Drunken Mystic

talking with Becca this morning about my post, and she suggested Obama might mean the European idea of where if someone has a menial job, they have to have an education to do it.  For example, if you are a waiter, then you need a two year degree to do that job.  Or someone working fast food, for example, would also need a two year degree to put the fries down in the grease.  This is so they can be called “higher-skilled” and therefore pay them “more money” for that “skill.”  Of course, this raises prices on EVERYTHING … hyper inflation is a good thing, right?

Amazing.  She’s probably right.  Europe has got it all figured out, you know.

Peace.

Before I go out of town tomorrow … I had to share.

Getting on my yahoo.mail account today, I saw the headline “Obama wants ‘higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs in the future’”.

And I want a pony.  And a winnebago.

Now, I haven’t read his entire speech, so not sure how this statement came about in context, and I know Republicans have said dumb things too (especially Bush) … but come on.

(The following has been brought to you by ancient Irish sarcasm)  Really?  You mean, our plan to have lower paying jobs filled with people with no skills isn’t working?  This really is change I can believe in!  High paying jobs and higher skilled workers!  Why didn’t I think of that?  (The preceding was brought to you by … well, you know)

On a serious note … why would we want higher paying jobs?  The current administration and Congress will just tax me out the wazoo … so what is my incentive for upping my skills to get that higher paying job that just materialized out of thin air?  Paying a higher tax bracket so I give more to the government to waste?

The current rate of spending is so outrageous, I can barely wrap my brain around it.  After criticizing Bush for bloating the deficit, I guess what Obama really meant was that Bush didn’t bloat it nearly enough.  The conservative estimates are somewhere around a trillion dollars of debt … per year … for the next decade.

The gubmint’s gonna have to get this money from somewhere, and as some of the current administration has a problem paying their own taxes and Obama gave .5% of his salary to charities … it’s not coming from them … it’s gonna come from us, the citizens of our country, from the pockets of the rich AND poor.  Don’t believe the hype about tax cuts for the poor … higher taxes on gasoline and stuff like that affects the poor WAY more than the rich.

A trillion dollars.  Okay, so you know how much a million is?  well, it is a thousand thousands … A billion?  A thousand millions.  A trillion?  A thousand billions … in other words, a million millions.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much that is.

A trillion dollars a year would give every person in India a thousand dollars … which is A LOT to them.  Some could live a whole year off of that.

We’ve only just begun, too, as the Carpenters would say.  “White lace and promises” indeed.  We’re only a couple months into this thing.  This is gonna be a wild ride to be sure.

Let’s put this on a scale I can understand.  Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I make $30,000 a year.  I’m having trouble making ends meet, so I max out my credit cards and begin to accumulate $10,000 of debt a year … for ten years, still only making $30 grand.  Oh, and by the way, I already have a debt of $20,000.  No biggie.  After ten years of racking up debt, I now owe over $120,000 of debt … all without paying any of it off.  This isn’t like a house payment where I start out with a big number and pay it off and have some equity at the end.  This is like racking up a hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth of debt and no equity in anything, just wasting money on things I think I need or may want.  To make the analogy pure, I’d have to be able to print money from my Lexmark to try to make it up … funny but probably not gonna happen.

What would you say about me?  Keep the names coming … I’m having a hard time not saying them about our current president.

Now throw in that they are seriously talking about growing embryos to experiment on … wow.  Just wow.

I’m staying positive, though.  Maybe Obama knows something about the world I don’t and this will work out swimmingly … doubtful, but we’ll see.

Peace.

Happy St. Patty’s day!  Hopefully you celebrate by giving to the poor and spreading the Gospel, which is what Patrick would have wanted … not the drunken thing it’s become.

Read a headline this week where Obama spoke and said we need confidence in our economy.  Anyone else find this ironic coming from a guy who has been saying this is an “unprecedented economic crisis” and other types of rhetoric? 

A sure way to turn a recession into worse, even a depression, is to use crisis rhetoric, spend (and waste) gobs of money you don’t have, and overtax the very people who need to be investing, spending and creating more jobs.  Check, check, and … check.  Wow.  Good job.  I didn’t mention printing money like they are Jonas Brothers posters, but that’s in there, too.  Hyper inflation doesn’t necessarily help average Joe afford his mortgage.

Our government is seriously considering taking away the ability to write off charitable giving — in other words, they will tax money you give away out of the kindness of your own heart.

Like I said before, socialism, while preaching a type of compassion, does not teach people to be personally compassionate.  It teaches them to be selfish and greedy with what they do get, expecting a bureacracy (without a soul or personality) to be compassionate for them.  Forced compassion has the opposite effect — haven’t we, as Christians, learned anything about legalism in the past 2,000 years?  I guess not.

By the way, some interesting comparisons between conservatives and liberals.  Who do you think gave more of their salary to charitable giving, Dick Cheney or Barack Obama?  Well, you guessed it … Dick Cheney, with all the demonizing the media and liberals have done on the man, actually gave more than 70% of his VP salary to charitable giving.  How much did Obama give of his Senatorial salary?  Less than 1%.  Hmmnn. 

I think it is funny how most people who love the buzz word “sustainability” probably voted for Obama who, in a matter of weeks, has outspent every president who ever lived … and is borrowing and printing money to do it.

I like the Pope.  I mean the man and what he’s been saying.  I really don’t like the position and the system behind it, but I like ol’ Benedict.

He comes out this week and boldly states that condoms won’t hinder the spread of AIDS in Africa — only abstinence before marriage and fidelity during marriage will do this.  He actually said just encouraging condom use will make it worse.

Of course, he’s right.  And while liberals say he cares more about his religious views more than the African people, nothing could be further from the truth.  Is it loving to treat people like animals that cannot (or should not even try) control themselves so we give them condoms?  Or maybe the Pope does love them because he sees them as people created in God’s image so it matters, morally, what they do.  In other words, if he’s right, is it love to lie?

One last thing: unfortunate that we have a president that gives in to the deception that fetal stem cells are necessary for scientific advancement.  Not surprising, though, which is also unfortunate.

Peace.

So I kinda wanted to write some of this last week … ah, well, got busy with sicknesses and just general life …

A few comments on Obama’s first press conference.  He did a decent job.  I was trying not to be too critical and just watch, which was difficult, but I managed to listen a little more objectively.  He got a couple difficult questions, which he danced around more than answered, so I was glad for that.

Of course, any argument he had about how he’s handling the “economic crisis” was pretty poor.  The AP had a great article where they fact checked his statements from the press conference.  I was glad to see the media doing a good job trying to keep him honest for once.

The whole idea of trying to convince the American people this stimulus bill is going to solve their problems is pretty insane to me.  A majority of the American people are against this stimulus thing … a majority actually voted for Obama, too … so there has to be some overlap of people who voted for Obama but are against the stimulus bill as a bad idea.  So to go out and have to convince people that they need your help, when they don’t feel that they do … pretty much socialistic doctrine, really.

As I’ve said several times, I’m pretty against the whole stimulus, bailout thing.  It is full of pork and pet projects (too much to get into here) and will not create more jobs than it will erase.  Unemployment will probably continue to go up over the next two years (my prediction … you can hold me to it) because of the passing of this stimulus bill.  All this government spending and resulting control over markets will hurt the economy.  It always does.

Did you know that the US has the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized, non-communist country?  That’s right, higher than those socialist Europeans.  But these companies are bad, so we can’t help them … even though putting more money in the pockets of these companies will mean they will spend more, hire more people, fire less people, invest more, etc.  As wasteful as some of these companies may have been, and yes some of them were poor managers, the gubmint will do a worse job managing that money.

For positives, I liked some of what Obama said about the war in Iraq and Aghanistan.  Sounded similar to some of Bush’s rhetoric in the past, ironically.  Sure he had his own spin, but at least Obama is taking time instead of just going forward full speed with some anti-war agenda.

I also thought Obama had a point.  He’s made some efforts to include Republicans, more than I thought he would, at least, and compromised here and there.  So I applaud him for that.  But Obama is right in questioning how much counsel he should take from Congressmen who have been bad managers themselves.  While they didn’t go way overboard like the Democrats are about to, they are the ones who preach this fiscal responsibility stuff and yet have acted opposite of that for five or six years.  Even with a slim majority, they had the presidency and should have done way more.

To compare them with the Democrats, of course the Democrats are going to spend and expand government.  That’s the basis of their whole ideology.  I expect Democrats to be Democrats.  But for the Republicans to act as they have for the past few years cheapens their message.

For example, let’s say you’ve got an Evangelical minister who preaches family values and high moral fiber.  Contrast him with a pimp.  The pimp sees nothing wrong with sex outside of marriage, and in fact encourages it.  You kind of expect the pimp to be a pimp.

But for the Evangelical minister to cheat on his wife for a few years with a couple mistresses and then preach to the pimp about his lifestyle … well, seems pretty hypocritical to me.  Not that he’s not right anymore, it just hurts the cause and the message … and he should be held accountable for it.  I remember Paul being concerned that he would be considered a counterfeit if he didn’t keep his lusts under check while preaching the Gospel.

The Republicans have the next four years to prove they believe what they say by how they vote and how they conduct themselves.  They’ve done it before, and they can do it again.  Recently, they’ve been the “lukewarm” politicians and you know how God feels about those who can’t decide whether or not they’re hot or cold.  It will take some hard nosed men and women willing to stand up for what is right against all the fear mongering of the left.

By the way, speaking of fear mongering.  I hope liberals are paying attention here.  All the arguments used by the left that Bush used 9/11 and the resulting fear to push his own modern expansionist agenda could also be used for Obama during this “economic crisis.”  The language Obama has been using, and the “necessity” to which he continually refers, is much the same tactic, and yet he’s using it to promote his idea of what the role of government should be.  The fact checking article by the AP I mentioned earlier is a great rundown of how Obama is spinning this thing.

Peace.

First of all, let me say that his speech a couple weeks ago admitting what he felt were his mistakes and being accountable to them, that was a class act and showed character.  I don’t remember the last president to do that.  Shows a lot of character for those that did.

Not good enough for the media or the Democrats, still and continually bashing the poor guy.  I mean, wow.  More on that later.

Not that Bush has been perfect in my view.  Not by a long shot.  He wasn’t clear enough on the commitment as we got into Iraq, and even Afghanistan, binding himself to a “WMD” platform that was politically damaging and just unwise.  And then, as the war and occupation continued, other mistakes were made, mostly because Bush allowed liberal criticism to impede and influence his decision making.

I also think No Child Left Behind to be the wrong step in education, placing public schools on a path of frustration, low standards, and ironically, failure.

There are some major positives from his 8 years, though.  The tax cuts averted a major recession after the Clinton years.  Bush also had to dismantle much of the federal beuracratic mess that Clinton fostered in his administration to properly deal with domestic and international terrorism.  Bush’s leadership right after 9/11 was superb and level-headed.

We weren’t attacked again, domestically, for the remainder of his presidency.

I personally thank him and respect him for his stand against abortion.  He vetoed partial birth abortion (I think I did a little dance on that day) and stood against scientific testing on aborted babies.

He also increased aid to Africa to help with the AIDS epidemic there, so much that they gave him a PEACE award.

We also have a more conservative and constitutionally minded Supreme Court because of the justices he nominated.

The standard of living for the poor, especially for the African American community, despite what you’ve heard and read, increased during his responsibility.

I appreciated his strong stand on some foreign policy matters, like North Korea.  Of course they cried and whined about it, and it must’ve been quite a shock after losing their best American friend in Bill Clinton, who gave North Korea more money than he did any other foreign country.  Kim Jong Il said “thank you” and made sure the common citizens saw very little of that aid.  (By the way, it was Clinton that gave NK the nuclear tech that became such an issue … smart move.)

Bush’s main fault, I think, was this: he truly believed that if he worked with Democrats, they would work with him.  He continually signed off on liberal and Democratic programs in hope of some reciprocity.

He got none.

Instead, the past 8 years have only proven that Democrats and liberals are the most hateful, vindictive, and divisive group of people in our country.  They took and twisted even the good things Bush was able to accomplish as failures.  They gave him no credit, called him names, cried a loud foul with every decision he made, and even ultimately blamed him for the weather.

And for those of you who consider yourselves Christians and were willing to treat any human being the way Bush has been treated over the last 5 or 6 years …

Shame on you.  Really.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

Over the next four years, Obama will do and say much I disagree with.  But I will disagree with him and do so without calling him names, blaming him for things that could never be his fault, or be unwilling to give him credit when credit is due.

Mr. President, you’ll probably never read this, but if you do, let me apologize on behalf of every Christian American who couldn’t be mature enough to disagree in substance but still honor you enough as a human being to give some respect to a man who served his country, for good or ill, for 8 years.

Peace.

One of the things the media continually does, giddily, is compare Obama to great presidents. One of these is Abraham Lincoln.

As is consistent with a media in love with extreme liberalism, that’s an insane comparison. If they were honest, they would compare Bush with Lincoln, for two main reasons.

First of all, Lincoln fought an unpopular war. The Civil War. You may have heard of it. Lincoln was constantly criticized for getting into the war and being the aggressor. And his main critic was (gasp!) the media. The North lost every battle in the Civil War until Gettysburg, and had Lee not made an insane stand, that unpopular war could have gone on indefinitely. Many in the North thought they should leave the South alone and let them secede.

Sound familiar?

Sherman’s slash and burn tactics through Georgia were quite nefarious and cruel by modern standards.  Some of the things the North did to get soldiers were pretty shady, too, like drafting immigrants in New York right when they got off the boat.

Also, winning the war committed the North to a sustained program of occupation that was pretty unsuccessful in some cases, as is evident in the necessity of the Civil Rights Movement through much of the South.

Of course, we don’t mention these things in popular history when talking about Lincoln.  We think of a unifying force during the Civil War (not necessarily true) and the Gettysburg Address (an afterthought of a speech soundly panned by the media).

We also have Lincoln’s stand on slavery.

Oh, you might say, that is where Obama and Lincoln are similar, racial equality and rights.

Okay, well, let’s look at what Lincoln stood for and against.

Slavery was a legal right in the South, the right to own another human being, and the rest of the country was pretty apathetic towards the whole thing, apathetic enough that it took a whole separate political party make it an issue.  Hence, the modern Republican party.

Lincoln was against a legal form of slavery that took away the human rights of a certain group of people based on a faulty idea that black people weren’t fully human, and therefore not privy to human rights.  Lincoln argued that black people were fully human and endowed with the same inalienable rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Lincoln, however, knew how unrealistic it was to make slavery illegal in every state, especially the South.  But he was dedicated to stopping it from spreading even further, therefore taking on the ire of many Southern Democrats.  Lincoln was able to produce the Emancipation Proclamation because the North began to win the war, and he finally had some political capital to do so.  But the Proclamation didn’t even free all the slaves, only those in the rebel South.  It took a Constitutional Amendment years later and in respect to Lincoln, to do that.

For Obama to be like Lincoln, Lincoln would have let the South secede and made slavery legal again in the North.

Bush has done the opposite, fighting an unpopular war, facing harsh criticism from the media, and fought against the spread of a legal form of taking away the inalienable right to life of a certain group of human beings, the unborn.

If anyone should be compared to Lincoln, it is Bush.

Peace.

Despite the insane giddiness expressed by many, last week was quite the historic week.

Beginning on Monday with MLK day, I’ve been trying to pull together some thoughts.  King has been one of my heroes, historically, for some time.  So what would he have thought of Obama?

Without a doubt, King would have been ecstatic about the first black president.  That achievement alone says a lot about our nation.

But what would King have thought about Obama’s policies?  Well, being a pacifist, King would have been against the War in Iraq, much as he was against Vietnam.  Being a socialist, King saw the government as the answer to many economic and social issues.  He’s with Obama there, too.

But what about abortion?  Would King have approved of the extreme policy of death that Obama is set on persuing?

Being a hero of mine, I would hope not.  But honestly … maybe.  Other civil rights leaders from the same era are completely in line with the right to kill babies today.  Would King have followed suit?  It is quite possible that he would not have.  We’ll never really know, but King stuck with non-violence even while many left him for more aggressive, divisive and violent policies.  Like Gandhi, King was a true believer in activist non-violence, even when the whole civil rights movement left him behind and attempted to marginalize him.  Would he have done the same with abortion?  We’ll never know, but I wonder.

I didn’t watch the inauguration.  I’ve never watched a live inauguration before, even when the guy I voted for won.  Why start now?  The media finally has a president they like, so they made it quite the event.

While the world seemed to party, I was a little sad.  I hope Obama does well, but we unfortunately just elected one of the most corrupt Senators in our country to preside over a major recession.  His economic and social policies will actually create poverty and selfishness (already done … check) and hurt this country.  So I wasn’t quite as happy as the celebration that encompassed the entertainment biz.

Obama hit the ground running, using his power of executive order to make some immediate noise, most notably to me, reversing Bush’s executive order that stopped using Federal funds for killing babies overseas.  Now we can.  Obama is also “reaching out” to Republicans by asking them nicely to vote for his bailout package that is full of pork and liberal kickbacks, helping few actual hurting people.  I hope the Republicans stand against it and point out the bailout/stimulus package for what it is.

Under the radar, the most extreme and extensive pro-killing babies legislation is coming forth, the Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA, and Obama is championing it.  FOCA removes all barriers and limitations to killing an unborn baby and could even force faith-based hospitals to either kill unborn babies or lose Fed funding … and could even force doctors with moral problems with the procedure to perform an abortion.

Freedom of choice means something different to different people, I guess.

I’m praying for God’s mercy that FOCA wouldn’t pass.

Peace.

Just wanted to give kudos to the Republicans for holding back their support for this Auto bailout until they get more concessions from the Union.  The UAW is one of the biggest contributors to this mess.

Of course now the UAW is blaming the GOP for holding back the bailout.  It passed the House and the Dems have a majority in the Senate and Bush would sign it.  Why do you need Republican support?  either the GOP is uber unified (doubtful) or there are some Dems afraid to support it without the Republican stamp of approval, so that if it fails, they all have someone else to blame.

The same issue exists with this bailout as with the Wall Street one.  We’re giving people money who are responsible for failure.  We’re not holding the right people accountable.  The Republicans are finally willing to make that stand.

In other news, a substitute teacher in England this week told a class of 7 year olds that Santa wasn’t real and parents really put the presents out.  Some of these same parents were livid.

“We’re lying to our kids and you ruined it!”

Not an exact quote, but you get the point.

Peace.