"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
Another incredible interview with Dr. Thomas Sowell who says things much better than I and is also much kinder about it. Does anyone else find it interesting that the liberal media would have you believe there is no such thing as a conservative black man? Well I know of several, and they're awesome!
Big companies are a lot like big government. They're both functionally incompetent. No, I'm not saying the people that work for them are incompetent. Many of them are geniuses. What I'm saying is that large organizations sometimes get so big that they can't function worth a tinker's dam.
Case in point: I was just dealing with someone this morning from a large corporation. I dialed the phone number on this person's email signature and entered her extension...then I listened to some automation...then I entered her extension again...then I finally got a prompt to enter an extension...then I entered her extension once again...then I got someone else on the phone...not the person I was calling...this person didn't know the person I was calling...so I gave her the extension...the person was unavailable...the same person that told me she would be handling something first thing this morning...that thing hasn't happened yet...so I'll send an email and cross my fingers.
For those who want government to get bigger and bigger and have more and more control over the daily lives of Americans...try calling a big bank...or a credit card company...or your phone company...remember that feeling of powerlessness...and then quadruple it.
Religious liberty is wonderful until it provides the freedom to destroy religious liberty. I don't hate Muslims. In fact, I imagine that many of them are very warm and joyful people that would be a pleasure to get to know. Many of the ones I have met through books or video (many of which have converted to Christianity) seem like very likeable people. Many of the unconverted are no doubt wonderful people as well that are more like us than we sometimes give them credit for. We just may not agree on the fundamentals yet. What I dislike about Islam is its philosophy of global dominion and assimilation and the secretive meetings in unmarked buildings. I also strongly dislike it when jihadists kill people. Other than that, if they want to become Americans like any other peaceful immigrants, then welcome.
It would be funny...except it's not. Is America Islamophobic? Well, gosh...I wonder why we might be. Should 3,000 people dead on our own turf not stir us up a little? Should the building of a mosque representing similar ideals held by the hijackers on those flights to the Twin Towers not cause us to question anything? Is Saudi Arabia Christianophobic? The threat that they would probably chop off my head for giving someone a bible in their country suggests that they just might be. I wonder what they would think about a Christian church building going up near a spot where 3,000 Muslims were murdered without cause by Christian militants less than a decade ago. If you want to talk fairness, then let's talk fairness.
In the video above, Daisy Khan compares America's skepticism of Islam to anti-Semitism. If I only had a quarter for every time I heard about a Jew hacking off a journalist's head with a sword. I'd be two quarters short of being able to make a collect call to Jack Squat. The speech from people regarding racism or Islamophobia is typical liberal divergence from reality.
Is it really the most important thing to be the best housed nation in the world? To most democrats, it certainly sounds like it is. But are today's policies really helping us to become a better housed nation or even a stronger nation financially, or are we really becoming a nation with higher unemployment and foreclosure? Promises...promises.
See using your pie-hole and your voice box to continually utter the words "hope and change" doesn't pay for our children's educations. It doesn't build our houses. It doesn't put casts on our broken legs. It doesn't put food in our mouths. And it sure doesn't prepare us for retirement (which is why my social security statement reminds me that 25% of what I've put into SS has evaporated -- not that I'm surprised). You know who does all those things and pays for those things? The American people.
Someone convince me that the fat cat bureaucrats legislating our lives away actually have America's best interest in mind. There are some great individuals in politics. Smart men and women with liberty and freedom in their souls. They MUST remain in November. The litmus test is whether America is more important to them than their own careers. If our nation has even one collective brain cell left, it will dispatch with the pleasantries of vague and wishful mantras like "hope and change" and "yes, we can" and flush the political toilet with pride at the ballot box this November. Look mommy, I made a poopie.
You see, Nancy, Barney, Barrack, Diane, Maxine, et al - No, you can't. I'm sorry to be so hard on you, but you have been hard on my country! Your philosophy no workie. It has failed us for decades. That is why I say, "No, you can't!" But we can. We the PEOPLE can! Yes, we can! That is our mantra, not yours. We can. You cannot! Over and over again you prove that you cannot and that you do not. Why we pay you is beyond me, and as far as I'm concerned, you're already fired. Let's see, what is that word that describes doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result...
Take a trip down memory lane. Scary how 1979 was so much like 2009. Watch this video and related videos. There was a great interview with Milton Friedman on Donahue back in '79. Milton had such an amazing ability to cut through the crap and speak to people with respect, humor, authority, and logic. Something you don't see a lot of these days (and probably not in those days either)...
Why would anyone believe in the words of a Barney Frank or a Nancy Pelosi? Probably because they've never heard a Milton Friedman.
"We must all recognize and respect the sensitivities (so why don't you)…9/11 attacks were deeply traumatic…the pain and experience of suffering (emotionless)...ground zero is indeed hallowed ground…let me be clear (my favorite phrase of all time)…as a citizen (still waiting for some proof of that)…and as president (don't know what we were smoking)…this is America…our commitment to religious freedom…blah blah blah."
I suppose all that sounds really keen unless you have a frontal lobe. I too believe strongly in the freedom of religious liberty even if the practice of a particular religion is not in agreement with my own. Yes, this is America. And Muslims do have the right to their own religious beliefs, misguided as they are.
For the president who wants to know "whose ass to kick", he certainly doesn't kick much ass at all does he? I think he must have meant "whose ass to kiss" and he just had a little phlegm or something. A real president would have used his indignant self-righteous tone for something other than giving consent to all the values that Americans don't share with him in an effort to bring about some sort of zombiotic global community.
No, a president with a backbone would have told the Muslim community that building a mosque in the shadow of ground zero, while arguably legal, is in very poor taste. Frankly, I'm wondering if our president is a Mohammedan himself, so it's hard for me not to be a little bit of a skeptic from that angle. But whether he is a Muslim or just a self proclaimed Christian with one wing, the left one, I believe he is wrong to proclaim religious liberty without cognizance of propriety and without asking why the Muslim community can't build somewhere else. Really…why can't they?
Mr. President, where does someone learn to speak with dignity and complete confidence in a shallow, amoral, prepubescent philosophy? Harvard? Columbia? I think you deserve your money back and a shredder for your diplomas. The best thing you could do is care more about America than you do your own fascist-leaning legacy. "Yes we can" has kind of lost its muster, hasn't it? Sounds more like the slogan of a wishful thinker rather than a strong and honorable leader. Yes we can, huh? Yes, we, the people, can. We always could. One nation under God. You and your bureaucrats…not so much.
If I were a gay man...I wonder if I would have the courage to ask myself:
"Self, is it right for me to demand of my fellow Americans that they change the values they have always held simply so that I can be legally united in matrimony with another man? I mean, I'll admit that life kind of directed me down this path, I don't know that I was necessarily born gay, even though I like using that as a defense. I've never seen any actual proof of that. Does the tax break really mean enough to me to tell all those hetero bigots that they can all stick their silly ideals about one man and one woman and all that? Am I really so self-absorbed? I'm not a minority. I wasn't simply born different. To some degree, even though it feels natural to me now, I chose this lifestyle. What gives me the right to demand that everyone view that lifestyle as equal to the natural lifestyle that God intended for his people? But I don't know if I can get out of this lifestyle even if I wanted to..."
Then I hope I would have the courage to think about that for a while.
"If a code proves to be generally effective in governing life it will only be because of character in the people governed—character that expresses itself in virtues such as benevolence, honor and integrity; and it will be from these virtues and not from the code, that people act. Indeed, one never acts from a code. A code by its very nature never addresses the question of motivation. If you knew someone had kept the code, you would have no idea of whether or not they were ethical, or morally good, people, or of what they would choose to do if they were sure they would never be found out and hence were not known to have broken the code.
Most so-called "professional ethics" today is restricted to codes and have nothing to do with character, and that is one reason why they have such little power over behavior. They are basically telling us how to stay out of trouble with clients, the law, and our fellow professionals. They have nothing to say about our moral identity, about who we are as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, professor, etc. etc."
