Mosquito Rodeo

Okay, so it's been a year since I posted and several since I posted seriously.  As I read my last post, I stand in principle by what I said, at least in general.  The constitution party deserves a read, but so does the Libertarian party and the rest.  All that most seasoned political observers know and have already done.  Most of them have quickly dismissed those readings.  I think that's a mistake.

The Democrat and Republican parties have a stranglehold on the American electorate.  This is demonstrable...I don't even have to provide proof.  It's self-evident.  We just spent a couple of BILLION dollars on a presidential campaign, several more BILLIONS on house and senate campaigns, and we ended up with the same president, same parties in control of both house and senate, and mostly the same individuals inhabiting those seats.  For any thinking American, this should be unacceptable.

Obama is, by any rational standard, a failed president.  And a corrupt one.  He is surrounded by yes men (and women), by corruptocrats who are very into machine politics and "paying people back" for real or imagined slights or offenses in the past.  I'm flogging myself trying to figure out why even any LIBERAL would vote for this man.  The anti-war crowd?  Obama not only has killed more people in war than Bush ever dreamed of, but he's issued executive orders that make it "legal" for him to simply rub out whoever is in his way, be they American citizens or whatever.  Not a peep from these supposedly "principled" people in response.  It makes me SICK.  I didn't have any respect for "code pink" and "amnesty international" and the rest of these pukes before, but now I have empirical evidence that their "principles" are nothing more than "whatever gets the Democrat elected".

So where does the principled conservative go from here?  Good question.  Certainly not with the Republican party...the establishment guys like Boehner and friends are busy trying to suck up to Obama so they aren't blamed for the tsunami of bad news about to issue from Obama's failed policies.  The Libertarian and Constitution brands have been damaged pretty much beyond repair...mostly through the inaction of the proponents of those parties, but who can really blame them?  They didn't know any more than the rest of us did how bad our leadership would really be.  How could they know that they'd have a platter on which to present their ideas so soon?

For my part, I suspect my window of activism has passed me by, at least as far as "machine" politics go.  I'd dearly love to run for office, but I WILL NOT bow down before the party apparatus, and that appears to be what is necessary to make such a run happen.  Too bad so sad for me.  For the republicans?  Hard to say.  The D vs. R war will be waged until other, more important things get in the way.  My money is on that happening this year...but then my money has been on that happening "this year" for about 5 years now, so take it with a grain of salt.  I have no idea why this system is still functioning.  Okay, actually I know that the only reason this system is still functioning is through the heroic efforts of the Fed and in particular Mr. Bernanke.  If he didn't have the presses fired up and running full-tilt we'd already be in a world of hurt.

But I'd be very surprised if even Bernanke (a sad, sad little man, really) were able to stave things off another year.  Obama will be swept away (and hopefully be rightfully blamed by history) by events that are just now forming.  I'm stockpiling food, fuel, tools and so forth.  So should you.  Seem freaky?  Maybe.  But just think what happens when you go to buy something at the store and find out that a dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on?  Visit http://survivalblog.com or http://survivalweek.com for tips on how to understand and survive the coming hard times.  Not hard as in "geez, I can't seem to find that new toy my daughter wants for Christmas" but hard as in "geez, the grocery store is closed and the stop-n-go is closed and I need gas and food".

Obama hasn't spent any time at all preparing the American public for this type of thing, but it's coming.  You voted for him, America.  Now you're going to get what you voted for, and you'll get it very fast and hard without any lube.

I hate to say it...but our country is now doomed.  It will probably be a long, slow, slide...but there is absolutely nobody on the political front (except possibly Herman Cain, but even he is suspect) who can help us.  I just went to the Constitution Party's website, and it finally made sense to me.  I had written them off as racists or whatever before, and maybe they even are.  But whatever warts they have, their fidelity to the constitution deserves a listen.  Don't you think?

http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php

Okay, I have no idea what this movie is about.  It has a vaguely left-wing tilt and makes no real sense.  It takes a swipe at the right wing cartoon when it can, but it's obviouly inept and can make no possible difference to anybody, except to me who am dumb enough to have spent a buck in the Red Machine based on the picture that represented it, which made me believe that it might be something like "Red Dawn".  I was wrong.  Do NOT rent this POS unless you're a lefty POS who has a "Bush Lied People Died" bumpersticker on your Volvo.

Yeah, I made a MAJOR mistake (I think, so far) in renting "Red State".  I'm about 5 minutes in.  So far, they've made fun of abortion protestors and right-wing people in general, with no corresponding ridicule of the drum-circle set.  More to come as I watch...except that I'm now subject to a bunch of guys talking about the women they want to sleep with.  It's pretty ugly, even by guy standards.

Okay, I started out undecided about the GOP primary.  I've known since before the 2008 election that ANYBODY would be preferable to Obama, and nothing that's happened since then has caused me to change my mind.  On the contrary, many things--particularly that abortion of a health law (pun intended)--have deepened my antipathy to President Obama into something that approaches hatred.

Romney seemed like more of the same, though less offensive and in-your-face than Obama.  I could hold my nose and vote for him.  Bachmann is simply too socially conservative for my liking.  I like her stance on abortion, but that's one of the few areas where I would be considered a social conservative, and that seems to be most of what she's about.  In addition, her negatives in the polls are very high, and I'm not sure she's electable in the general.  WRT electability, the same sort of holds true for Ron Paul.  I like his hard money ideas, his general attitude toward economics (let's face it....faux Keynesianism got us where we are today, and given the political environment true Keynesian economics isn't possible).  I even like his stance on the wars we're in.  We gave it our best shot, and nobody can say we didn't try to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize and recover after removing abusive leaders.  Time to let them sink or swim on their own, I'd say.  But he's just got such high negatives in the polls.  I don't understand why, really, but it's the reality we have to deal with.  I liked Rick Perry more than those two simply because he seems plain-spoken.  He's another big-government guy though, and not big about securing borders and liberalizing LEGAL entry into the US...and he's got a bit of foot-in-mouth disease.  Not great on many fronts, but I could vote for him, maybe even without holding my nose too hard.

Up until that point, I had not really looked at Herman Cain.  This guy I really like.  I don't give a fig about his lack of experience in elected office.  People with lifetimes in elected office got us where we are, which is where we're trying to escape from.  He DOES have political experience, though, and anyone who disputes that just doesn't know what CEOs do.  He's much more in line with my own fiscal conservatism, and practically speaking he would finally remove the race issue so we could focus on actual issues in the general.  And I think he'd mop Obama up in a landslide approaching what Reagan did to Mondale in 1984.

Then this morning, I got my first look at Gary Johnson.  I'm absolutely BOWLED OVER.

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/129298/

Here's a guy who promises to propose a balanced budget to congress his first year.  He promises to veto any budget that is out of balance.  As he freely admits, congress can override the veto and likely will.  But then the disaster that is overtaking us is squarely on them, and it will force their voting record to reflect that.  He acknowledges that the drug war is lost, and advocates legalizing marijuana.  While acknowledging that the problems with drug use and abuse won't magically go away, he wants to treat it as more of a public health issue than a legal issue.

In short, Johnson's seems to be a reality-based campaign.  It's not hard, then, to see why the media has worked so hard to keep him out of the debates in favor of candidates that polled lower than he did.  A guy like this will finish the job that their own shoddy reporting has done halfway already....blowing up their carefully constructed world.  I don't know what his politics are as far as foreign policy, and I'll be interested to see.  He CANNOT be worse than Obama, though.  He doesn't seem the type to bow to foreign leaders, gratuitously and/or accidentally insult the Brits and other allies, force the Dalai Lama to take the back door at the White House and so forth.  I don't know his views on energy policy, either....but assuming it is closer to "drill baby drill" than financing losing solar companies, 1,000,000 electric cars on the roads in a couple of years and other unicorns-crapping-skittles nonsense then I'll be putting a Johnson sign in my yard postehaste.

It would be nice if Cain kept his current momentum.  He'd beat Obama, and he'd be a good president.  But if somehow Johnson could catch fire...he would destroy Obama also, but would represent the real "transformative change" this country needed 4 years ago and needs much worse today.  And if that makes me a racist the same as I apparently was in 2008 when I felt McCain, while definitely flawed (I preferred Thompson), would be a better president, then I guess I'm a racist.  But the definition of that world must have certainly changed since Obama came on the scene.  I used to think it meant that you hated people of a color different from your own simply because their color is different from your own.  Now apparently it's a synonym for "sane".

Labels: Bachmann, Cain, Johnson, Obama, Perry, Republican Primary, Romney

A Godly man has been convicted of the "crime" of being Christian in Iran and refusing to renounce his "apostasy" and recite the shahadah:

http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2011/09/well-done-president-obama.html#anchor

He will most likely be executed, probably in a quite barbaric and creative way.  Just go to the link and read his statement, and then compare it to whatever random segment of an Islamic cleric's bellowings you can find easily on the internet.  Who is the man of virtue and who is the screaming nutcase caveman?  It's easy to tell.

I echo the sentiments of the blogger.  Obama has for the most part been an unmitigated disaster for the United States.  But two things I will commend President Obama for:  1)  He has shown extreme prejudice in hunting down the Islamic nutballs that want us dead, and done so in a very similar fashion to what I personally would have done, and 2) He issues here an incredibly clear condemnation of Iran (and really, Islam) for its extreme religious intolerance.

Good show, Mr. President.  No way on this Earth will you EVER get my vote...but you have managed to marginally reduce my antipathy toward you.  It is rather telling, though, that the very things you have done that make the most sense are the very same things that are turning off your base (e.g. lefty moonbats).  I do sympathize with anybody who has the impossible job of trying to placate the Daily Kos Krowd while still maintaining any kind of connection to reality.  It's gotta be tough.

This post is being delivered about 30 years after many of the events described transpired.  Other events, however, were recent, and therefore are relevant.  Just thought I'd deliver the heads-up so I can't be sued for irrelevant bloggership or something.

I was once a "progressive".  "Progressive" means embracing "progress", am I right?  And who but a knuckle-dragger wants to delay that?  And that's their main weapon.  Whatever feels good or sounds good is the way to go.  That's why Churchill or whoever did the quote about whoever is 20 and isn't a progressive has no heart and whoever is 30 and is a progressive has no brain.  Most of us get that by nature, but Churchill (a great American, even if he wasn't American) put it in a form ready-fit for the masses to understand deeply and at their level.

I grew up in a town bisected by railroad tracks.  Most of the "action" happened north of the tracks and the south side suffered from a not-so-well-deserved reputation of being "the wrong side of the tracks".  But whichever side you grew up on, the mothers of the children knew who you were and where you belonged.  I once crossed the tracks to visit a friend against the expressed wishes of my mother.  I arrived home about 1/2 hour later, and was promptly grounded for the rest of the day for crossing the tracks.  These ladies were not only mean, but they meant what they said.

And that is the point of this post.  The federal government could do well if it only would do what it said and mean what it said.  The tea party movement, for all its flaws, is a movement that says "dammit, spend less and mean it and do it".  Lots of ink has been spilled on how insane they are and how stupid they are.  But I have seen an echo of all our mothers back in Breckenridge, MN circa 1978 in what they have said.  Don't spend more than you have.  If you do, don't come crying to me, because I will publicly shame you if I have to.  I don't want to...I'm proud of you in the whole, but if you do something stupid I will do what I have to.

We have let our political scene get turned upside-down.  The farmers in Breckenridge now are hooked on federal subsidies.  Instead of being the cornerstone of freedom and free enterprise, they are now waiting for their next check from the federal government for leaving certain tracts of land fallow in the spirit of CRP (look it up, but we all know it's crap).  It takes a lawyer to navigate all the legal gobbldygook to even BECOME a farmer or other small business today.  Lots of the people who I most admired back in Breckenridge circa 1978, who contributed the most to the community and who added the most "glue" to that town would be considered to worst kind of enemy of the public today.  Because they did the necessary when it became necessary.  They added a little bit more fertilizer here and there when the federal government today wouldn't allow it, but they with their generations of acquired knowledge felt it was necessary.  They did what had to happen to meet their payroll and get the crop in that would support it.  Screw the feds.

The same with my folks.  They brought my sister and me up to be decent, God-fearing people.  We would, at that time, have been absolutely horrified at the nanny-state regulations that are in place today.  Not once, from the time I can remember until I was 18, did I ever see a person outside of an official race wear a bike helmet.  This morning I saw a child of about 8 wearing one for a ride down the street.  Safe?  Yes.  Stupid beyond belief?  Also yes.  My folks brought us down into the basement for actual threatening events such as possible tornadoes.  They didn't sweat the small stuff.  The one time I did sustain a real injury from riding a bike was when I broke my arm when I was 14.  NOT my head.  No helmet would have helped me then.  And in 18 years of growing up in that helmetless town, I don't recall a head injury to anybody.  In a town of 4000 or so people.  Plus the neighboring town of 8000 or so people.  But some bureaucrat somewhere thought it would be a good idea, so now I have to watch children ride down the street with expensive, non-necessary helmets on their heads instead of the smiles God gave them that I remember so well on my own face.  Thanks, government.

For my own part, I'm NEVER going to require my child to wear a helmet or anything else the government (fed, state, local or otherwise) says they need to.  I'm going to spend my money and effort making sure that she gets the education she should, the common sense she should, and the other things she needs to live a productive, normal life.  Government has left the rails of common sense, and is the enemy of people who want to get things done.  Screw them.  My daughter will have no part of it, nor will I any longer.

You've watched quite a spectacle play itself out over the last weeks and months, yes?  The tea party (of which I am not a member but which I support in many particulars), sporting what, 17 house members and no senators, prevailed (mostly) against a president and senate aligned against them.  Not bad.

But have you, as a citizen of our largest creditor nation, really listened to the message of this movement?  Have you stopped to examine carefully our overall fiscal position?  Have you examined the past actions and general moral climate of both major political parties that run our country?  I'm a proud American...but I'm not proud of our political parties or political culture.  The tea party movement is like a breath of fresh air to those of us Americans who have looked on with you in disbelief as our once-frugal-and-responsible country has run up $trillion-plus yearly deficits the last few years (by the exact same people, including our current president, who pretended to be aghast at the several-hundred-billion yearly run up immorally by our last president).

I don't understand your country, and you probably don't understand mine, especially lately.  I think we both should just take a step back and look at what's going on.  Why do you continue to buy our debt?  That's what I really don't understand.  You have the cash to buy gold, which is a much safer bet.  Or silver, or platinum, or palladium, or copper or almost any mineral that will hold its value far better than the US Dollar.  I know you want to prop up your number one export market...but trust me, you won't be able to export to us for much longer.

So if you indeed are a Chinese person of goodwill...please cut us off.  Don't buy another treasury or any other debt instrument of the United States government, including even dollars.  Give our politicians the medicine they so badly deserve.  In the long run, your people and mine will be able to develop a much healthier economic relationship that will benefit us both.  Right now our relationship is very unhealthy and cannot get better with the people we have in charge until they learn a real lesson in economics.  Your country is the only one, in my estimation, that is in any kind of position to teach that lesson peacefully, particularly if you could arrange a concerted action with Japan in this vein.  I know your two countries have bad blood from the past, but the United States is a huge trading partner for you both and our usefulness to either of you will continue to dwindle until painful economic action is taken.

I suspect, but don't know, that such an action would cause far more pain on our side than on yours right now.  That may not be the case for much longer...because I fear that if you take such an action later our political leaders will be even more desperate.  And a careful study of our country's history will show that when we get desperate about something, the guns come out and we go to war.  It doesn't pay to wait too long, if there's a chance things can be done peacefully sooner.  I know you guys have nukes.  We have a LOT of them, and a bunch of them are already aimed at your cities...and unlike yours, ours are the latest stuff and not many of them will fail or miss.  I'm sure many of yours won't fail or miss, either.  So both sides lose if we let it come to that.

So neuter these dogs while they are still puppies.  You have the perfect cover with the recent S&P downgrade of our debt.  Simply declare that you'll hold the debt you currently have, won't be buying any new American debt until our budget is balanced and then only to roll over old debt, and that you will not issue new debt purchases until half of our obscene debt is gone.  It would be a favor to our country and a long-term favor to both our countries, though it would cause pain for both of us short-term.  I've tried to think of a better way to force the issue on the clowns in Washington DC, and come up empty.

Worst case?  You lose your investment in us.  If you keep going the way you have, that investment will only get bigger and the prospects of being repaid will NOT get better.  Consider it.

Labels: China, National Debt, Tea Party