Drunken Mystic

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.

Wow.  So much I could talk about, but I’ll stick to one issue today … maybe I’ll tackle the others later.

Everyone is probably aware of the issue surrounding Obama’s honorary degree and speech at Notre Dame.  Did anyone see the photo of Obama being “christened” at the ceremony?  It was very creepy.

Well, Notre Dame is a Catholic university and therefore stands strongly against abortion.  They decided to give him the degree anyway, and their reasons are their own.  I’m not sure why it matters to them either way, but they did it.

What I want to address is Obama’s speech.  First of all, while he began, something else very eerie happened.  Three times a protester shouted “Stop killing children!” during the beginning of his speech.  To drown out the protesters, the rest of the crowd started chanting “Yes we can!” in support of Obama.

“Yes we can”?  Yes we can … what?  Kill babies?  Again, just creepy to me.

Then Obama gets into the abortion issue and tackles it head on.  Well, I suppose he should be commended for not ignoring it, for having the courage to express his beliefs about it before what could be a hostile crowd.

And I will agree with Obama in the sense that he encouraged a sensible debate on the issue of abortion.  I don’t believe he really wants it, but I will agree with the statement.  Obama’s concern was that people not denigrate and demonize people on diferent sides.  Which is great.  I agree that people, especially liberals, should stop doing these things.

But my major issue was when Obama made the statement that people of faith cannot know what God thinks about abortion, and in such a state of doubt, should leave it to people’s conscience about the decision, which he admits is a tough moral and spiritual decision.

What kind of people of faith is he talking about?  Faith does not lead to doubt but to confidence.  I guess my definition of faith is quite different than his own.  People of faith are able, more than anyone else, to know what God thinks about abortion.  And let me be clear.  He hates it.  Passionately.

Not to mention … does Obama feel this way about other things that are illegal?  Stealing, rape, child molestation?  Of course not.  How about torturing terrorits?  Is he, as a self-proclaimed “person of faith”, able to decide when it is okay to torture another human being?  He thinks he is and is prepared to force his views on large groups of people who fundamentally disagree with him … and on other issues as well, like health care and the structuring of our financial institutions.

The hypocrisy is astounding, really.

One particular abortion procedure reaches in and sucks out the baby’s brain.  Another cuts it up into little pieces and pulls the pieces out.  Sometimes the baby survives the abortion and they just let it sit in the corner to suffocate alone.

A person of faith cannot say this is wrong?  I absolutely believe that we can.  And must.

We can talk about the details of waterboarding and call the Bush administration criminal for perpetrating it.  But it was all done through legal channels.  It was technically “legal” if not morally justifiable at the time.  Are we not able to discuss the details of abortion?  Well, we don’t for a reason.  The “conscience” of our country would react quite clearly.

So the real danger is in being brainwashed into the mindset that abortion isn’t an issue to discuss, in detail, with others that you work with or people in your family or on the news.  Don’t be brainwashed that there are other, more important issues, so we don’t have time to discuss killing babies right now.

One last statement by Obama that I feel needs to be addressed.  He says that abortion should be “legal but rare.”  I won’t get into the philosophical copout that this is (what if I said child molestation should be “legal but rare”? … what would you think of that statement? or my character?), but instead just say that this is either complete ignorance or a bold-faced lie.

I’ll give an example.  What if I said that I believe we can’t really do anything about gang violence in the inner cities.  We have so much more to tackle first.  What those gang members do is their conscience and is a difficult moral and spiritual decision for them.  But then I say I believe it should be rare, implying that I don’t like it.  Then what would you say if I then funded a program giving all those gang members Uzis and building battleground parks where they could shoot each other to their little heart’s content, all on the government dime.  Would you believe that I think gang violence should be rare?

So either it is a lie, or Obama is so ignorant of truth and common sense that we should seriously consider whether Joe Biden is a better man for the job.  You make your choice.

Either way, as you can tell, I’ll keep talking about the truth and the horror and the shame of what we are allowing to happen in our own nation.

Peace.

So last week there was an AP article detailing how Obama is trying to cut 17 billion from the federal budget, saying things like, “In this hard time, everyone has to make cuts.  The government should be no different.”

First of all, the Democrats will not pass the cuts, so good try.  Second of all, the article made no mention on how slight a 17 billion dollar cut is when the US is going almost 2 trillion in the hole THIS YEAR.  Not really sure how that makes Obama look fiscally responsible, but the AP does.

Also there was this Press dinner with the president.  It happens every year.  During Bush’s first term in office, Bush had Steven Colbert roast him, and Bush’s own speech where he detailed his own verbal flubs over the years was very funny and classic.

In an amazing show of bipartisanship, Obama made a semi-funny speech and then laughed while another comedian called Rush Limbaugh a “traitor”, a “terrorist”, and wished Limbaugh would be tortured and killed.  Later Obama gives her thumbs up and a “well-done.”

Ah, the leader of the “civilized” world.

They found an old Nazi death camp guard and moved him back to Germany.  On the one hand, I’m glad they are bringing the guy to justice … on the other hand, the Holocaust is something Germany would just rather leave behind in the past, so it will be another sad reminder for that country that has come so far over the last fifty years.

The US trade deficit continues to widen … not surprising  as the unemployment climbs closer and closer to 10%.  As a side note, remember that the whole world is in an economic slowdown.  Don’t know how it can be all Bush’s fault, but somehow it is.

And in non-related news, tatoos are still quite popular and that business is booming.  Really gives me confidence in the American economy.

Which goes into a little rant here: anyone else noticed how during this economic crisis, people are buying less physical stuff, but their entertainment consumerism is still right up there?  Seems like some people will starve before giving up seeing the latest movie or downloading the latest CD. 

Peace.

Haven’t done this in a while … lots to cover …

To begin with, I’ll try a little positive.  I don’t have a problem with Obama’s Iraq policy.  At some point, we have to leave and let democracy work or fail.  In some ways, we have been more successful in Iraq than even Afghanistan.  But short of staying in Iraq another 20 years, we cannot assure long term success.  There is still a lot of instability in Iraq and democracy could fail.  But that region has been quite unstable for the past few thousand years.  I don’t know if that will change anytime soon.

Interesting to me that Obama is going to focus on Afghanistan now.  I would have predicted a withdrawal from that country, too.  Obama will have to man up and work some stuff out with Pakistan to really have success in Afghanistan, so we’ll see how far he’s willing to go.

An overall pre-WWII appeasement attitude by Obama, very Clinton-like, hasn’t been all that encouraging.  Obama got props for handling the Somali pirate situation, but anyone who’s looked a little closer knows, he had nothing to do with that decision.  It was an on-site decision by the SEAL commander because he felt the hostage’s life was in danger.  Fairly standard procedure.  But being the political person Obama is, he will take credit and try to work the military image while he downsizes the military.

Something you may not have heard about: an independent study on school vouchers in DC proved that they worked.  Only the Obama administration didn’t release the findings until after the vote on the issue so the Dems could lie and say it wasn’t working.  Oops.  Wouldn’t want education to improve for those inner city poor kids, would we.  My prediction?  We’ll see billions more dollars in education pumped into public schools by this administration … and the gubmint schoos will still fail.

The proposed closing of Gitmo is a struggle for me.  On the one hand, even though they might have saved lives by getting good intel, I’m not sure how I can support some of the techniques used as acceptable for moral people to do to another human being.  On the other hand, to close down the whole place seems to invite disaster.  What happens when one of those guys is responsible for a mjor terrorist attack on our country (or anywhere, for that matter)?  I would put it in the highly probable category.  Gitmo has probably done some good, too.

One last note.  The Dems and the Obama administration are pushing this Mother’s Act bill.  They are very sneaky … saying it is bill to protect against internet sexual predators for children … which it addresses … but it also has a major psych evaluation that mothers would have to take and pass before leaving the hospital with their children.  If failed, they might not be able to take their baby home … or they could be given major anti-depression meds.

Let me get this straight.  Some moments before the birth, the mother could have made the decision to have the baby cut into pieces in teh womb or have its brains sucked out, and her sanity is not questioned at that point?  She is allowed, unencumbered in any way by this administration, to kill a baby in the womb at any time up to the birth … actually, this administration has sought and will continue to seek to fund such a monstrous procedure.  But actually wanting to take your baby home is grounds to question your sanity.

I think I’m moving to Texas.

Peace.

I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I stole this headline from the bottom of the screen on TV.

We realize these go together, right?  I mean, I know at least a couple people that read my blog probably voted for Obama, which is fine, but I’m just saying that we realize that with more government involvement and funding and the nationalization of things that is happening under our noses, more of our freedoms get taken away with it, right?

They have to go together.  It is the nature of things.  In the hopes of forcing the rest of the country (the rich, those EVIL corporations, etc) to help those in need, or at least a perceived need, you have to put more laws and rules on them.  And the government has to be the one to do this.

Let’s look at the recent GM situation for an example.  The government gives them money to help them out.  Fine.  They blow that money, too, so we give them more.  Well, Obama doesn’t like that his “just give them money” idea isn’t working (did he really think it would?), so he removes the head of GM and picks his own guy.

Obama has now tied his success with the success of GM.  If GM continues to fail, and I predict that it will, Obama will have to get more involved.  I won’t even tackle the outrageousness of the government removing the head of a private enterprise … because that goes with it when you take the gubmint’s money.

At some point you have to deal with the fact that GM cannot, in its current form (tied to the unions as they are) produce a competitive product for a competitive price … in their own country.

What happens next?  Well, Obama has more options.  He can put a salary cap on the executives at GM, or maybe all employees … but I doubt that happens.  The unions would scream.  But maybe he stands up to his own party and the source of millions of campaign contributions.  Maybe he surprises me.

What then?  Well, we could place overwhelming tariffs on Japanese and Korean cars, the ones that are kicking GM’s tail out of its own country.  Of course, then Obama would have friends and allies screaming at him about his unfair trade policies.  Oh, not to mention the inflation that goes along with a cornered auto market … unless the government takes up the slack there, too … which means more taxes on everybody, and then less money to spend.

I’m not saying all this will happen … only what choice does Obama have?  If he lets GM fail at this point, he cannot blame Bush (although he will try) or Republicans or evil corporations.  GM is now the gubmint’s company, and Obama is making the decisions.  If GM continues to fail, he will either go down with the ship or continue to place more rules and taxes and blame to force success of a company that deserves to fail, since the unions and the executives would not adjust while foreign competition had vision and competence.

And GM is just one example.  It is already happening with the banks and health care, and other places I don’t even know about.  To fix this “economic crisis” (Obama’s words), he feels he needs to take more and more control and Americans lose more and more of their freedoms.  There are other leaders of other nations who have done the same throughout history … I wouldn’t want to be on that list.

Peace.

while the US has pirates surrounded … the FRENCH take them down?  REALLY?  I think John Wayne is turning over in his grave.  Don’t usually believe in the whole “the end is coming” kind of rhetoric … but this is too odd to ignore.

Peace.