On Welfare

Ever seen this man in an American welfare line?

Me neither.  Maybe we were doing okay with capitalism the way it was.  I wonder if helping people on welfare who have big screen tv's in their living rooms is like spitting in the face of the man shown above and making a mockery of the freedom and the strength with which God has blessed our nation.  How long will we have these gifts to waste?  Obviously there are people who need help in the world (yes, even in the US), but apparently not all our priorities are sorted correctly. 

You'll have a hard time convincing me that every American deserves to own their own home when that philosophy has almost certainly led to the foreclosures we are experiencing now.  Plus there is such a thing as renting.  Plus there is this man seen above who deserves a meal, a shirt, and pants before you deserve to get help financing a home you can't afford. 

A reworded highschool speech dug out of a box in the attic might be enough for America's "poor" to cast their votes for the Left, but it will take more than empty promises of hope and change to help the man above.

Oh yeah, I forgot...and also, the sky is falling

For Al Gore that is.  Guess what relatively big story regarding the not-so-irrefutable climate change "crisis" is not on MSNBC.  Huh.  Weird.  Oh well.  Guess they're covering bigger stuff...oh thank goodness, there it is...I was worried all night about who was going to fill Oprah's void after she moves into the adult film industry.  I like how "Breaking news, Weather, etc." includes the absence of "Global Climate Change".  Maybe not mentioning it is just their simple way of admitting defeat.

Don't debate. Discriminate.

So what am I supposed to call race baiters if they're not ironically racist?  Antidisdiscriminationalists?

(image above on loan from thepeoplescube.com)

Life after Death

Two possibilities seem to exist: 1) either the universe has always been or 2) there was a time when it did not exist.  Either way, can you comprehend it?  Scientific types, you might be interested in this article regarding science and eternity.

Andy McCarthy on Terrorism

You might also be interested in reading one of Andy's recent articles on this issue: click here.

Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

Reading Holder his Rights

This video is so awesome, I'm posting it again: here.  Too often do you see liberal congressmen reaming individuals on CSPAN.  It's not hard to see when it's all for show.  Not often enough do you see a congressman come down on an individual for making bad decisions that impact the other 300 million of us.  And I appreciate the respectful way that Graham was able to do it, allowing Mr. Holder to save face.  It may have been a little harder for me not to unleash hell.

Protected Class

In the wake of everyone becoming a protected class (except white Christian heterosexual males who apparently can all just go to...), I think this fellow makes some interesting points.  See Progressives, Islam and the Universe of Lies.  In the world of homosexuals, pro-choicers, trans-this-and-thats, government defined minorities, committed atheists, code pinkers, and illegal immigrants, it would sometimes seem that the only unprotected class is the one called Americans.  And if you are an unwanted fetus, you are the most unprotected class of all and ironically the weakest.  No one speaks for you.  In a liberal society, only throwaway babies get the death penalty without a trial.

Why the Left isn't Right, Part Deux

Pardon me, liberal, I'd like to ask you some questions...

What is your complaint against conservatives?  Is it that conservatives are all white fat cats?  Well how about Thomas Sowell, who I mention frequently on this blog?  He's very black.  He looks black and sounds black.  He was raised in Harlem, graduated magna cum laude at Harvard, started out as a Marxist, and is now one of the greatest minds on the conservative side.  Liberal, how do you answer for supporters of your side such as Warren Buffet and George Soros?  They are pretty darn rich and white.

But conservatives hate the poor, you say.  Do they?  Why do you say that?  Because they hate the idea of bringing down the successful in order to support failure?  Because they don't like to punish the hard working people that are responsible for coming up with the businesses and ideas that offer employment to the poor?  How do you answer for the fact that studies show that conservatives give more of their own hard earned money to charity than liberals do?  Even if that study weren't true, why don't you hear about liberals donating more of their money in taxes if they trust the government so much?  Social justice, helping the poor, equality?  Those are things the liberal stands for!  Yeah, right...  You wish that is what people believed.  You want to give other people's money and other people's time, not your own.  Pretty smart really.  If more people do your work for you then you don't have to.

Maybe you hate conservative talk radio for being so popular.  Maybe more people would listen to liberal programming if it actually said something.  Better yet, something true.  Only a real liberal can take up a full hour to talk and wind up saying nothing at all.  Why don't any of your show hosts appear to work to educate themselves beyond what is on the New York Times bestseller list or Oprah's book club?

Maybe you can't stand that conservatives don't use the F-word in every blog post or don't make fun of Bush's southern twang enough.  Maybe "F Bush" just isn't that powerful of an argument anymore.  Let's not forget that we are war-mongering.  Yes, because it is much better to wait until a Muslim terrorist has his foot on your nuts in your own home than to take the fight to his country.

So come on, give me a reason.  You have your heroes.  Let's see them.  Do you hate conservatives for...I don't know...freeing the slaves (thank you Abe Lincoln) or maybe being strong on defense in a world with radical nuke seeking miscreants, or Bush's unsung contributions to Africa?  Have we just not done enough?

Why do you hate us?  Is it because we think you should have a baby even though you didn't want to?  Do  you hate that life is more important than your selfish nature?  Have you forgoten the answer to unwanted pregnancy is love?  Do you just hate responsibility so much that you'd rather justify taking an innocent life without a trial and fight to free a murderer from capital punishment?

Are you mad that conservatives prefer logic over raw emotion?  Do you wish that feeling something really made it true?  Did you know that if you wish in one hand and crap in the other, only one hand has something in it?  Are you mad that conservatives like to ask "why", that annoying little three letter word that you do such a good job of avoiding?

As for the bumper sticker that says "Jesus is a liberal"...well folks, if that were true, he would have chosen to avoid the cross, be aborted in the womb, and come back as a gay, pot smoking, narcisist.  In other words, he would have come back as Barney Frank.

To educate yourself on health care...

Allow me point you to a resource that is sure to fill you with practical knowledge about health care.  Click here to read Thomas Sowell's series on the Economics of Medical Care.

Why the Left isn't Right!

I'm sorry if you fall into the category of someone who agrees with democrats and liberals because of their empty rhetoric about how much they care about the poor and downtrodden.  Your heart is probably in the right place, but your logic most likely isn't.  If you are going to identify yourself with any political party at all, why would you want to identify yourself with a group of loose lipped, terrorist appeasing, schemers that are devoid of understanding history and economics and are incapable of honoring the sanctity of life?  Does that mean republicans are better?  No, not always.  Republicans have had their share of self-interested hypocrites at times.  So does this mean true Conservatives are a better choice?  Yes.  It really does.  Are democrats and liberals the same thing?  No, not always.  But why would you want to identify with a party to which the term "liberal" so easily attaches?  Why would you want to simply be a fence-sitting liberal that knows nothing but emotion and only votes present when choices are hard?

The leftist policies that seem to be invented almost daily typically contain so many unintended consequences that they become increasingly idiotic, as well as despotic, with time.  Look at minimum wage, water and building restrictions in California, global climate change, civilian trials for terrorists, increased spending, government run health care, welfare, tax hikes, etc.  They all come with lofty guarantees and disclaimers of low side-effects.  But as soon as you swallow the blue pill, the nausea begins.  You're now more likely to have probes put in places you don't like.  Though they'll market to you how much help they've given society, the reality of what they've done to society is something quite different.  They even market ambiguous things like "hope" as if that is actually going to provide hope.  That's like jumping off a building without a net and yelling "fly". 

Conservatives need to drop the gentlemanly attitude and start kicking butts and drudging up the truth on opponents because we know they aren't going to play fair.  Stop being afraid to fight people like Ted Kennedy (may the Lord forgive his soul) who should have gone to jail but instead was considered a liberal hero.  Some democrats even want to pass this disaster of a health care bill in his honor.  Nevermind the American people they represent.  It's Ted's honor they're worried about.  That should tell you all you need to know about liberals.  Stop being afraid to tell people that Barrack Obama has very sketchy friends, and his own preacher was a certifiable lunatic.  Stop walking on eggshells because he's black.  Big deal.  That's no excuse for being liberal.  No thinking person is against Obama because he's black.  That would just be silly and ignorant.  I am, however, strongly opposed to having a liberal socialist in charge because that person will continue to make well-spoken but stupid and selfish choices for America.  What kind of person thinks it's fair to give the planner of the 9-11 attack the same kind of trial an American citizen has access to but doesn't think it's fair for his daughter to be "punished with a baby" (his own words) if she were to get pregnant on accident.  In other words, only unwanted babies deserve the death penalty without a fair trial?

So please vote more carefully next go-around and say what needs to be said if you are running for office.  If you have to vote based on race, pick someone like Thomas Sowell instead of voting like the presidency is nothing more than a high school popularity contest.  As for reaching across party lines, John McCain disappointed me greatly in the general election.  Instead of repeating ad nauseam how he could reach across the isle, he should have told those snakes that if they reached across the isle, they'd pull back a nub.  It's time to stop making deals with the devils.

Siwhatti?

Had to go to the UK for this one.  Click here to read an article about a woman you've probably never heard of but probably should have.  I mean, it's almost good enough for a Lifetime evening drama.

The culture of unions

The headline of the (Allentown, PA) Morning Call news story reads:
Union troubled by Eagle Scout project in Allentown.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

Let me just say for the record: you are a sick man.

Just a Thought

If KSM wants to be a martyr, why do we have trouble helping him out with that?  On second thought, maybe he does deserve a second chance.  How about a job at the White House as the Obama kids' bed-time story reader?  Or better yet, Nancy Pelosi's pool-boy.  I heard she likes 'em with a little hair on their chest.

A Response

You know, just once I'd like to actually witness a conversation like that of the post below instead of just reading about it.

The conversation Grimp posted here is certainly illustrative of the argument a professing Christian would like to make in the face of an openly hostile, disbelieving critic. I doubt that the conversation is, in fact, a strictly true story. It is nice to read. It is nice to imagine laying the verbal smack-down on the metaphorical disbelieving critic. But the story is almost certainly not true, in the sense that there was an actual college classroom where this exact exchange took place.

But of course, everyone reading the story knows that.

The salient point is that disbelieving critics should be debated rationally, logically, but with a sense of the faith our hero in the story professes. Christians should, as Saint Peter wrote, "be able to give an answer to anyone who asks" about what and why we believe as we do.


I was originally going to do this as a comment to the previous post, but then I realized it was getting longer and longer and...hey! I've got posting access! So here it is as a full post.

An Interesting Conversation

An atheist professor of philosophy was speaking to his class on the problem science has with GOD, the ALMIGHTY.  He asked one of his new Christian students to stand and debate him...

Professor : You are a Christian, aren't you, son ?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor : So, you Believe in GOD ?
Student : Absolutely, sir.
Professor : Is GOD Good ?
Student : Sure.
Professor : Is GOD ALL - POWERFUL ?
Student : Yes.
Professor : My Brother died of Cancer even though he Prayed to GOD to Heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn't. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent )

Professor : You can't answer, can you ? Let's start again, Young Fella. Is GOD Good?
Student : Yes...
Professor : Is Satan good ?
Student : No.
Professor : Where does Satan come from ?
Student : From . .. . GOD . . .
Professor : That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this World?
Student : Yes.
Professor : Evil is everywhere, isn't it ? And GOD did make everything. Correct?
Student : Yes.
Professor : So who created evil ?

(Student did not answer)

Professor : Is there Sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the World, don't they?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor : So, who Created them ?

(Student had no answer)

Professor : Science says you have 5 Senses you use to Identify and Observe the World around you. Tell me, son . . . Have you ever Seen GOD?
Student : No, sir.
Professor : Tell us if you have ever Heard your GOD?
Student : No , sir.
Professor : Have you ever Felt your GOD, Tasted your GOD, Smelt your GOD? Have you ever had any Sensory Perception of GOD for that matter?
Student : No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.
Professor : Yet you still Believe in HIM?
Student : Yes.
Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student : Nothing. I only have my Faith.
Professor : Yes,Faith. And that is the Problem Science has..
Student : Professor, is there such a thing as Heat?
Professor : Yes.
Student : And is there such a thing as Cold?
Professor : Yes.
Student : No, sir. There isn't.

(The Lecture Theatre became very quiet with this turn of events )

Student : Sir, you can have Lots of Heat, even More Heat, Superheat, Mega Heat, White Heat, a Little Heat or No Heat. But we don't have anything called Cold. We can hit 458 Degrees below Zero which is No Heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as Cold. Cold is only a Word we use to describe the Absence of Heat. We cannot Measure Cold. Heat is Energy. Cold is Not the Opposite of Heat, sir, just the Absence of it.

(There was Pin-Drop Silence in the Lecture Theatre )

Student : What about Darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as Darkness?
Professor : Yes. What is Night if there isn't Darkness?
Student : You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the Absence of Something. You can have Low Light, Normal Light, Bright Light, Flashing Light . . . But if you have No Light constantly, you have nothing and its called Darkness, isn't it? In reality, Darkness isn't. If it is, you would be able to make Darkness Darker, wouldn't you?
Professor : So what is the point you are making, Young Man ?
Student : Sir, my point is your Philosophical Premise is flawed.
Professor : Flawed ? Can you explain how?
Student : Sir, you are working on the Premise of Duality. You argue there is Life and then there is Death, a Good GOD and a Bad GOD. You are viewing the Concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can't even explain a Thought. It uses Electricity and Magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view Death as the Opposite of Life is to be ignorant of the fact that Death cannot exist as a Substantive Thing. Death is Not the Opposite of Life: just the Absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your Students that they evolved from a Monkey?
Professor : If you are referring to the Natural Evolutionary Process, yes, of course, I do.
Student : Have you ever observed Evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shook his head with a Smile, beginning to realize where the Argument was going )

Student : Since no one has ever observed the Process of Evolution at work and cannot even prove that this Process is an On-Going Endeavor, are you not teaching your Opinion, sir? Are you not a Scientist but a Preacher?

(The Class was in Uproar )

Student : Is there anyone in the Class who has ever seen the Professor's Brain?

(The Class broke out into Laughter )

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's Brain, Felt it, touched or Smelt it? . . ..No one appears to have done so. So, according to the Established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that You have No Brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then Trust your Lectures, sir?

(The Room was Silent. The Professor stared at the Student, his face unfathomable)

Professor : I guess you'll have to take them on Faith, son.
Student : That is it sir . . . Exactly! The Link between Man & GOD is FAITH. That is all that Keeps Things Alive and Moving.

The Daddy Mac'll Make Ya Flip-Flop

Remember Kris Kross, who made us jump-jump back in the 90's and helped us see that wearing your pants backwards could be cool?  I'm reminded of someone else who likes to flip things around. 

"And I think that it is important for us to recognize that if, in fact, you are going to mandate the purchase of insurance and it’s not affordable, then there’s going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses. And they may charge people who already don’t have health care fines, or have to take it out of their paychecks. And that, I don’t think, is helping those without health insurance."
             - Barrack Obama (while debating Hillary Clinton in 2008 prior to election).

Why I'm a Racist

It's Friday the 13th, and I've just realized 13 reasons why I'm a stinking racist!

1. I must be racist because I don't support the liberal policies that my president and democrat-majority congress are always working to cram down our throats.  Since the president happens to be black(ish), then I have to support everything he stands for in order to be an equal opportunity open-minded citizen.

2. I must be racist because I believe in prosperity and safety for my fellow Americans over soft-soap rhetoric about how we should be our brother's keeper while making real decisions that hurt minorities and the poor more than anyone else.  I heard somewhere that being a hypocrite was kind of a bad thing.  I believe in America not Victimica.

3. I must be racist because I dislike the idea of punishing the successful and middle class and using them like a blank check to fund failing programs that keep the poor stuck where they are, including the black poor.

4. I must be racist because I think it's a blessing for the people of this nation to be able to visit its country's capitol and see the history and inner workings of our great nation. I don't care if Harry Reid can smell them or not.

5. I must be racist because I don't believe that government bureaucrats living in the twilight zone can make decisions about my life better than I can.

6. I must be racist because I feel that black preachers are better from the pulpit than they are from the Oval Office. Church of Obama is still not a real denomination.  And usually they don't have their wives preaching too.  Thanks Michelle.  We all know your hubby's in control of our lives.  You can stop talking now.  Great arms, by the way.

7. I must be racist because I happen to think that Americans donate lots of money and effort to causes that really help people more effectively than government and that taxes take away from their ability and/or eagerness to do so.

8. I must be racist because I don't believe that big businesses are inherently evil. When you punish a big business (via taxation or fees to pay for government programs), you simply punish the small people that work there and the customers that buy their product.  I also believe that more blacks would be employed if not for minimum wage laws and an unhindered continuation of "stimulus".

9. I must be racist because I think that fairness means fairness. It doesn't mean protecting the rights of people who do evil things in the name of religion or personal preference while treating those who disagree like bigots. After all, by that logic, are you not also a bigot for thinking I should be just like you? Secondly, fairness means that if your liberal radio/TV program blows goats because the only thing it's good for is displaying your cool rhinestone encrusted Che t-shirt and how witty you are at regurgitating liberal groupthink, it should stay in the toilet where it belongs.  Hopefully you flush, even when it is just a single.

10. I must be a racist because I believe that aborting little black babies is worse than taking responsibility for them. Abortion (ie killing people that are weaker than you so that you don't have to care for them) is bad for our culture, the parents, and the baby. But then again, my black president doesn’t want his own daughters “punished with a baby” if they got pregnant.  So I must be racist.

11. I must be a racist because Jeremiah Wright has never invited me over to hear any of his new stand-up routine.  But I shouldn't pick on a man who is just bitter to know that if had been white, he could have been Bill Maher?

12. I must be a racist because I was taught that men have a penis and women have a vagina.  And for some reason it seems like those go together (for married people anyway).  I don't think that "gay" is a race anymore than being fat is.

13. Finally, I must be racist because our liberal media and Nancy Pelosi say so.  They can't refute items 1 thru 12 which makes them mad.  So they lie and call people racist when they really aren't.  But that's okay because it's not racist to lie.

If our president spoke for us...

If our President believed in America, he'd be saying something a lot like this:

Nothing short of ridiculous.

Obama's stash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19v5Kjmc8FI

Hey Obama, since when are you concerned about spending our money? Only when it results in skimping on our military's strength and success? (Below is an excerpt of the transcript of Jake Tapper's interview of Obama - occurred 11/09/09):

Tapper: “You are about to make a final decision about the new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What variables play into your decision making that would cause you to not just take General McChrystal’s recommendation and implement it?”

Obama: "These are not only eh, enormous burdens that we’re placing on our young men and women — and that’s the thing I think most about. It’s also expensive. Every thousand troops we spend that’s costing us a billion dollars. Uhh, if you send 40,000 troops you’re looking at maybe $50 billion per year above and beyond the costs that we’re already spending."

How can you have it both ways??? First the stimulus package, now the health care "reform" bill? Yet the "commander in chief" can't support our troops when they need more resources and manpower?

Strength & Honor

Borrowed from Nothingbuttruth.com

V is for...

There's a lot of talk regarding the recent tragedy at Fort Hood.  Some say Muslims should not be singled out; others want to lock them down.  Some say Hasan alone is the only one responsible for his crime.  Some say Islam is a religion of violence and that Islam is extremist by its very nature (ie jihadist Islam is the same as regular Islam).  Furthermore, we are confused because there seem to be Muslim heroes in the US armed forces; their graves strewn amongst many other American heroes.  Well, I don't know the answers to all those questions.  What I do know is: if it walks, smells, talks, and acts like a duck, then it's pretty darn logical to think it might be a duck (or in this case, a traitor).  And the penalty for treason in this country is pretty serious (like death).  Not much of a penalty though, it would seem, for a people who believe in blowing themselves up for their cause of removing infidels from the earth. 

In regards to the Ft. Hood tragedy, our own military command seems to be off base just a tad.  General Casey recently said, "I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."  Maybe the word "greater" wasn't used so well in this context.  Loss of diversity would certainly pale in comparison to the loss felt by the wives, children, and families of the recent victims of this murdering robotic parasite.  Whether Hasan was of the "x-treme" or more "regular" version of Muslim, there is something to say here about a repeatedly violent mindset; a mentality that is controlled by far away Imams rather than conscience.  Over and over again Muslims kill lots of people for so-called religious reasons.  In recent times, people calling themselves Christians have murdered people too.  But were they really trying to follow the word of God as real Christians aspire to do, or were they simply acting in deluded self interest?  Were they praised by other followers of Christianity for their bravery as in Islam?  Did they grow up as children being taught that stealing another person's life is a great honor?

As Patrick Stewart playing Capt. Picard once said in Star Trek: "The line must be drawn here!"  A line must be drawn between what we believe in our hearts and minds in this nation and what we are expected to bend over and accept with political correctness.  This clip also contains some interesting parallels to how we might feel at a time like this (maybe some feelings of vengeance mixed with feelings of responsibility and the urge for strong leadership and safety):


If you're a radical Muslim like Hasan, V might stand for Vendetta.  But if you're a true American, V stands for two things: first, it stands for Victory!  And victory will be ours because we are a people of conscience, honor, truth, and freedom who worship the one true God.  We refuse to lose.  Secondly, it stands for Veteran.  With tomorrow being Veteran's Day, please remember those, whether they be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Confusian that helped preserve the freedom we enjoy today and help to regain it every time it is threatened by enemies foreign and domestic. 

True heroes exist.  True evil exists.  Hasan may have been a hero to a select bunch of non-thinking jealous radicals who want their 72 virgins in heaven.  But he has no honor.  And hopefully he has no honor among Muslims as a whole.  But it's unfortunate that it is so difficult to know that for sure. Honor belongs to those who are able to sacrifice themselves for the good of others not only for themselves.  Honor belongs to the American soldiers that give of themselves.  I wish them safety, and though they are trained for war, I wish them peace.  And I hope that our government and military command place more importance on the safety of the American soldier than they do on the politically correct, softsoap, shortsighted, misprioritized concept of diversity.

Correlation and Causation

This interactive graphic at the NYT is interesting.

Among other things, it illustrates data that shows that almost half of black men aged 15-24 without a HS degree have been unemployed at some point during the last 12 months. On the other hand, only 3.5% of white women aged 25-44 with a college degree have been unemployed at some point during the last 12 months.

Some might look at this data and think about the latent racism of our country. I think the data behind the numbers deserves a deeper look.
1) Somewhere between 30-40% of the 15-24 age bracket is not old enough to have completed high school, much less received a degree.
2) Teenage unemployment rates are historically significantly higher than that of the general populace. Wage floors (i.e. minimum wage laws) are a primary contributor to this phenomenon.
3) Skin color does not determine employability or lack thereof. Availability of jobs (supply) is one primary factor. But boiling job availability down to the word "supply" dilutes what is an incredibly complex soup of corporate, economic, governmental, individual, geographical, geopolitical, and financial ingredients. Taking into account the availability of jobs, there will always be a certain subsection of individuals who are more likely to be employed: college educated, highly-skilled, charismatic, intelligent, well-spoken, those with many well-placed contacts. I could go on. None of those characteristics have anything to do with race, gender, or income.
4) In case you're curious, blacks make up approximately 13% of the US population. Black men are a little more than 6% of the population. Black men ages 15-24 are approximately 1% of the population. Simple math says that if about 50% of these men are unemployed, then that equates to around one-half of one percent of all the unemployed people (10.2% of the populace) in the United States.

All of which to say: stop focusing on one small subgroup of America and start focusing on creating jobs. Which, if you are a (rational) government means lower taxes on businesses and individuals, remove the federal minimum wage laws, provide for the common defense, reduce the federal deficit, and get out of the way while businesses create, market, and sell products and services; hire employees; and (in aggregate) grow the economy out of the mess we find ourselves in.

Reagan Smash

Have we gone from Reagan to pagan in barely over 20 years?  Recommending the following video in its entirety: view here.

The Visitors

Wasn't that the title of a scary movie?  Oh wait, it's real life!  Anyway, O'Reilly had an interesting column here about recent visitors to the White Hizzle.

Compare and Contrast

Republican health care plan: $61,000,000,000 over 10 years. Which is 3.5% of...

Democrats health care plan: $1,800,000,000,000 over 10 years. That's trillion with a T.

Change I can believe in.

Change of Heart

Director of Planned Parenthood in Texas town has change of heart.  So did Roe.  So would anyone when they have a real opportunity to see the difference between right and wrong.

"The best way to prove a stick is crooked is to lay a straight one beside it" - FW Boreham

Airport Hijinks & Healthcare Hootenanny

The fact that the word "Airport" is in the title of this post will probably flag some freakishly advanced satellite to start taking high res images of my bald spot.  But it must be done.  Also, I'd like to point out that I don't care if healthcare is one word or two.  This is a little diddy (not about Jack & Diane, as much as I love those kids) about my favorite burning topical ointment, bureaucracy.  Bear with me.  I have a point.

I was at an airport a while back and had to go through customs.  For the most part, the customs procedure was fine.  The airline employees were kind enough to pass out US customs declarations forms (that look a whole lot like this) for us to fill out before we, the people, unloaded the plane and waded our way like a frumpy Chinese dragon winding round and round a path of shiny silvery poles with their cinema style velvet rope dividers waiting to meet our destiny at customs. 

Waiting in line wasn't all that big a deal despite almost 24 hours of airport travel up to this point.  At the end of this lazy congo line was a man.  A man in a hat.  A mysterious man in a hat (let's call him Jack) that controlled the flow of traffic and told people when they were ready to go to a customs station to have their declaration form checked by a customs officer in a booth.  Presently, we came to the beginning of the line.  After quickly looking at the form the airline had given us which was filled out nice and pretty, Jack says, "No, you have the wrong form.  You have to fill out this form."  Really?  I mean, with Lindsay Lohan hitting rock bottom, I just don't know how much I can handle right now.  Thanks Jack.  What was funny about "this form" is that it was exactly the same (word for word and line by line), the SAME as the form we had already filled out except for two MAJOR differences.  One was that his form was an ever so slightly darker shade of blue.  The other was that the form number at the bottom right corner was slightly different, probably to denote that this form and its superior shade of blue keeps America much safer than its paler counterpart, Form 605-9er-letterQ-b12-or-whatevertheheck-version1. 

So, using the coke-can sized top of a silvery pole as my writing desk, I copied what I had written on the first form onto its identical cousin, all while keeping a close eye on my luggage so that no terrorist could slip a mickey into it while I was performing my civic duty.  Made it thru.  Here you go, Jack.  "Okay, head over to booth 9".  Thanks again, Jack.  At booth 9 (or whatever number it was), customs officer says, "Huh, why did you fill out two forms?"  Because I love forms, dude.  I download them and fill them out when I have spare time...when I'm not harping about Jack-In-The-Hat on my blog.  "I wouldn't have even noticed that," says the officer.  I know.  Nor would you have cared unless you too were among the living brain-dead.  But alas, that is not the world we live in.  Zombies with a little bit of authority.  Sorry, Jack-In-The-Hat...I love you like a brother.

In conclusion, I think that's what I want to happen to healthcare.  More government influence.  More bureaucracy.  I want to have trouble in the hospital because the nurse in the lobby had me fill out Form OMGMyHead'sFallingOff-A instead of Form OMGMyHead'sFallingOff-C3.  The point is that this type of thing isn't that big of a deal at the airport or while standing in line at the DMV, but when you are talking about health issues, matters of life and death, there is no room for it.  There is certainly a place for government involvement, especially in the realm of national defense and law enforcement, however, when bureaucracy permeates even the smallest decisions of our daily lives and puts procedure above useful information, we, the people, will certainly be bogged down by it and lose to it every time.