Collide

Before getting into my post, I wanted to link to the website of a gentleman who knows all about what it's like to collide:  http://www.sonofhamas.com/  The website contains free audio downloads of  interviews with this remarkable person who is the son of one of the founders of Hamas.  His story is far more important than what I'm going to be writing here, so that's why I've placed it at the beginning.  I encourage you to visit his page, read his book, or listen to his story.  You can come back to my blog if you like.
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There was a song called Collide by Howie Day that came out a few years ago.  I suppose it was a love song of sorts.  I was dating a girl around that time, and it had kind of become "our song".  After enough time went by, she wanted to get married.  I wasn't ready.  We collided alright.  In fact, I collided, not just with her, but with her father, mother, and brother.  Mutual friends distanced themselves from the situation, and I wound up feeling despondent, angry, and more hurt than I can remember ever feeling before.  Someone who once claimed to love me now treated me like a complete stranger.  We didn't understand one another's concerns or desires.  And we collided.  Things may have ended anyway, but they should have ended differently.

I've got a job.  A job where 95% of the customers are friendly and generally understanding.  But the 5% that don't get their way seem to turn on you like a mother grizzly whose cub you just tried to pick up and take home in your Subaru.  There are times you can be completely upfront with a person only to have them imply later that you misled them and complain that they are most displeased with their experience.  They'll want you to pay for their trouble even if they helped to cause it.  If you're really lucky, they'll ask to talk to your boss.  At times like these, I find it somewhat challenging not to say what I'm thinking, to deconstruct the faulty logic of my new found enemy, to unleash the dragon.  Once my blood gets boiling, I want nothing more than to thickly slather them with the facts, slide them onto the pan of truth, and watch them roast in the oven of reality.

I'm actually a pretty mild mannered person, almost a pushover some might say.  But when a certain line is crossed; when I encounter people being unfair or unjust, my instinct is to switch into search-and-destroy mode.  I'm not saying that this is necessarily a good thing, although I do believe there are rare times when search-and-destroy is the appropriate response.  I have engaged in this tit for tat with every intention of having the last and most powerful tit.  To give you some idea of what ensues--the other day someone told me in all seriousness, "You may win the battle, but you won't win the war!"  Honestly, who even says that in a business setting?  When you hear someone speaking like that, it's a pretty good indicator that things have escalated into the realm of the absurd.  So often we don't understand one another.  And so we collide.  The primal brain takes hold and haphazardly steers our adrenaline and shortly thereafter, our judgment.  Perhaps you've been in situations of conflict like this where it feels like you are on a high wire, and one slip can spell disaster.

But with experience comes improved control and capacity, and I was able to diffuse the above mentioned situation by doing the following: 1) informing the person that I wanted to switch gears and start over with them,  2) apologizing for the misunderstanding, 3) reminding the person that I had, in fact, done a very fine job on my end (which was true), and 4) setting the tone going forward and letting the person know he/she deserves my respect and I deserve his/hers in return.  Essentially what worked for me this time was reframing and redirecting the situation down a more positive road rather than doing what I usually do which is simply winning the argument.  I didn't hear another negative peep out of the person from that point on.  Now, I may still get bad mouthed all over town by this person (although I don't think so), but at least I didn't go away from the situation a big winner but still feeling like a big jerk.  We could have collided much worse.  Maybe I finally learned something from the times before. 

What's funny about conflict is that that same formula probably won't always work.  But I'm starting to find that, in general, it works much better to avoid simply going straight for the jugular and disproving another person's point of view (yes, even when they are indeed clearly wrong).  You can rarely win when you collide with someone. You can only entrench deeper and deeper while your opponent does the same.  As F.W. Borham once said, "The best way to prove a stick is crooked is to lay a straight one beside it."  The best way to "win" is the show your opponent the straight stick (ie what's right) and let them choose how they wish to react.  The hardest part for me is allowing them to act foolishly.  Just as importantly, and just as hard is realizing that I too can be wrong every once in a blue moon. 

What I'm trying to say is: life is pretty easy except where there are people involved.  Whether it's brought about by people at work, an ex, illegal immigrants, terrorists, or people of authority, it's in our nature sometimes to collide.  Some collisions are much more serious than others.  Some are given too much credit. 

But I'll leave you with this.  I saw a verse in the Bible this weekend that struck me in a way that verses in the Bible usually don't.  In fact, though I've often wanted the Bible to speak directly to me, I've spent most of my life not really "getting it" most of the time.  The verse is talking about Jesus:

"He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered.  He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly." - 1st Peter ch. 2 vs. 23

What sort of socks it to me in this verse is that last part about God, "who always judges fairly".  Sometimes, life just flat out ain't fair.  People can be jerks, can be hateful, can be rude, can be evil.  You can't always even the score.  But that's where God comes in.  This verse helped to remind me that God knows much better than I when it is appropriate to even scores and when it is appropriate to show mercy or even take no action at all.  He knows what's up.  And it comforts me to realize that there is no need for revenge when the God of the universe already sees all things and cares about justice even more than I do.

Wall Street Greed

What today's politician's term "Wall Street Greed" may indeed amount to nothing more than political scapegoating. But you probably knew that already...

While I'm not always 100% comfortable posting information from a democrat senator's website, I will, because I think it's important to look at both sides of the coin.

For an interesting primer from a democrat on the cause of the financial metldown, click here.  There seems to be some very pertinent information there.  One thing that is missing, however, from the timeline is what happened before April 2, 2007. 

For that you will need insight from my favorite economist: click here & definitely here.  If you want more, he's written lots of books, and there is a link to his columns in the menu to your right. 

I'm going to make this short, but I think that, philosophically speaking, this whole idea of blaming Wall Street for all the world's financial woes is misguided.  Wall Street is just like Main Street but bigger.  It's still just business and finance...but with more zeroes.  Not to mention the fact that Wall Street hires a lot of people!  And many of those people were Main Streeters at one time who moved up in their careers.  The fundamentals of running a business and working for a living still apply as much to Citi as they do Bill's Burger Barn.  Or at least they should.  In other words, could it be that the politicians that changed the rules for big corporations under the auspices of "protecting" Main Street were really just jacking with a free market they don't understand (or don't really care about) and introducing wormholes into the economy that sucked a lot of people in?  It's not that congress doesn't ever do anything right.  It's just that, they often seem to do too much.  It's like when you try to fix something that needs to heal on its own, like a scab.  You usually do more damage; there's more scarring when you pick at it.  As someone who works on Main Street, I have a problem blaming Wall Street for trying to make money under the rules it has been given?  Isn't that a lot like what we do on Main?

And Why Would That Be?

NYT:

Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs.

After a hearing on the issue, the chairman of the Senate health committee, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said he intended to move this year on legislation that would “provide an important check on unjustified premiums.” 

 That would be the same NYT who didn't report on the economic certainty of premium increases due to ObamaCare, because when it comes right down to it, they are just a mouthpiece of Our Dear Leaders.

Thus:
How to Nationalize Healthcare, in 6 easy steps.
Step 1: Mandate insurance coverage for all individuals.
Step 2: Require insurance companies to provide coverage to all individuals, regardless of health risks.
Step 3: Impose price ceilings to prevent insurance companies making a profit.  Simultaneously demonize the insurance companies for their "cruel and heartless nature".
Step 4: Watch the insurance companies go bankrupt.  Quickly.
Step 5: Gleefully introduce all formerly insured citizens to the government run health care exchanges.
Step 6: Profit!  Or, you know, not.  This is the government, after all.

Helped to Death

You know those magnets that people sometimes have on their fridge that have a bunch of different faces displaying all kinds of emotions.  There's a smaller magnetic frame that goes on top of the face that best portrays how you're feeling today.  If I had one of those, it would be on the face that says: "I feel despairing today." 

Before we really get going here, I want to clarify that I am not anti-government.  There is a proper place and purpose for a government, especially when it comes to defense and law enforcement.  There are some in government that are outstanding and are blessings to our nation.  But there are many who are not.  Many who would suck the lifeforce right out of this country, eat its marrow, and chew on its bones.  Unfortunately, it is this group that appears to be in control.  And it's not just a problem of one particular political party. This is not just about R's and D's.  Although I have more fundamental problems with the D's, the R's (Republicans) are not always faultless.

My gut feeling is that someday we'll all look at our recent history and say, "We really did make a choice.  I wish we could go back and make it differently."  I believe there are two things that are going to impact our immediate future as a nation more than anything else:

1. Economic liberty - If you're in the financial services industry, this really doesn't exist for you and may not exist in a lot of other industries much longer.  Pricing is set by regulation.  In fact, regulations are so cumbersome that banks simply avoid helping certain customers and must make such choices to survive.  So next time you hear Mr. Obama blaming banks for not lending, you can thank regulators and lawmakers for that.  Trust is the great lubricator of business.  Trust cannot be artificially manufactured with documentation despite what Congress or Fannie Mae might think.  Almost all people will still need and desire human contact and verbal explanation even after they've seen it all explained on paper.  So why so much time is spent on that is puzzling.  Time is money; isn't that what they say?  So who pays for the financial services' lost time and for this lack of trust?  Americans pay for it all.  We pay with legal fees, filing fees, certificates; and we pay with waiting times for document preparation, extra waiting time for redisclosures if something changes, required waiting times for consumer protection, etc.  In this world, you can no longer adjust price to compensate for risk.  It is the price of a "representative" government that continues to go up.  Those prices are never limited.  And how could they be when we're all paying for a myriad of mindless projects?  For instance, why am I paying for broadband in Cape Cod?  A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away the people that owned businesses and the people that worked for them were free.  Banks could actually charge for taking on more risk.  But enough about banks.  This is not just a banking problem. Doctors once saw patients and had time to spend with them.  They weren't ruled by the tedium of insurance and Medicare.  They were allowed to cover their expenses and make money.  People were not forced to buy insurance, nor doctors forced, either directly or indirectly, to accept it.  There was once a time when car companies were allowed to make quality automobiles, and if they couldn't then the market punished them by going out and buying something better.  There was competition in the marketplace.  Competition which drove prices lower and quality ever higher.  Now failing companies are propped up by our taxes so that they can fail repeatedly like irresponsible teens whose parents don't have the cahonies to let them spend a night in jail.  What is going to happen?  I can just hear the story scrawled on a prison camp wall: "They came for the bankers, and the people stayed quiet.  Then they came for the doctors, and all were silent.  They came for the auto manufacturers, the insurors, the pharmaceutical companies, the fast food restaurants, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker; still no one spoke up.  Finally they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."

2. A Culture of Weakness - There are so many examples of this, I'm not sure where to start.  You may have read number 1 and thought: "But what about the poor, what about the uninsured, what about the unemployed?"  Aren't they everyone's responsibility?  No.  They are not.  They are yours.  Yours personally.  The guy next door to you in Nebraska that doesn't have health insurance and is sick.  Is he the responsibility of a young man in Georgia who was the first of his family to go to college and get a good job?  Should his hard earned income now contribute to pay your neighbor's medical bills while you feel better doing nothing because you know your neighbor has government medical coverage?  What if I told you the young college grad was black, and his family was poor.  Does that matter?  What would be much better is if we were free to be personally responsible for each other, not liable to the government to dole out funds as it thinks appropriate in its infinite wisdom or lack thereof.  Americans are generous, creative beings.  We can take care of ourselves and each other without Acts of Congress rammed down our throats every few weeks.  We have churches, and organizations by the thousands, and even some big nasty corporations that help to care for the downtrodden.  But you wouldn't know any of that listening to someone like Obama, or Barbara Boxer, or Chris Dodd, or Barney Frank, or Pelosi who we voted in office to represent us as one people.  They think you are incapable of rising above hardship.  They think you are better off staying unemployed a little longer.  They think you want to talk and have tea time with terrorists as they prepare weapons in their garages back home.  In the mind of someone like Barrack Obama, the government that governs most, governs best. And the weaker you are, the stronger and more important he feels as he works non-stop to help you to the point of helplessness.  Here's the kicker.  They seem to want you to fail.  They want you to be irresponsible.  There are so many of you out there that still don't seem to get it, and it scares the hell out of me.  We put these people in office and gave them this power.  And the longer you don't get it, the more chance there is for all of us to fail; indeed for the nation to fail.  When we all fail together, it won't matter a tinker's damn how high or low you are on the food chain or how much money you make.  Our nation is like a sinking ship that is tossing its life preservers overboard to make room for more deck chairs.  On a ship like that, everyone is going to drown.  And I haven't even gotten to abortion yet.  The very fact that our culture has made it acceptable to kill its children because they're still behind a curtain (womb) makes us a lousy bunch of weaklings, scared to death of responsibility, incapable of putting our own needs aside for the sake of anyone else or for the sake of what is right.  We don't know right anymore from a kick in the nads.  We speak so often of fairness and helping the weak until we are blue in the face.  And yet a fetus has no protection because his vote doesn't count yet, and his own mother won't protect him.  Who else deserves to die because they are a burden on us?  Grandad who doesn't recognize you anymore?  Mom with her broken leg?  Little brother with down syndrome?  If this is our legacy, we deserve to fail as a civilization.

I've heard a lot lately about how a Christian should respond to government, about civil disobedience, about rendering unto Caeser what is Caesar's.  But there is one thing I have not heard that is crucial:  in this country the people are Caesar!  Our representatives, our proxies, our avatars, if you will, are failing us.  They have attempted to reverse their proper roles and apparently succeeded.  In November, during the gladiatorial races, if America has any worth anymore, we shall seal the fate of these failures and their philosophy of economic servitude and a culture of weakness with a simple thumb pointed downward.

Parents v. The Government of the United States of America

A good post on liberty vs. accountability (and why functioning societies need both, not just liberty), from brand new libertarian/classical liberal blog Pileus.

Interesting Tax Fact of the Day

The 2010 lower threshold for actually owing federal taxes: $50,300.
The 1997 lower threshold for actually owing federal taxes: $24,000.

A primary reason for this is probably not what you would think, at least if you're a Rightie.

We Got to Pray

U.S. District Judge, Barbara Crabb, recently took some 66 pages (666 pages might have been too obvious) to explain why she thinks that a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.  See article here.  Of course she tries to cover her tracks with something that sounds logical...we don't have a "National Day of Blasphemy."  Brilliant.  Nothing against Wisconsinians, but apparently in Wisconsin, there is a way for you to pass law school, pass the bar exam, become a career judge, and still find a way not to use your mind.  What motivates a judge to tackle prayer at large?  I don't know church lady.  Could it be Satan?

Three points:
1. Crabb says that her ruling is based on relevant case law.  I understand that precedent is important in law, however, there can be no precedent which supports her ruling because her ruling is illogical.  If the "relevant" case law supports her latest decision, then the "relevant" case law is also illogical.  But she would realize that if she weren't a flaming lib with judgment as cloudy as an old man's cataract.

2. Some people like to hang their hat on "separation of church and state", something that the Constitution doesn't really do.  What it does do is limit the government's power so that it cannot become a theocracy and enslave the public with a specific religion of its choosing.  What the Constitution actually says is that congress shall pass no law establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  Don't take my word for it, get out your own dang copy and read the thing.  See the 1st Amendment.  What this old Crabb is doing is closer to legally prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  And that actually is unconstitutional.  A National Day of Prayer is not a law that establishes a religion.  In fact, if I'm not mistaken, it's not even a law.  Therefore it is not unconstitutional.

3. Finally, this whole thing started because a group of deliquents called Freedom from Religion Foundation pushed for it.  Personally, I think it would be cooler to be in the chess club or even the Stare-at-your-own-lugi-foundation than to be a part of this group.  But the Constitution that they seek to destroy protects their right to form a peaceful assembly of windbags.  You got to love atheists:  the only group I know that are so passionate about believing in nothing. 

If you're listening, Crabb, FRF, and the rest of America...  You probably think you'll do just fine by removing God from your life.  I wonder how confident you'll be if God decides to remove you from His.

You Go Girl

Bam!

Beat It: a tribute

Perhaps you missed the former: Tribute to the High Pitched Male Vocalist. It becons you for a visit in a voice that only a dog can hear.

Today we recognize the drum soloist, the one that puts the "mp" in thump; that takes a good song and changes its direction with a meaty pounding of sticks on a cow's hide. But skill alone isn't enough to be in this tribute. Oh no. The solos here are game changers; a major reason a song was ultimately remembered.

3:40 into this video...that's the spot.


You go Phil.

This next one is just in here because...well...because the Ventures were cool, and Mr. Bean shows some leg:


The Ventures covered this next tune while in Japan in 1965, but the original was by the Surfaris. You'll probably recognize it:


Now then, if that didn't wipe you out, this next one is one of my personal faves (love that baseline too).


One more. What would life be without the 80's? Less cheesy, sure, but then again...it would be less cheesy. Where would your mondo jams be then? I love this next song more than any straight man should love a cheesy song. There I confessed it finally.  Wait until 3:23.  No fast forwarding, cheater.

A little anticlimactic? Maybe. Any less awesome? Never.

Well, that's about it for this installment. Time for me to beat it.

Doublespeak

Ah, you've got to love nonsense.  It's like duct tape for liberals.  Aldous Huxley wrote about the doublespeaking liberals all the way back in 1931.  And guess what?  They're still doublespeaking.

To quote Rep. Patrick Kennedy attempting to say something meaningful about abortion (from this article):

"Obviously there’s going to be some legal decisions that are going to be coming forward, I’m sure, that are going to adjudicate this...But obviously, we’ve got to protect women’s health. Half of our population are women, and -- this is a matter of public health...It’s not a question of morality or anything; it’s a matter of health -- public health. Our mothers, our sisters, our spouses, I mean, this is a simple issue. It’s not making any judgment on people. It’s just a matter of providing -- making sure that they’re safe. And there’s only one way to make sure they’re safe, and that’s making sure that it’s legal.”

Wow.  Just wow.  To borrow a liberal term, allow me to "deconstruct" this ball of twine dipped in manure.  Half of our population are women he says...and therefore deserve to be protected by the state.  You know, "obviously"!  But 5,000,000 terminated babies beg to differ.  Who represents them I wonder?  Who's got their back on healthcare?  President Obama, who, in his own words, doesn't want his girls "punished with a baby"?  Yeah, probably not.  "It's not a question of morality...It's not making any judgment on people", says Patrick Kennedy.  Can you even be more liberal than Ted???  So you're not making any judgment on the babies that are being killed, is that correct?  I suppose, by defining human children as something other than people you can make your argument work for the confused individuals that voted for you.
 
Let me see if I've got this right...it's okay (in your mind) to kill unborn babies to protect women because there are a lot of women.  By that faulty logic, a lot of murder could be justified based on the numbers.  I understand that unborn babies can't vote for you yet, but a bunch of scared or misguided women can.  So why protect babies when their own mothers won't?  I get it.  It's a numbers game, and apparently it worked for you.  What I don't get is what made you grow up to be such a scum sucking miscreant that you cannot distinguish murder from morality.  You choose to encourage weakness and death over courage and strength; guilt over joy.  You package your lies as "women's health" while it's the women who are saddled with the unintended consequences of abortion.  Then you piously talk about "serving others" and remind us all ad nauseum that you're doing so.  I don't care if you have good intentions.  Grow up and think about results.  You're not protecting women.  You're using them. 

Patrick, there is a reason why the ass is the symbol of your party, and the only way to make sure that America is safe, is to kick those asses to the curb.  November's coming quickly.  Tell your friends.