot.

Just as we know that the Sun and the Moon and the stars go around the Earth, our current President came in and immediately began looking around for a credit card that wasn’t maxed out.  Sorry, Mr. Obama, what little credit was left, you’ve used up with the “stimulus” intended to “jump start” an economy that has a broken crankshaft.

I am betting that within one year, the entire conversation will have an entirely different topic.  It won’t be, “What would happen if GM went into bankruptcy?”.  It will be, “What happens if we default?”.  And if not then, it will be sooner rather than later.  I’ll still be a young man (HaHaHa!) to see it.

G’nite all, and may God continue to bless America.

Nothing else matters

I’m in a rush, writing this, so if this falls short of even my usual low standard, please blame it on the paella.

Now I’m wondering, the health care insurance reform bill is going to bankrupt the Nation.  There is no serious argument to the contrary.  Medicare, a far less ambitious program, will bankrupt the nation singlehandedly with two decades.  How adding ten of millions of uninsured to a government funded program (*) will improve that situation is beyond an improbability, it is an impossibility.

(*) Of course the health care insurance reform will save enough from Medicate to lower the bill to printing press-breaking $1 trillion, BUT THOSE CUTS WILL NEVER HAPPEN!  It’s like time travel: if it was possible, it would have already happened.

So what’s the plan here?  The ruling Democrats say this is necessary to restore America’s competitiveness.  But of course that’s impossible, we are in a flat spin.  And they know it.  So what are they thinking?

Here’s what I’m considering at the moment.  The elected officials of the Federal government know that because of the size and structure of our debt, and the prospects for our economy, it is inevitable that we will default on our debt.  We practiced that with GM and Chrysler, doncha’ know?

Realizing that default on our debt is inevitable, I believe that our elected officials are trying to get universal health coverage in place before default.  Once in place, then default will be far more palatable.  ”We did this for you!!!”

I hate to think this way, and I would never encourage anyone to agree with me.  This is very serious, and we the people don’t have enough information to really know what’s going on.  In any case, it’s a lousy plan, because if we default on our debt, to borrow a famous phrase, “Nothing else will matter”.  We need answers!!!  Too bad the major media are rolling over on all things political, nowadays.

Well, paella timer is going off, more later.  G’nite all, and may God bless!

What am I seeing?

The election and transition kind of slid by, a few off key notes (a phony-official-playacting looking “Office of the President Elect” podium, grand productions, etc).  But I figured this was a newbie Senator running up to the Presidency and missing the mark on a few details.  The Administration seemed so well adjusted, the words about engaging in a heated dialog so noble, this whole thing slid right by me.

Then a slow but steady drumbeat of weirdness began.  Gagging Humana, attacking the health insurance industry for their report, directly attacking Fox, going after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Wow.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re a liberal or a conservative or an independent, this pattern is chilling.  The First Amendment forbids laws restricting the freedom of speech.  Acts equivalent to law are forbidden by the same Amendment.

Do any liberals who may cheer this attack on free speech, do they really want the next conservative Republican Administration to inherit these powers?  Do they want to legalize what Richard Nixon was forced out of office for?  Do any liberals, who think this pattern of behavior by the White House is OK, really want to contemplate a Nation without a Constitution and run by Conservatives?  Because that’s what this is, it’s an attack on the Constitution plain and simple.

Will the Chief of Staff realize in time that he is attacking the foundation of our Government, that being the informed consent of the people?

Many Americans dislike the press.  I generally do, with a passion, for the simple reason that the press so often gets things wrong.  The press has no right to expect to be respected, they must earn that, and they rarely do.  And I would never question the judgment of anyone who really, really doesn’t like newspapers, tv, and radio.  But by God, people, understand this one thing without doubt: without a vigorous, questioning, adversarial, even confrontational press, THERE IS NO FREEDOM.  If you can’t find out from multiple independent sources what’s going on, you will never know if you’re free or not.  Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the very most basic bedrock of all freedoms.  Whether you agree with the product or not, and maybe ESPECIALLY when you disagree with the product.

This Administration is acting out an astonishing, frightful, juvenile, thoughtless course of action.  This is the reaction of an exceptionally thin-skinned group, a group that talks tough (“call them out”) but can’t take a tap, much less a punch.  These people are a bunch of spoiled pansies, they can only function in an atmosphere of adulation.

There is no redemption for an American Administration that tries to use its power to manage the public debate.  That might work in an election, but once elected one become a public official.  Different rules and different expectations apply, and this Administration seems to not even be trying to make the transition.  They remain, and appear to only be able to function, in “campaign mode”.

This bodes very badly for America.  But hey, if the President isn’t “losing any sleep over it” (the most thoughtless and shallow statements ever by a President), then why should we worry?  G’nite and may God continue to bless.

So glad to be done with health care insurance…

For a day or two!!!  Right now I’m reveling in the image of the President of the United States of America “calling out” Fox News Network.  OMG, has anyone in the White House heard of “the enemies list” and “cutting off the New York Times”?  That was Richard Nixon, before Watergate, but of course you knew that.

This White House continues to amaze me with its absolute inability to recognize a changed situation and adapt to it.  They are upset with Fox because that network reports the result from that self-imposed disability.  I can easily understand how somehow would have difficulties with Hannity’s vein popping monologue.  But how does someone come to despise Glenn Beck?  Any politician, of any persuasion, who gets upset with Beck is simply maladjusted.

Anyone, any administration, which favors those who agree and praise, and criticizes those who disagree and find fault, is clearly on the path of delusional problems.  This is how individuals, and regimes, go off the rails.  If you have power and authority, be very very careful that you engage and treat with those who oppose you.  When you start cutting off your “enemies”, you are on the path that Richard Nixon followed.

Don’t laugh, this IS how things happen.

What is just as worrisome to our democracy is the lack of coverage in the rest of the media.  If  NBC, CBS, and NBC stand by for a liberal administration trying to muzzle Fox, they will have no sympathy from me when a conservative administration goes after them.  There is the old story about “First they came for…” and then there was no one left.  The press enjoys protections under the Constitution, in return they have the responsibility to always challenge the government on behalf of the people.  If the government has adequate answers, so be it, but there is no excuse for failing to ask tough questions.

I am done, G’nite all, and may God bless!