Potent Quotables (updated periodically)

  • "If you like sausages and laws, you should never watch either one of them being made." -- Otto von Bismarck
  • "God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." -- Thomas Jefferson
  • "The best way to prove a stick is crooked is to lay a straight one beside it" -- FW Boreham
  • "There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who walk into a room and say, 'There you are' and those who say, 'Here I am'" -- Abigail Van Buren
  • "It was not political rhetoric, mass rallies or poses of moral indignation that gave the people a better life. It was capitalism." -- Thomas Sowell

Monday, December 29, 2008

A New Year

Click here for an excellent article by VDH about some of the big changes that occurred in 2008.

As we move forward in time with a new president, new problems, new solutions, and new outlooks on life, let us remember once again that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and perhaps now more than ever, our country is encountering a fork in the road and a choice as to which future its citizens will have.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Merry Christmas

Here's some good stuff related to Christmas, Christian history, and Christianity's origins if you're interested:

Rumor mill - I've heard that this is the first time on history that Christians have been able to publicly celebrate Christmas in the city of Baghdad, Iraq. That's an interesting tidbit considering this was in the vicinity of the birthplace of the first known human civilizations.

Article - "Be Not Afraid", by Joseph Morrison Skelly

Also of particular note if you are not a Christian and/or are seeking to find out more about what Christianity is, there is an excellent book called Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. I wasn't interested in Lewis' writing at first because all I knew about him was that he wrote the Narnia books. The more I learned about him and his faith, the more intrigued I became. I learned he was at one time an atheist which I think gives credibility to his faith and ideas because he struggled with them and worked them out logically. I prefer the audio version of this book because reading it would probably be too time consuming because it's very deep in thought. Plus, I think it was originally aired as a radio program which makes the audio make more sense than the written version. But it is available through just about any bookstore or online at Amazon.com. The audio version is also available online by going here.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Reality Bite

In this article professor Thomas Sowell discusses posponing reality and the related auto industry bailout.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Hoenig Rules

Hoenig: "We've witnessed nothing short of an economic coup in this country. Paulson and Bush have turned what could have been a short six-month slowdown into one of the worst economic periods in modern times. You can't fix capitalism with socialism.

Worse off, the free market is mistakenly getting the blame for the economic chaos that's been caused by government intervention. Freddie, Fannie, the Community Reinvestment Act and the easy money policy from the Federal Reserve were all government-led intrusions into a free market. That's what has prompted the collapse...not speculators or nefarious operators on Wall Street."

and a little later...

"I'm inspired by my 104 year old grandmother, who to this day still reminds me of the importance of frugality and thrift. 'Make a dollar, save a quarter' she says. This is simple advice but would have kept countless Americans from financial ruin in recent years."

Happy Happy Hypo

What was it that Doc Holiday says in "Tombstone"? "...my hypocrisy goes only so far." What's happening to people these days? You've got men like Danny Glover, an actor who I actually really like, at least when he's acting and not making a giant tool of himself by talking politics.

What I really love is how in this article Danny talks about the Freedom to Choose Act and how gay marriage is related to civil rights and then hides behind the line, "Because of my lack of familiarity with the bill itself and the detail of the bill, I can only comment on the basis of the bill...I’m not a lawmaker or an expert, but I certainly – on the basis of the bill, however it’s framed, in some sense, however it is, it should not restrict a women’s right to choose." Is that even a sentence? I thought you were an expert, Danny. You "act" like one. Reading Glover-speech (ie libspeech) is kind of like reading hieroglyphics on a dirty cave wall with a lantern that's dripping candle wax on your hands. It's hazy and painful.

It appears that actors have been on the political scene at least since the Judy Garland days...I guess since tv has been going. But what weight do they have? Do they sway popular opinion? Do they even believe what they say, or are they simply continuing to act? Now some actors are really smart and actually appear to know some history. They've got a head on their shoulders that isn't filled with pudding and marijuana. Take Gary Senise who selflessly outperforms popular culture any day of the week. And yet we've got these other doe-eyed beauties and anvil headed schmucks in Hollywood that spout stupidity out of their mouths like a rainbow of crap leading to a pot. Not a pot of gold...just a pot. You can read more about Senise here.

Let's talk for a second about civil rights. Last I checked, gays have the same rights that I do. Now before you think we're about to start gay-bashing, let me assure you that I find it uncharitable and unhealthy to engage in serious persecution against another human being. Pointing out how you disagree with certain ideas or choices is one thing. Projecting hatred on a person, even if they are wrong, is quite another. It's important to be careful when dealing with judgement because none of us are above it. That does not mean you cannot vehemently disagree with someone else's opinion. I know there will be some that disagree strongly with mine.

Now, back to our civil rights: gays as well as straights both have the right to stick our hoohas up another man's yoohoo, not that I'm gonna. Let's face it...gay men bring a kind of light and fun feeling into the picture. They're often very talented and enjoyable people. I still believe their gayness is ultimately a psychological/spiritual condition. Whether it's a gay person's "fault" for being gay, I could not say. But it's a good thing liberal men can't get pregnant, otherwise, there would be a lot of aborted would-be decorators. You'd have an episode of Will and Grace with a post-partum depressed Jack. Of course, in true Jack fashion, he'd be happy again just as soon as a male nurse bends over to pick up his kleenex. It would be one of those "serious" episodes where abortion is discussed like a dumbed down after school special for mentally retarded adults. It's fine to oversimplify things for those who are mentally challenged, but most people are not, at least not genetically. Some are by choice. Many of us have simply been swayed by small changes taking place over a long course of time causing us to become increasingly obtuse.

As for gay rights and straight rights...We both have the right to make choices which spread disease and live a lifestyle that probably originated from having a bad father. We both have the right to get married and have all the same tax benefits and whatnot with anyone we want, or do we? Is the question whether or not I have a right to be married to a anyone that makes me happy, whoever that person might be? Should I be able to marry my sister, my brother, my nephew? What if that's the companion I desire? Why can't I marry my horse? I know, I know...you will say those are not comparable arguments. Okay fine, let's keep it in human non-incestuous terms. Suppose I want to marry two women, or nine. Maybe I want to marry your wife or your life-partner. Does the fact that reproductive organs are specifically designed signal nothing?

I guess if you're a liberal, the logic is like this: I should be able to marry whoever I want because it makes me happy, and it's my civil right to be happy. Pursuit of happiness is one thing. Pursuit of changing natural law and asking the rest of free society to change its law to match your own is quite another. Anyone can come up with their own morality and harass society to match it by demonizing their supposed bigotry. It takes a man, whether gay or straight, to obey the natural law, to protect babies rather than slaughter them, to help old people rather than rely on their taxes to do it for them.

Three cheers for the auto bailout?

When I look at the stock market news today, it says "Stocks up on auto bailout announcement." Last week when Congress decided it just might listen to the vast majority of Americans who said they oppose the bailout, the financial news said "Stocks down on Congressional opposition to auto bailout". So here's a question I honestly don't know the answer to:

Why would the market be for an auto bailout when voters are overwhelmingly against it?

I can think of a few possible answers.
1) It's not, but the financial press always has to come up with a simple one-line reason why stocks go up or down on any given day.
2) Market traders really believe the auto bailout will be a good thing overall for the stock market/the economy/America's National Security.

I'll posit that #1 is maybe 55% likely. Tim or someone else with more financial knowledge than me could set me straight. If #2 is correct, why is it? Theoretically, "the market" equals "most voters", given the ubiquity of stock ownership nowadays. Although, since the vast bulk of trading is done by pension funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc that "ubiquity" is probably more in the realm of ownership (as in, "I own mutual funds in my 401k") rather than trading power (as in, "Sell $150M of GM and F and buy APPL. I don't like this bailout news").

I'm willing to be convinced that traders really do believe the malarkey about the auto industry's importance to the economy, but this farce about it being responsible for 10% of the country's workforce is crap.

You should all feel very safe now

The newest list of Safest Cities in America is now out. Here is the top 10 safest (and most dangerous) large cities. "Safest" is defined here as having the lowest violent/aggravated crimes per capita compared to the national average.
I note that, with the exception of New York City(!), the top ten safest are comprised of southern/southwestern cities while half of the top ten most dangerous are northern/northestern cities. Could weather conditions have an impact on crime rates, as full moons are anecdotaly said to do?
I'm not researching this in depth, but my hunch would be other factors that would influence these rankings would be size of police force, relative pay of police officers, quality of schools, cultural opportunities available, unemployment rate, and state gun law restrictions. Weight those factors as you will.

I wonder how these rankings would change if other (non-intentional) safety data were included, such as fatal automobile accidents.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Watch your Freedom Die & The Great Freakout of 2008

This article in the WSJ talks about Bush finalizing the touches on a law giving professionals the "right of conscience" which would allow them to legally refuse performing agregious acts in healthcare if they think that's what they should do. In other words, a doctor might not have to perform an abortion if he doesn't think it's right and not have to worry about getting sued over it. Sounds a lot like freedom doesn't it?

Well, guess what your president elect appears to want to do. Reverse it. That's right, reverse the right of conscience. Does that tell you anything yet!!! My only hope is that Obama played the role of Pied Piper for liberals to get elected and will make good choices once in office...or at least not make freakishly bad choices.

Oh, and in related news, the Fed dropped rates and mentioned in its statement yesterday that it would purchase mortgage back securities which seems to have caused a drop in mortgage rates...at least this morning. I assume they'll continue to jump around due to uncertainty in the markets.

And now for a little help from our friends Jonah and Victor.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Earth: it slices, it dices; it stirs and fries

I thought this was a keen link for showing how the earth rotates around the sun and when different parts of the earth receive the most sunlight. Click here to take a look.

Also, here is some stuff about how the man-made global warming junkies are going to get their clocks cleaned by science. Maybe not popular science, but the kind that is measured in actual numbers instead of hopie-changie units. Who would seriously think that the giant magnetically furious ball of nuclear fire that is relatively close to our planet would have the slightest thing to do with global temperature? That's just crazy talk!

I think it's all those Jose Ole burritos they have at the grocery store that's doing it. After you have a couple of those blissful bean and cheese babies, you can feel the evidence of global warming right there in your pants.

Say Hello to My Lil' Friends

Wright
Pfleger
Rezko
Ayers
Dorhn
Blagojevich
Richardson

There is never just one cockroach. There will be more to come. Change is coming.

Why the American auto companies are failing, a three part tutorial

Exhibit (a): Big Brother tells you what cars you can build.
Exhibit (b): your workers make it impossible to build those cars at a profit.
Exhibit (c): the public does not accede to Big Brother by buying the preferred American-made vehicles. (Note that the first American vehicle to hit 30+ on the MPG scale is at #10 on the list.)

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Free to Choose

When a bunch of screwy ideas are floating around the news, and the media is shouting "crisis" everyday...sometimes you've gotta latch on to something that makes a little bit of sense. Sometimes that means a trip back to the 80's. If highlighting your big mullet doesn't do it for you, and you've already listened to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" while watching C-SPAN and noticing that Nancy Pelosi really is a Twisted Sister, aaaaaaaand you've already had 3 bowls of Wheaties and played a round of Asteroids...well, then it might be time to hang with Milton Friedman for a little while.

You'll notice while watching this video, especially the dialogue towards the end, the amazing degree to which some things don't change over a 20-30 year period of time. More evidence that history repeats itself which is why it's so important to know a little.

Click here to watch an excellent video series by Nobel Prize winning common sense economist, Milton Friedman. If you ever want to return to watch it again or watch more later cuz it's kinda long, you can go straight to it by clicking the link to the right that says "Friedman..." under "Links to Reality".

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Friday, December 12, 2008

Holy Hezbollah, Batman (or Milky Vision)

Looks to me like sitting on the fence sometimes doesn't do much more than get splinters in your crack. What do you think, Jimmy? Careful not to support Israel too much. You might offend an innocent terrorist. If only Hezbollah would agree to meet us without preconditions. Oh wait, they don't have Sphincter Pelosi to tell them what "fairness" is. Doh! Click here for related article.

And now for something completely different (maybe these children are weeping over their vastly superior infrastructure's inability to provide safe milk to their little brothers and sisters):

Christianity and Western Civ

Click here for article.

Drill Baby Drill

Investor's Business Daily has pencil to paper and come up with a shocking shocker:
It seems funny to talk about a $1 trillion taxpayer- and debt-funded "stimulus" plan when there's something we could do right away to boost the economy, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, shrink our trade gap and secure our energy independence: Drill for oil here, and drill for it now.

Let's see...we've got
86B barrels of oil in the OCS.
36B barrels of oil in ANWR.
30B barrels of untapped oil in the lower 48.
That's 152B. At current market prices, that's around $6.84 Trillion dollars. That's 20+ years of American oil at our current usage rate.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the oil in shale deposits. That just another 1-2 Trillion barrels of oil.

Drill Baby Drill, Pros: self-sustainability. Cease American funding of oil dictators. Reduce the unemployment rate. Reduce the national deficit.

Drill Baby Drill, Cons: Environmental damage? (Not that much, with new drilling technology)

So tell me again why anyone is seriously against this idea?

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sock Puppet Bailout

Wait, wasn't he that guy...

What's so interesting about this gov. of Illinois business? Not too sure what it all means just yet. But I will tell you what interested me the most. See page 10 of this FBI legal filing I gleaned off of Wall Street Journal: click here.

Antoin Rezko? Where have I heard that name? Wasn't he in the news at some point in relation to our president elect? Could that be Tony Rezko? What's the connection?

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Bring out your Dead!



Click here to find out a little bit about what's up with our nation's financial bail out.

I'm sorry. Does this article (second paragraph) here talk about the bailout of Chrysler in 1979-1980? Isn't Chrysler one of today's Big 3? And we're asking if they might come back for future bailouts? Turns out there was a Chrysler Corporation Loan Guaranty Act in 1979 signed into law by Jimmy Carter.They never teach you in the MBA programs that government assistance = competitive advantage. Not to worry, the left is gonna change our textbooks to help us out.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Monday, December 01, 2008

The Grand Imposition

I started to call this entire blog The Grand Imposition, but decided it left little room for fun. So instead, I've decided to write a post describing why liberal thinkers are confused, controlling, and incorrect; and why it's dangerous. Now, why would I start out like that by drawing a line in the sand? First of all, this commentary is not a line designed to divide two people, but rather two types of thinking. I'm doing this because I disagree, and because I disagree, my nature is to write it out and think it through. What good is a philosophy that goes unquestioned and untested?

So why are liberals confused, you might ask? First, liberals are confused because they think they care about others. They'd like you to pay more taxes if it would help those less fortunate. Simply put, you should be obligated to give because you have more than someone else. However, the real question has never been whether tis right to give. It is not the obligation to give that is in question but rather the power to take that is questionable; to take from some to give to others. Giving is good; there is joy in it. Not many people appreciate it, however, when you take something from them, no matter how generous they might be. Taxes don't upset you all the time because you don't really notice them when they are automatically deducted. You're just happy to get some back around tax time. However, I doubt you see many liberals donating their return back to Uncle Sam on tax day no matter how caring they are. Maybe they'd rather give it to a cause they believe strongly in, or pay their own bills, or even put some away if they're really selfish.

To tie in with that last point, liberal thinkers are myopic in the sense that they support their own programs and "helpfulness" to such an extent that they are willing to impose upon everyone else because it's the "right thing to do". They'd like you to support all those who oppose your point of view; to be so tolerant as to be tolerant of the intolerant, to paraphrase a smart man. They are willing to put their trust in a political body in order to spread the wealth around as it sees fit. Surely, there is a flaw in this line of thinking, for it leaves less room for each individual to pursue his/her own cause or spread the wealth where it would do the most good or be more efficiently used. Sure people can still give more and more, but there is less incentive to do so now that we believe our taxes are doing it for us. It creates what is called a diffusion of responsibility. Everyone is responsible for everyone, therefore, no one is responsible for anyone in particular. The liberal might even think Marxism more Biblical in a way than capitalism or conservatism, and yet I find it interesting that their mindset fosters a false sense of security that rests on government (i.e. on man) rather than on God.

Liberals might argue that government must control poverty by taking wealth from some and giving to others because individuals by themselves are not generous enough. Would it not logically follow then, that a political body made up of representatives of these same individuals be just as selfish, possibly more so? And might their constituencies not influence them to spread the wealth differently than what it was originally intended? Might the funds that are so generously being stripped away from each according to his ability and distributed to each according to his need be wasted in the overhead created by a massive internal revenue system and employees required to oversee its workings?

Liberals might also argue that tolerance is bliss while imposing their views upon you intolerantly. You will support gay marriage, abortion, and a slew of other ideals in the name of fairness. Don't like the idea of killing babies? Well, that's not fair. Don't like the idea that you have to fight for your freedom? Not fair! Profiling at airports? That's a big no no, even if there is no racism behind it. Condi's a war criminal, right? No, probably not.

A liberal will accuse you of being contradictory because you support our troops but not abortion. Aren't you supporting the act of killing either way? Never mind that there aren't a lot of babies running around with AK-47's in Sudan or bringing down the World Trade Centers on 9/11 that we brush off as a one time event. Never mind that it wasn't little children throwing human bodies in the ovens of Dachau. If only we'd had more peaceful talks with Hitler without preconditions. But I digress.

So in summary, why are liberals incorrect? Because they impose their intolerant and illogical views on others while claiming that truth is really just an individual's set of emotions open to interpretation. Then they suffer from narcissism enough to file their ideas under F for "Fairness". At least the hard left is consistent in treating babies and the wealthy as if they had no rights. Not surprisingly, they retain their own rights to act like both; only when acting like they have wealth, it is because they are able to pick the unlimited wealth out of the pockets of the American people. It's reminiscent of Veruca Salt throwing a fit in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory: "I want an Oompa Loompa nowwwww!" I don't think that liberal people necessarily intend to scam you or be dangerous, but so much of the time, whether intended or not, their policies simply turn into a grand imposition.

Click here to read another excellent and brief article by Thomas Sowell.