Drunken Mystic

If anything convinces me that I don’t want to be a liberal or a Democrat, it is the way they treat others who happen to disagree with them.

Ironic to me that those supposedly dominated by compassionate ideals would say such horrendous things about another human being.  And the only true distinction made is political beliefs.  Rapists and adulterers are defended ad nauseum if they happen to support liberal causes, and perfectly fine people, at least as far as we know, are accused of the most horrible motivations.

I’ll give an example.  For some reason, Sarah Palin is the beneficiary of such hate in ways that would appall liberals if the same actions were levied against one of their own.  How would they feel if conservatives made T-shirts calling Pelosi or Hillary Clinton a “c*nt” or hacking in her private email or burning down the church building she attends?  This doesn’t include the constant references to her being “stupid” or an “idiot” or her abilities as a wife or mother, which again, would be a reprehensible attack against feminism if done to a liberal female political leader.

Of course, the way George Bush was attacked for 6 or 8 years was borderline insane.  It is not insane to disagree with his political ideas, even all of them, but insane to interpret everything he does as not only wrong but motivated by some deep evil intent.

As I’ve made my own observations or opinions known, I’ve been accused of just blindly accepting all conservative beliefs, and someone who is supposedly my friend recently implied that any misgivings I might have about universal healthcare is related to a desire to see more poor people die.

Others might be different, but for me, that’s probably not the way I’m going to begin to consider a differing view, and that’s for two reasons.  Number one, it shows a lack of an ability to truly hear what another is saying, which by nature means that no intelligent conversation or exchange will take place.  And two, if you have to insult others to make your point, you don’t actually have one.

All of this has led to my stubborn refusal to question Obama’s deep motivations while disagreeing with his policies and ideas.  Because seeing the ugliness of that level pervasive in the media, I choose not to step down to it.

It is my right, and some might even say duty, to disagree with leadership where conscience dictates, and it is the duty of citizens and educated people to critically analyze the ruling power, but I cannot know the deep motivations of the heart of another man … unless God somehow reveals them to me.

There were things Bush did that I did not think were wise, but for all I know he did them out of a desire to help and do a good thing, as wrong as those things might have been.  I feel the same way about Obama.  He truly believes that doing certain things will help others.

And even my stubborn refusal to question Obama’s deep motivations have gotten dirty looks from my conservative friends at times.  Of course my conservative friends are just as capable of saying the same types of things.  Like “Obama wants to destroy our nation” or other things.  And when I open my big mouth to make sure I don’t take part in questioning aspects of character I can’t know, then an awkward vibe settles on the room.

And where Obama has done things that I think are good or positive, I have and will continue to acknowledge those things, something most liberals were not able to do for 6 years or so for the previous president.  And I will not oppose something just because Obama does it.  That is also a sign of closed-mindedness that is unhealthy in life, not to mention a republic.

To be honest, I kinda feel for Obama at times.  While I disagree with 90% of his policy, the dude can’t swat a fly at a speech or try to encourage students in education without someone making more out of it than it is.  So this is also a suggestion to my more conservative friends to disagree on issues of substance and be willing to listen and weigh things out before reacting.

And to those of my liberal friends who are willing to engage in real life and realize that politics is largely forgettable in the grand eternal scheme of things: thank you for listening to me express my view at times without questioning my character or intelligence.  I hope to continue to make informed decisions of my own and respect the rights of others to do the same.

Peace.

Been a while since I’ve weighed in, for various reasons, but it seems like Pelosi and the Democrat leaders won’t have the votes to get a public option.

As I’ve said before, I don’t mind a public option in the health care bill.  If all there was to worry about was a public option, I wouldn’t be so worried.  In fact, I would fully support a bill that ONLY had a public “option.”  The conservatives are making way too big a deal about the public option.

But the part that concerns me is the part that remains in the bill.  Penalizing people for NOT having health insurance?  It is in the bill even though a few months ago, Obama said he was against it.  Of course there are several other measures that limits the freedom of the public to make choices (or penalizes or taxes them for them), and puts the power in the hands of the government to choose those limits.  In other words, if it were just about more or better choices for the citizens, then fine.  But there is too much associated with this bill that goes beyond that to control over others, and I just can’t agree with that.

I’ve lived in a country with socialized health care.  And the Korean system was great.  But it didn’t seek control over people as it provided health care.  I’ve seen a system where you can have socialized health care without the communist control, and it was fine.

Peace.

Obama isn’t a socialist or a communist.  He’s a neo-communist.

Now, before you think I’m calling him names, I am using these terms in their true sense.  I’m not trying to put Obama down as if he’s a “commie”, or even criticize him, but the correct terminology of his political philosophy and practice is neo-communism.

Socialism and communism are close enough that people get them confused.  They do overlap to a degree, but there is a significant difference between them.

Socialism is, simply, a political belief that it is the job and responsibility of the government, the state, to provide basic amenities for its citizens, especially for those that have not.  Things like housing, food, clothing, education, and now health care are all in this mix.  As many conservative Christians might find it hard to believe, many Christians were involved in the early stages of what socialism looked like in the West, i.e., the Social Gospel.

Communism differs on a couple key points.  While communism also sees the role of the state to provide, it goes even further to guarantee complete equality of station.  One person possessing more than another is inherently wrong, in their view.  In order to insure this, the state must have an inordinate amount of power to enact these changes and force compliance with their view, including the suspension of many of what are human rights, or the rights inherent in any free society: free speech, free press, freedom of religion, etc.  Communism is completely atheistic.  Communism believes it takes a revolution, usually violent, to achieve at least begin down the path towards utopia.

After WWII and through the Cold War, the initial manifestation of communism has utterly failed.  it’s been a failure everywhere it has been attempted.  Some of the most dismal places on earth are communist countries.

What about China and Vietnam? you might ask.  Good question.  Those two countries were extremely depressed economically until they began to embrace capitalistic ideas and morph them into their own.  In an ironic turn of events, China recently encouraged our current president to enact some free market solutions.  Hopefully he listens.

So as traditional communism failed worldwide, communists in democratic nations adjusted their methods, but not some of the basic belief system.  Gone are the notions of violent revolutions and atheism.  Communists realized they could slowly, step by step and without making a big deal about religion, achieve their goals by working within the system to overthrow it from within.  And as long as religion can be manipulated to move them down that path, all the better.

This is not, then, traditional communism.  So calling Obama a communist is not accurate.  But neither is he simply a socialist.  He is of this newer philosophy that I call neo-communism.  Others might use the term, but I haven’t heard it used before.

While the focus on a violent revolution, a revolution is still the goal, however evolutionary the revolution might be.  Behind this evolution are still very strong communist beliefs: the increased power of the state over individual freedoms that will insure equality of station.

The first liberal/leftist response is to call such a notion paranoid or some sort of conspiracy theory nonsense, but it doesn’t take much digging to see that the extreme left, while offended to the public eye, admits such things openly among themselves.  In an unprecedented time in history when everything is recorded and put on youtube, you can hear much of it from their own lips, or read it from their own books.

Obama and the extreme left believes, wholeheartedly, that it is in the best interest of the nation to have more control over the banks, private corporations, and the health care sector.  If there is a problem, or more specifically, if they feel there is a problem, the solution is always more regulation and government control and spending.  In spite of evidence of the failings of such things, things like public education and health care are sacred.  All dissenting opinion is dangerous and must be marginalized as much as possible.

This belief does not make Obama and other neo-communists evil or bad people, necessarily.  They act according to a strong conviction and their own perspective.

But if it looks, talks, and acts like a Marxist, it’s a Marxist.  And no amount of outrage at the term, which is Cold War loaded, i agree, changes the facts.  Obama and the extreme left are neo-communists.

And while the notions themselves are held by more of a minority in our country, because the bulk of the media and the entertainment industry is on board with these principles and the direction, it seems more prevalent than it is … and cooler than it is.

But despite the propaganda to the contrary, many still oppose these principles, both citizens and elected officials.  Even people within Obama’s own party oppose the most extreme of them.

Which is the beauty of a republic.  Differing opinions can exist freely.  And dissent keeps a republic healthy.  The pendulum will swing again and dissent will be healthy then, too.

Peace.

but it was on my heart to share it again.  Penn (from the Penn and Teller act) has some video blurbs on youtube.  If you haven’t seen this, as a Christian, it really encouraged me to “speak the truth in love” to others and not be so afraid of offending.

Watch video here.

Penn also has some good things to say about the “party of hate” … I have to say I agree with his line of thinking here as well.

Watch the “party of hate.”

Peace.

Just going to focus on a couple things here today.  Lot’s happening, but I don’t necessarily need to cover it all here.

I want to first comment on a very dangerous pattern from the Obama administration and, by extension, the Democratic party here in their first six months of total power.

Twice (that I’m covering here) the White House has kept independent studies under wraps until after a vote on the issue in question.

Example one.  A vote coming up on a program for school vouchers.  The Democrats made lots of noise how there was no evidence of its success and how they are a failure and all that.  All the while there was an independent study done on the school voucher system in DC that found them very successful, and while it was ready before the vote, the White House did not release it until after.

Example two.  A recent vote to raise taxes on production of energy that supposedly causes global warming came up a couple weeks ago in the House.  The bill was delivered on a Friday afternoon (hundreds of pages long) and the vote scheduled for the very same Friday afternoon, which gave congressmen and women mere hours to read, respond, and try to debate a bill that would have massive impact on energy prices in a major recession.  Also, that’s right, an independent study by the EPA, the government itself, saying no correlation can be proven between certain types of energy production and global warming, was witheld by the White House until after the vote.

This is a direct abuse of power to control the flow of information to push an agenda, even when the facts say otherwise.  We could also talk about the hoopla and fear mongering that went on before the passage of the “necessary” “stimulus” bill … didn’t some of us learn from the last president to maybe not use fear and “crisis” language to get our country involved in something stupid?  I guess the Democrats didn’t.

Meanwhile, the education of our children continues to suffer when a real solution for improvement is available, and energy prices are on the verge of skyrocketing during a deep recession based on faulty assumptions, and now our country will be trillions of dollars in debt to a spending package that has done little if anything for our economy.

This doesn’t seem to be the open, honest, transparent administration open to bipartisanship and dialogue to find the best solution.  Starting out of the gate, it’s been quite the opposite.

The next thing I’d like to discuss is scapegoating.  I’m fairly skeptical of any agenda, political or otherwise, that is accompanied by scapegoating.

To define, scapegoating is placing blame on an individual or group of people, in this context to justify demonizing and punishing them.  Usually it is a small, easily identifiable group.  And political scapegoating happens when you need to blame a group to take something away from them.

Some conservatives have done it with “Muslim extremists” and “terrorists.”  Not that these are not real threats, but to use them in order to push an agenda or to restrict the freedom of others or just overreact, I’m skeptical about that.

With liberals, it is the rich.  Anyone making money and being successful, no matter how deserved for hard work and ingenuity, is targeted and demonized … unless they are a celebrity that votes Democrat.

The rich are blamed for poverty and recessions and everything else under the sun.  And so the rich can then be punished … mainly overtaxed and their companies overregulated.  And of course they become the bad guys in most of our movies.

Are there bad men who happen to be businessmen and rich?  Sure they are, but we’ve got greedy people everywhere.

And demonizing the rich doesn’t seem to take into account how many of the wealthy in our country make genuine contributions, create jobs, and are full of compassion.

Just to name two.  Rick Warren, a pastor, ended up making lots of money after he wrote a successful book.  He gives 90% of his income to charity.  Or Truett Cathy, founder of Chic-fil-a, has more money than he can count and gives gobs of it to charity … not to mention he’s even closed one day a week and takes care of his employees better than any other fast food chain.

These are men of God who are amazing examples to us all.  Of course Hollywood won’t do a movie on Truett Cathy or Rick Warren because they are men of God.  They’d rather make a movie about a gay mayor.

There are more examples of rich people full of compassion and integrity and contribution, people who didn’t need the government to tell them to give.

The point is, you shouldn’t have to demonize and punish one group of people to help another, and yet that has been the liberal manifesto like they got it out of a Marxist handbook.  Judging someone by the amount of income (without taking into account the character of how they spend it) is just as faceless and ignorant as judging someone by the color of their skin or nationality or creed.

And what is even more sad is that the modern neo-communist is also either ignorant or in denial of every national experiment in history to force equality of station.  All it does is take away freedoms, increase the abuses and waste of government, and spread poverty instead of prosperity.

Peace.

Okay, so Obama’s fly swatting thing was pretty cool.  It was translated into the ridiculous by PETA having to make a stupid statement about it. 

North Korea has been even more aggressive in its puruit of nuclear capabilities.  On the one hand, North Korea does this from time to time, making noise, trying to force the US and the rest of the world to the negotiating table so they can get something for nothing.  It is not quite as serious as it may seem.

On the other hand, any country led by a dude who propagates a god-like myth about his own birth, and is not only a communist dictator but worshipped like an idol, he’s just crazy enough to use those weapons while he starves his own people into mass graves.

But we shouldn’t call him “evil” … that would just be mean.

Not sure how much of a coincidence it is, but Obama has had to deal with a much more aggressive North Korea than Bush did.  Could be just timing of capabilities and other things (like a more conservative government in South Korea), and we probably shouldn’t make too much out of it, but interesting nonetheless. 

Funny that Kim Jong Il is firing weapons at us with the nuclear capabilities given to him by his good friend, Bill Clinton.

One last ironic thought, and proof of Kim Jong Il’s craziness, is he keeps firing off missles at our allies (and possibly soon the United States itself) and then saying, “Don’t attack me.” 

I think a diplomatic rolling of the eyes is appropriate.

Moving on to Iran, wouldn’t surprise me if Ahmadinejad rigged that election.  That’s what dictators do, right? 

Obama has gotten some flak, even from his own party, for not being supportive enough of oppressive-free elections in Iran.  It is rather curious that he won’t make stronger statements in support of justice and freedom for all in Iran.  Guessing at his motivations doesn’t really help, but it is curious.

One of the things that bothers me, though, is the hypocrisy of the front page headlines about the problems with elections in Iran and almost nothing for the last few months from the same media as to the widespread liberal voter fraud that happened in this country.  ACORN was convicted of voter fraud recently, and the stories abound … just not reported by CNN and other major networks.  In fact, they are marginalized.  You know who got millions of dollars from Obama’s “stimulus” package?  ACORN.

We’ll never know how much the liberal fraud affected the outcome of the presidential or even senatorial elections because the only one who will touch it is Fox News, and then that network gets the “conservative propaganda machine” name calling when they try to do something as inconvenient as report facts inconsistent with the liberal agenda.

I guarantee, if a conservative group had been convicted of voter fraud and Bush had passed a bill giving them millions of dollars, the outrage would have made Alec Baldwin blow a heart valve and been broadcast 24/7 everywhere, even Fox News, as the next Watergate.  The journalists breaking the story would receive Nobel Prizes.

Obama signs the biggest anti-smoking bill ever in America.  Okay.  Fine.  Anyone else think it’s weird that he won’t stand up and support freedom and justice in Iran, we can kill the unborn at will, but we’re gonna stop all that smoking of cigarettes, by God!  I do.

A quick note on health care stuff.  I was hoping to do a little more research to cover this more extensively, but basically I feel there does need to be some major regulation and restructuring of our health care system.  Unfortunately it is left to the Democrats to overspend and mismanage to solve this problem since the Republicans keep repeating the mantra “free market!” and refuse to deal with the real issue.

Health care in America is not a “free market” now.  And the major reason for this is the health insurance industry.  Coupled with wasteful litigation, health care costs have risen out of control.  We’ve got great doctors, providers, professionals and technology, but access is limited by cost.  Even people with “full coverage” go bankrupt if they have a major health issue.  It is very common.

So I would support a government run health care system that deals with those two issues well, insurance companies and wasteful litigation.  Other countries have it and it works okay, but I am seriously pessimistic that the Democrats we have before us have the cahones to restructure our whole health care system when they financially indebted to insurance companies (anyone realize that AIG was the first bailout and that AIG insures Congressional pensions?) and most of those Senators, and our president, are lawyers.  Putting all those people out of business during a major recession where unemployment is about to hit 10% probably won’t happen.

So what the Democrats will end up doing, I feel, is overtaxing to pay for a system that’s already broken instead of cutting it out at the root and redesigning it.  This Democratic White House and regime has already proven that they will overpay for really bad planning.  I hope they prove me wrong.

Peace.

Well, I’ll try to bullet through some of these, just to give a head’s up here and there, but I’d like to start with some positives on Obama.

In his “brave” abortion speech a week or so ago, Obama made the point that the country needs to do a better job encouraging people to adopt.  I agree.  Adoption is way too cost prohibitive, especially in a major recession.  But even in “good” economic times, adoption costs a lot of money (somewhere between 10 -25 thousand dollars … in rare cases even more).  There are also other issues with adoption, like a burecratic hesitation to place minority children with white families, but ultimately cost is the issue with many people who look into adoption.

Not that adoption should be easy, but the high cost isn’t necessarily the right limitation or obstacle.

I don’t know that Obama really believes in making adoption more affordable or manageable … call me a skeptic, but I will be pleasantly surprised to see him make constructive changes in this area.  But I’m all for it.

Some conservatives made noise about Obama wanting to add more regulations in the investment business.  Looking at what he wants to address, I can’t say that I disagree with Obama.  There is a real problem with capitalism, in that sometimes people’s risk with capital hurts more than just their own business or lives.  More risk garners more profit, so you do see some abuses.  So I don’t know that these regulations are so uncalled for, but it will depend on the actual rules, regulations, and implementation, of course.

I’ll also commend Obama on trying to ease the pain of the housing market collapse with some incentives for first time home buyers and those buying foreclosures.  The housing market is in a situation where many investors are taking advantage of the situation, as they do, and I agree the better thing in the long run is to encourage more private ownership than more real estate speculation.  Of course, the current administration still blames the Bush administration for all of this … and the only blame Bush should really get is that he wasn’t more adamant and forceful in changing the unrealistic banking and housing regulations the Democrats instituted with Bill Clinton.

Even though he tried to close it down, Obama did make a good choice to keep sensitive photos from Gitmo out of the hands of the media, which he got a lot of flak from his own party and the ACLU about.  He did listen to military advisers in the field and kept the pics from the public.  Some of that was pure political survival … can you imagine releasing those photos and experiencing a major terrorist backlash … it would have damaged Obama’s image as someone needed to move us more toward peace with the international world.

As an aside about the Gitmo situation, Dick Cheney had a speech a week or so about it … did you realize that they used those questionable techniques on only THREE inmates?  There are a couple hundred more terrorists that were not treated so harshly.  Not that only three justifies any wrongdoing by a longshot, only that with all the coverage, we’ve been led to believe, by implication, that waterboarding and such was a common occurence there.

All this in the midst of Pelosi denying she ever knew they did such things, when she clearly signed off on it before the ACLU and other liberal groups got ahold of the info and became so outraged.  She has lied several times about what she knew and when, and the CIA has even transcripts of what she knew when.

The last positive I’ll mention is Obama’s handling of the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.  He has, in effect, done very little and let what has been working continue to work.  That has been the best choice, and shows at least a little wisdom.

I know a lot of people were really afraid of what Obama would do in Iraq and stuff when he got in office.  I never really had that concern.  My concern was more the unnecessary nationalization of industry, the free and unlimited support of killing babies, and the unwise raising of taxes, all of which we are seeing and will continue to see.  Obama is listening more to the military commanders than he is the extreme left.  As long as he does that, I don’t think we have much to worry about.

To continue on with foreign policy, North Korea is being more aggressive with its nuclear program now that Obama is in office.  Again, I thought Obama’s charm, good looks, and transcendent liberal personality was supposed to fix stuff like this, not make it worse.  Funny to me that Obama is doing and saying much the same in regards to North Korea as Bush … except without Bush’s “axis of evil” language … and Obama isn’t getting any flak from anyone.  Same foreign policy.  Different reaction.  Interesting.

As most of you know now, the US government will own 60% of GM.  The Canadian government will own 12%.  That is 72% of a major company owned by the state.  Then Obama stressed “the government’s commitment to staying out of the automaker’s business decisions.”  Really?  Removing the CEO, giving all those ultimatums … that is a different definition of “staying out of the automaker’s business decisions” than mine.

Almost the very next day, the AP reported that Congress is reviewing the closing of dealerships by Chrysler and GM.  Chrysler is closing almost 900 dealerships … GM closing 1,100.  Gubmint doesn’t like that so many will be out of a job.  Again, this is “staying out of the automaker’s business decisions”?

And to top it all off, Obama has made June Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender pride month.  You can read the proclamation here. Ah, change you can believe in.

I’ve been thinking more on the nationalized/universal health care issue lately … too much to include here.  Probably another post soon.

My only other little rant is on the celebrity status of our president.  When does he have time to work?  He’s doing a different interview or speech every day.  There is more discussion on how Obama throws a perfect spriral than his policies.  Classic bait and switch: distract while all this other stuff is going on.

Peace.