...on being under water

Being wise about buying a house was undoubtedly the stupidest thing we've ever done. We bought in the fall of 2007, right before the housing market plunged into the abyss, never to be heard from again. After years of "throwing our money away" renting, we decided to be "wise" and buy. Of course we paid top dollar for a town house that we figured we'd be in for 2-3 years. And of course we figured we'd take the equity and roll it over into the next, bigger house. And of course, thanks to the housing bubble bursting and an undisclosed, pending lawsuit between our HOA and the builder we're now about $100K+ underwater.

But our wisdom didn't end with buying a house at the worst possible time in history. Oh no! The stupidity really kicked into high gear when we "wisely" chose to live within our means and buy a house we could (and tragically still can) afford. The down side of buying an affordable house in the Seattle area is that it's going to be small--really small. And the kicker is we bought willingly*, knowing that we wanted more kids (we had one at the time).

Buying a house we could afford....idiot!!! Had we leveraged ourselves to the max (or better yet, beyond) like so many others, YOU, gentle reader, would be paying our mortgage now. We'd have been bailed out by the government! But no! Instead, we're not only still paying our own mortgage, but our rising taxes are paying the mortgages of all the "unwise" people who got in over their heads.

Sure, we could just walk away and let the bank foreclose (it will take us far longer to get back above water on our house than it would to repair our credit), but that would be dishonest. Boy have honestly and morals come back to bite us. Those without them...yea, we're paying their mortgages too.

Had we only only known in 2007 that a socialist government would aggressively reward stupidity on the wise man's dime, we'd have acted differently. Instead, we acted "wisely." And now wise has become stupid and stupid wise.

Lest you think that I'm implying that wisdom no longer pays, I'm not. Wisdom, it turns out, pays for itself and everybody else. It pays and pays and pays. And that's just stupid.

*It was only after we bought the house that we discovered that the seller had failed to disclose known and major damages that were, and still are, at the heart of a lawsuit between the HOA and the builder. So even if we were willing to sell at a huge loss we can't because no bank will issue a loan on any house in our community until the lawsuit settles.

...on being a virtuous capitalist

"When people don't spend their own money, they don't care what health care costs." -John Stossel

Capitalism is not perfect. Sir Winston Churchill described it as, "the unequal sharing of blessings." But Churchill's portrayal of socialism as, "the equal sharing of miseries" not only hits the mark but, in my mind, makes capitalism the better option.

To understand this, one must understand the essence of government. I've said this before, but it bears repeating that the history of government can be boiled down to the taking of money from one group and giving it to another group. In other words, wealth redistribution.

The principal I would put forth here is that those who do the work should enjoy the fruits of their labors. If this is moral, then it is not virtuous for the government to take away one man's hard earned money and give it to another man. Sure, this will lead to inequalities. In the free market, competition is king and those who can deliver high-value goods and services will be rewarded far more handsomely than those who cannot.

The onus, then, is on each individual to prepare themselves to be able to provide the goods and services that the market demands. The end results, though unequal, are a product of individual choice--the opportunity being generally equal. And equal opportunity is virtuous. Guaranteed equality of result is not virtuous because it overwrites choice and consequence by forcefully taking from one person and giving to another.

Imagine the 100 meter dash. All eight runners line up side by side and start at the same time. That's equal opportunity. By mid-race, the runners begin to separate, as some take the lead and others fall behind. This separation usually increases until the race ends with the runners crossing the finish line at different times, one through eight. The top finishers are rewarded and given medals. The late finishers are not. This is inequality of result, it's overtly fair and it's exactly what socialism seeks to overcome and undo.

I realize that there are and should be exceptions in all this. Mentally or physically disabled individuals, for example, may not be able to compete with those without disabilities. But such exceptions are just that--exceptions. The principal underlying the free market remains sound. It does so because it is based on free agency. Those who choose to work hard, educate themselves, take risks and find innovative ways to satisfy market demands deserve to be rewarded. The converse is also true.

Socialism exists because, simply put, everybody wants to be handsomely rewarded, but not everybody is willing to pay the price necessary to earn that reward. In a free market, the lazy, unskilled and uneducated will be financially punished because their goods and services are generally not valued highly.

Enter government. In a democracy, everybody gets one vote. And while school and ingenuity are difficult, electing representatives who will take the financial rewards from the hard working educated man and give it to the lazy, under-skilled man is easy. So, what socialism lacks in virtue it makes up in popularity.

Unfortunately, where the free market is ruthlessly efficient at wealth distribution, government--which takes a huge cut off the top to pay for its own bureaucrats and politicians--is horribly inefficient at income redistribution. And the bigger government gets, the more expensive and less efficient it becomes. Forced income redistribution is immoral; being forced to pay for the lackeys who are redistributing your income is pathetically immoral.

In the end, "pathetic" and "immoral" are perhaps the two words that best describe socialism. Whether you agree or not depends, I suspect, on where you've chosen to fall in the free market system of rewards and punishments. If you're reasonably well rewarded, then you probably view capitalism favorably. And if you're not well rewarded, you probably view socialism favorably.

But if you fall into the latter category, I have one question for you: Why do you think you deserve my money?


Post Script: I realize that native intelligence and talent have a lot to do with success in a free market economy. This highlights the need for gratitude, empathy and charity (none of which can or aught to be legislated). That the wealthy should be intelligently charitable with their largess is both practical and virtuous. Failure to do so not only offends the Giver of intelligence and talent, it exacerbates market inequalities and increases the chances that socialist governments will come to power and attempt to legislate equality of result.

So, even though we should never be required to give, we must give nonetheless. In the immortal words of John Milton, "Our voluntary service God requires."

...on being crutchless

I recently listened to a radio interview of a prominent atheist (in Seattle, it's not easy to be a prominent atheist). As with so many modern atheists, this one was intent on stirring up controversy by depicting religionists, and especially Christians, as naive, misguided sheep. Such is the fashion of the day.

But this atheist, who spoke in calm, self-assured tones, went a step further. He took several occasions to accuse believers of being immoral, and gave several examples. He also underhandedly complemented the interviewer (a practicing Christian) on "rising above the crutch of religion to a more humanistic morality."

What struck me was that this man rejected God, the Bible and theistic religion, but insisted on maintaining the the notion of morality--of right and wrong. And he clearly relished holding the moral high ground via what he called secular humanism.

So I looked up humanism to get a high level understanding of what makes it such an enlightened path. Turns out that humanism is a "life stance" that is deeply concerned with truth, ethics and morality. Sounds a lot like religion. Except that religion is bad and humanism is good.

A basic tenant of humanism holds that, "right and wrong must be based on the individual and common good." Which begs the question, which is it? Does the individual determine what's right or does the group? The answer to this question, no matter what it is, begs many, many more questions.

If the individual is the source of truth, then we've got a mammoth problem on our hands, because individuals inevitably have opinions that contrast with the opinions and ideas of other individuals. Get a few billion individuals together on a planet and you've got one, two three, four......well, a lot of versions of the truth. So who's right and who's wrong?

This, I'm guessing, is where group morality enters the picture. But is the common good ever really common (much less good)? It's not hard to find a group of individuals who share common views, but driving global consent is a bit like herding cats. Billions of cats. In all of mortality, there will never be unanimous consent when it comes to right or wrong. That's my opinion. And if you disagree, you're proving my point. Besides, I've got all of history on my side.

So what happens next? Does morality become democratic? Do we leave it to the majority to decide right and wrong? If so, then right and wrong are bound to change, then change again.

The problem with all this is that there is not, nor indeed can there be, an absolute in the equation without a God. Atheists will recoil at this suggestion, but I defy them to show otherwise. The only alternative is that right and wrong, moral and immoral are purely relative. Such a notion gives way to nihilism and chaos.

One might declare that murder is wrong.
To which I would ask, why?
Because everybody knows it is.
Everybody?
Well, most people.
So right and wrong is determined by majority rule?
No.
Well then, what determines it? Why is murder wrong?
Because murder is contrary to the common good, that's why.
And who decides what is commonly good?
The people. The community.
All of the people, or just a majority?
Look, not killing people helps preserve society.
So it's a simple matter of preservation? In that case, is it wrong to kill murderers?

The slippery slope is obvious. Almost embarrassingly obvious. With secular humanism, right and wrong are forever subjective. There is no anchor holding the ship in place, only a lively debate on deck as to the proper course. And even if an unlikely consensus is reached that the ship ought to travel north, everyone's compass is pointing a slightly different direction, making north impossible to identify.

Does organized religion have a similar problem? Yes, with so many religions, doctrines and denominations, it's impossible to argue that all who believe in God also understand and follow His doctrine. And yet, there are some common principals and ideals, foremost of which is the idea of one God with one set of objective, immutable truths.

To the believer, this is the anchor. God is the basis of right and wrong, moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. And to the non-believer, the idea of God must be recognized for what it (at the very least) is: The best and only chance to rise above the shifting sands of philosophy and find truth.

...on being forced to buy car insurance

Growing up, everybody had a car. You really had to. Living in rural Snake River Idaho, the distances were just too great to walk. Our nearest neighbor was nearly a half-mile away. The grocery store was 7 miles. And an Idaho winter without a car? Forget it.

But life in the city is different. During my three years in Seattle, I've met a number of people who don't own a car, and don't want to (unlike the myriad college students who don't have a car but wish they did). These are high paid professionals who live downtown, use the ample public transit system to get around, and have an Obama '08 mug instead of the bumper sticker. It's a different lifestyle, but it works as well as one's birth control. To each his own, right?

So I had a thought: Wouldn't it be both bizarre and poetically just if the government passed laws placing auto insurance on the same plane with health insurance--I mean the kind of mandatory health insurance that Pelosi, Reid and Obama are ramming through congress?

My pedestrian, city-dwelling cohorts would then be forced by the government to by a car. Well, not forced, but they'd be forced to pay car insurance, so they might as well buy a car. That would just be ridiculous to buy car insurance and not buy a car to go along with it, right?

And if your neighbor decided to buy a big red Hummer or a totally impractical sports car, your insurance rates would go up to help cover their high-premium choice. It wouldn't matter that you own, or would have purchased, a Prius.

So the next time you hear somebody on TV or the radio or at work justify legally mandated health insurance by comparing it to car insurance, you'll understand the seamless logic of their argument.

Oh, and if you disagree with me, you're a racist.

...on bing opted-in

I listen to the radio on the way in to work. One of the ads I hear frequently pitches a solution to credit card debt. Basically, if you've got credit card debt, this company will hook you up with government stimulus money and pay off your debt. Is this for real? Who knows. What's obvious to me is that the pitch and appeal of this ad is income redistribution. Since government money is my money, this group proposes to take my money and pay off somebody else's debt.

That pisses me off, but on a small scale compared to the redistribution scam that is the health care reform bill(s) coming out of congress. Unable to gain traction for a trillion-plus dollar public option (i.e. government-run health insurance), congressional hucksters are now peddling a bill that allows states to "opt out" of the public option.

Mind you, the states can't opt out of paying for the public option. Oh no! Tax payers from all 50 states will fund the government option. Instead, "opting out" means that state governors can decline the government-run health insurance that their citizens are paying for. That's a tough sell--one that most governors will not attempt, and few-to-none will succeed in doing. Of course the snake oil salesmen in D.C know this, but they're apparently banking on us NOT knowing it.

So to anyone out there who still doesn't get it, here's the analogy: If you don't like the ShamWow, no problem. Just pay us the money for it and we won't make you take it home. Seriously, Billy Mays couldn't sell this crap! But Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi apparently think they can. And they may be right!

...on being cut in half

President Obama has often pledged to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. The fact that he's quadrupled the deficit during his first year should make this feat somewhat easier. Unfortunately, the net effect of halving a quadrupled deficit is doubling the original deficit. Here's the equation: (Dx4)/2=Dx2
As this chart from the Heritage Foundation illustrates, we have so much to look forward to.

Today's good news is that the GDP grew by 3.4% in the third quarter. So we're out of the recession! Hurray! But those curious enough to analyze the numbers will find that GDP has three financial components: CIG

"C" is for consumer consumption (spending), of which there hasn't been an appreciable increase. "I" is for business investment which, again, has not improved much since the depths of the recession. So the up-tick in GDP rests on the shoulders of "G", which stands for government spending, of which there has been P-L-E-N-T-Y.

So bottom line: Our economic recovery is riding on government spending, which in turn is based on borrowed and printed money that has quadrupled the deficit and made the Dollar nearly worthless. Bush is looking not so bader every day.

...on being just too irresistable.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
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Smile. You're welcome.

...on being a gravitational certainty

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. " -Sir Winston Churchill

The health care wars are in full swing, dominating the news and internet. From the conservative right, you have angry town hall'ers unloading on their congressmen and senators. Sarah Palin's "death panel" Facebook entry has kindled an inferno of concern and angst. Many believe that the government will take control of health care, begin rationing and leave the weak and elderly to die--and spend trillions in the process. The left denounces this as absurd, dishonest fear mongering. Further, they've attacked the town hall'er as being either raving loons or "astro turf" henchmen of the RNC. They maintain (among other things) that the current system is unsustainable, that a public health option will not result in a government take-over of health care, and that there will be no rationing.

ObamaCare opponents are almost certainly correct to assert that the Democrats seek to implement a government health care option that will eventually run private insurance out of business and result in a single payer system. However, the angry right is wrong on one count: Too many believe that those on the left, lead by Obama and Pelosi, are malicious; that they are plotting health care rationing targeted at the elderly, and that they take some kind of perverse pleasure in this. Not only is this line of thinking wrong, it completely misses the point of the rationing argument.

If ObamaCare passes, rationing will occur unintentionally and without malice...and THAT is precisely the point. If rationing could be avoided by eliminating malice, then we the people could simply elect non-malicious representatives and end rationing. But it won't and we can't because malice is not what drives rationing. Scarcity is.

Rationing will occur as a natural consequence of adding 50 million more patients to the system without adding doctors, nurses, hospitals or equipment. It will occur because we have an increasingly old population with a decreasing number of young workers to be taxed and pay for social programs. In short, it will occur because the government doesn't have the money to fully fund nationalized health care, can't get it through taxes, and can only borrow and print money for so long before the whole sordid Ponzi scheme collapses in insolvency (and the economy along with it).

So, when you can't bring enough money into a program to cover expenses, your only alternative it to cut expenses. There simply is no other option. Resources are scarce and demand consistently outstrips supply. Difficult decisions must be made--and some person or group has to make them. Of course the decision makers won't be called a "death panel", but to those whose health care services are cut, diminished or delayed, they will serve the same function. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem.

The road to hell, as the saying goes, is paved with good intentions. Let's make no mistake about it--those advocating government run, universal health care have good intentions. But what is enacted into law must be paid for, and therein lies the rub. The inability to pay for nationalized health care will, with gravitational certainty, necessitate and drive rationing. If liberal malice were the problem, then there would be no problem. But malice is not the problem. Math and the economics of scarcity are.

...on being a little concerned

In a surprise move, the government announced last night that it was suspending its "Cash for Clunkers" program, in which they give you $4,500 for trading in your older, less fuel efficient vehicle for a new one that, in many cases, is only a few miles to the gallon more efficient (Hummers and Chevy Suburbans are eligible fuel efficient vehicles under this program). They then destroy your old car, so that it cannot be recycled. How green.

Anyway, it turns out the the government misunderestimated demand for this something-for-"nothing" program. It planned for a $1B budget that would carry the program through October, or about 4 months. Instead, the program ran out of money in about 4 days. Oops! Somebody forgot to carry the 1. Not to worry, though: Another $2B has been requested by legislators and will almost certainly be approved.

An article I read today quoted New York car salesman Rob Bojaryn: "If [the government] can't administer a program like this, I'd be a little concerned about my health insurance," Yeah...me too. I'd also be a little concerned about the deficit, which has quadrupled in the last year and is now a whopping 13% of GDP. By contrast, the post-Carter deficit of the early 80's was only 5%.

What if this were health care? What if, instead of a government car program running out of money nearly 30 times faster than planned, the proposed $1 TRILLION+ government health care plan goes over budget and ends up costing $30 trillion instead. Nah, couldn't happen. Couldn't go 30x over budget. But 2x, or 3x, or 5x, or even--like Medicare--11X over budget. This seems not only possible, but based on the government's long track record of blown budgets and rampant deficit spending, very probable. If not guaranteed.

What if Cash for Clunkers were a project run in the private sector? Can you imagine? A project manager estimates the project will take 4 months and will cost $1B. The project is approved and the $1B allocated by an executive committee. Four days later, the project manager returns to the executive team to report that the entire project budget has been spent and requests another $2B. Would this be considered, as Auto Secretary Ray LaHood has said, "a wild, roaring success"? No. In the real world, the project manager would be fired immediately, the project would be shut down a and the additional $2B would not be allocated. The project would go down as a landmark failure and an example of how NOT to run a project. But in government hands, that same project is a wild success, nobody loses their job and billions more taxpayer dollars are allocated.

Senator Richard Shelby recently said, "The Cash-for-Clunkers program is a shell game of transferring wealth from the pockets of one taxpayer to another. We should call it what it really is – another billion dollar auto bailout." I agree. The tax payers not participating in the program are basically being forced to take out an auto loan for those who are participating. But then, that's the nature of government, isn't it? They are lobbied by various interests, then pass legislation routing taxpayer money to those interests. The history of government can be boiled down to them taking money from one group of people and giving it to another group of people. Wouldn't it be something if we all just stopped using the government to steal from one another? Imagine.

...on being opposed to government-run health care

Here are the top 10 reasons I believe the proposed government run health care is a disaster worth opposing:

10. Advocates claim government insurance will force private insurance to compete. Sounds good, but in this "competition" will private insurance be able to subsidize its bottom line with tax money and legislate the rules of the competition? It's not a competition if the game is rigged by the house.

9. Government estimates of the cost of universal health care are almost certainly wrong--and wildly so! In 1966, the government estimated that Medicare would cost only $9 billion by 1990 (adjusted for inflation). This "conservative" estimate was hopelessly wrong! By 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion. Today that number is around $900 billion.

8. According the the CBO, the trillion dollar+++ health care reform legislation being promoted by the Obama administration would achieve a net decrease of 16-17 million uninsured. Subtract that from 46 million presently uninsured and you get about 30 million STILL uninsured. So Obama wants to spend trillions of dollars to solve a third of the uninsured problem? For that price, we could purchase private health insurance for ALL uninsured citizens and still have money left over.

7. Guaranteed government health insurance will remove the incentive for employers to offer insurance at all, which will create many millions more uninsured. Think about it: If I'm a small business owner, why would I continue to pay for my employees' health care when you--I mean the government--will pay for it? Sure, the government will slap an 8% penalty on businesses that don't provide insurance for their employees, but most companies who offer their employees health insurance pay 10%-14% of payroll. So 8% is a bargain!

6. Legally and constitutionally, the government has no business in health care. But once it's in, it grows and expands like cancer. And that expansion is nearly impossible to reverse down the road when it becomes obvious that the government is wretchedly inefficient and needs to get out of the health care business.

5. Do we want to pay for health care, or do we want the government to tax us to pay for health care? Shifting costs from premiums to taxes does nothing to change the sustainability of health care, and is likely to make federal budget deficits worse. Middle men always add expense to any process.

4. According to a Census Bureau report, of the 45.6 million persons in the United States that did not have health insurance at some point in 2007, 9.7 million, or about 21%, were not U.S. citizens. Now we know why they call it "universal" health care.

3. The government proposes to add an additional 46 million uninsured people to the health care system. But will there suddenly be additional hospital rooms and doctors offices for these 46 million patients? Additional medical equipment? Additional nurses? Additional doctors? No. The existing health care system will simply be stretched beyond its capacity, which will lead to government-managed rationing and substantial wait-times for (government approved) medical procedures.

2. Remind me again why we are ramming this supremely expensive legislation through NOW when we are in the depths of a massive recession and have just doubled the national debt? We've spent all of our money, borrowed as much from China as they will give us, are printing money around the clock...and the government thinks NOW is the time to spend trillions more on socialized medicine?

1. Government-run health care already exists...and it stinks. It's called Medicare/Medicaid and it's nearly insolvent--in the red to the tune of trillions of dollars. If the government wants me to finance additional government-run health care, then I say fix the existing government-run health care first, then we'll talk about additional programs. Fix Social Security! Fix the DMV! Fix the Post Office! Fix Amtrak! They're all broke! Until then, get your filthy hand out of my pocket. I'm not willing to finance another one of your catastrophic failures.



"The President has failed repeatedly to explain how the government will provide more (health care) for less (money). He has failed to explain why increased demand for medical services without a concomitant increase in supply won’t lead to rationing by government bureaucrats as opposed to the market. And he has failed to explain why a Medicare-like model is desirable when Medicare itself is going broke."
-Caroline Baum

...on being sissified

I don't know if it's just Washington, or if it's 2009, but the Boy Scouts of American aint what it used to be.

I've talked to a few local scout masters about the scout camps in the Seattle area, and I've looked online and seen the pictures and read about their programs. Last week I got to sample it first hand. For our Lake Serene hike, we camped at Camp Brinkley north of Monroe. The camp sites each have a large bathroom hut (with toilets, urinals and sinks) in the middle of them with large Adirondack sleeping huts around the perimeter. For those not sleeping in the huts, there are platforms with tents already set-up for you. Just down the trail, there are lodges galore, including a full service dinning hall.

So basically, you're going to "camp" at a place where you don't have to camp. You don't have to pitch a tent, don't have to cook a meal, don't have to wash dishes, don't have to leave camp to use the bathroom and don't have to pack anything up when you leave. Sounds like a cross between the Beverly Hilton and Vacation Bible School!

Is this a Seattle-area thing, or a product of scout camp evolution? I'm told that the camps do all the "leg work" for the boys so that they can concentrate on earning merit badges. Um....like the Camping or Cooking merit badges??? I wonder if they have all the knots pre-tied for you at the Pioneering merit badge class? And perhaps they have one of the staff do some of the swimming for you on the Swimming merit badge. That would certainly save time and allow the boys to come home with more merit badges. Including the I'm-A-Sissified-Wuss-Who-Doesn't-Know-Squat-About-Camping merit badge.

As a young Boy Scout, we called the "leg work" camping. My troop, the Fightin' 224, went to Camp Little Lemhi every summer. It was up in the mountains, not just down the street from civilization. Going to scout camp meant getting dirty and learning a thing or two about camp craft. It meant taking responsibility. We pitched our own tents in camp sites that featured trees, dirt, bushes and not much else. We made the trip down to the commissary three times a day to get food that we hauled back to camp and cooked over an open fire. You either learned to cook or you starved. After cooking we washed all the dishes. It wasn't always fun, but we learned that it was part of camping. When the urge hit, we tromped off down the trail to the latrine (I never heard a boy complain, "Gee, I wish we had one of those stench-buckets right in the middle of our campsite"). It all took time and effort, and nobody ever came home with 12 merit badges. But we all returned with basic camping skills, a sense of what camping is all about and confidence that we could do it.

I mention all this because my son Gavin just turned one, and already I have visions of grand adventures with him in the great outdoors. But I must say that I have serious misgivings about him going to one of these sissified, artificial, no-responsibility scout camps. Maybe by the time he's 12, the BSA will have done away with camps and just hand out Eagle awards to every boy. That would save time and allow the boys to focus on other things.

...on being an ex post facto capitalist

Not that I would have before, but let me make it official now: I'll never own a GM or Chrysler automobile.

The things is, they should have been left to die, victims of their own dysfunction, decades of poor management decisions, unsustainable labor agreements, and the inability to compete. Instead, they've been bailed-out. They're like the kid who only makes the team because his dad is the coach. He may be tolerated, but he'll never be respected. Likewise, I'm not going to drive the product of a company that I don't respect; a product that shouldn't exist because the company that made it should no longer exist.

But they're an American company, you say. Nonsense! American companies compete or die, it happens every day. GM and Chrysler should be out of business. But instead, and thanks to a socialist-leaning government and hundreds of billions of dollars, free market capitalism is the only thing that has died. That and common sense. And dignity.

I've never been a Ford fan, but have recently developed a grudging respect for them. Unlike GM and Chrysler, they rejected government bail-out money and have thus far managed to avoid bankruptcy. That may change, but for now I truly admire their "live free or die" determination not to become a government lackey.

GM, on the other hand, has had its CEO dismissed by President Obama and now has a new, government appointed CEO who's first memorable quote after taking the job was, "I don't know a thing about cars." Not to worry, neither do the politicians who appointed you. Neither did the politicians who ran Yugo. Sure, the Yugo was voted "Worst Car of the Millennium," but...um...this is a new millennium.

Why on earth would anybody want to purchase a car made by people who "don't know a thing about cars?" Why would anybody want to buy a car from a company that is owned by the government and whose decisions are heavily influenced, if not outright made, by politicians? Politicians can't even run the government, much less a profitable business.

The punch line to all this is that the government claims that GM is owned by the "taxpayers." Oh really? Is that where the government got the hundreds of billions of bail-out dollars? From taxpayers? No, they borrowed it from China. So the sad truth is that GM is owned by China and is being leased by the U.S. government. And who will be paying off that lease (and several others) for generations to come? Ah yes, this is where the American taxpayer comes in...at the butt end of the joke.


BTW, if you like the pictures on this post, they came from Despair.com. Check out their hilarious website and excellent product line here.

...on being qualified

President Obama has just nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme court. I don't know much about her, other than she appears to have an inspirational, Horatio Alger-type story. I'm not writing to address her qualifications. In fact, my concern is that her nomination has little to do with her judicial qualifications.

This morning, news headlines proclaimed, "Obama picks Latina." Sounds like a politically savvy choice. NBC news questions, "Would Republicans dare vote against first Hispanic Woman?" Probably not in significant numbers (not that it would matter)--they can't afford to further alienate the Latino vote.

But I have a few questions about the nomination (if not the nominee). First, what does being a Hispanic woman have to do with being qualified to be a Supreme Court justice? What does being any gender from any race have to do with being qualified? President Obama said he would nominate somebody with "empathy and understanding." Admirable traits, but what do they have to do with dispassionately applying the law? I'd like to think that the answer to each of these questions is, absolutely nothing. Now, Sotomayor may in fact be the most qualified person President Obama could have nominated, but anybody would be hard-pressed to make the case that Obama's decision was based on her qualifications and not her race and gender.

I also can't help wondering if Ms. Sotomayor feels that her appointment has been cheapened by being based on marketing, political correctness and voter-getting rather than judicial excellence. Obviously, nobody is going to come out and say that she was only selected because she's a "Latina", but would she have gotten the nod had she been a white male? And if not, isn't that racism? Ms. Sotomayor isn't stupid and can't be naive to this line of reasoning.

Here's how I look at this and other quality vs. equality issues: If I'm on an airplane who's only pilot suddenly dies of a heart attack, the attendant asks if anybody in the plane has any kind of flying experience and four people raise their hands, I hope the attendant ascertains the skill and experience of the four, then selects the best pilot. If the attendant selects the new pilot based on gender, race, sexual preference, political affiliation, friendship, financial favors or any other reason, I'll be looking for a parachute and the nearest exit.

...on being confused

First off, let me admit that there is much about this topic that I don't understand, but it appears to me that a) the gay rights movement has an agenda, and b) it's confusing.

Take for example a recent Politico article:

"But gay rights groups — disappointed that Obama didn't pick an openly gay man or woman for his Cabinet — are pushing him to put the first openly gay justice on the Supreme Court.

"Within hours of word of Souter's departure, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund was hailing the candidacy of a First Amendment scholar and former dean of Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan. 'Out lesbian a contender for Supreme Court,' one of the group's web sites declared."

To me, this seems to clash with what I thought was the gay rights agenda, namely indiscriminant equality. So when it comes to marriage, we mustn't discriminate, but when it comes to the President's cabinet, we suddenly should? When it's a local school teacher, sexual preference is irrelevant, but when it's a supreme court justice, it's vital? Must the supreme court nominee also be, as the Politico quote suggests, an "openly" gay person, or is being discretely gay sufficient? What are the rules here? What is the criteria? How is a person supposed to be politically correct? Even if one wanted to color within the lines, they couldn't because the lines keep shifting!

Look, I'm not making any moral, right or wrong arguments here (that's another rant), I'm just pointing out what appears to be multiple standards and multiple agendas. And I'm saying that it's confusing. At best. At worst, it's disingenuous and makes "indiscriminant equality" look like bait.

...on being a pirate's best friend

Now that an American ship has been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia (it was the 6th ship hijacked this week), I thought it a perfect time to unveil my plan to end modern-day piracy, which costs the developed world hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

What's the solution to the piracy plague? Here it is: We bail them out! That's right, we simply create a stimulus package for the pirates that incentivizes them to stop working, i.e. to stop hijacking ships. They stop working, we pay them. Simple.

Note: The other way to get them to stop working would have been to severely tax their earnings, but that seemed a bit of a stretch since Somalia doesn't have an IRS.

The beauty of my plan is that the international community wouldn't need to do a thing. Americans will foot the bill! I mean, this would only cost a couple hundred million dollars a year--that's pocket change compared to the trillions upon trillions President Obama and Congress plan to spend on far less urgent projects; indeed, on projects that have far less chance of success.

To those who balk at this plan, let me remind you of two things. First, the American tax payer is apparently quite willing to throw obscene, illogical amounts of money at problems. According to recent polls, the majority of Americans don't mind having their taxes raised...or at least the taxes of their more wealthy neighbors. The Obama spending frenzy still has the support of 59% of Americans according to Gallup. So if they're willing to spend their childrens' money so freely, why not give them a sure thing, success guaranteed project to spend it on?

Second, I don't think I need to remind you that piracy, along with every other problem in the world today, is America's fault, and we are therefore morally obligated to pay for and fix it. I was a bit surprised that President Obama didn't apologize for piracy on his recent European tour. He apologized for everything else, but not piracy. No worries--we'll fix that omission too.

My plan is to have President Obama travel to Somalia and apologize directly to the pirates. Of course, he'll want to bow to the pirate Captain as a sign of cultural respect. And we'll make sure he gives one of his trademark "America is arrogant, it's all Bush's fault and we're sorry" speeches. And to seal the deal, he'll present the pirate captain with a box set of DVDs! And THIS time, we'll make sure he includes a DVD player that actually plays American DVDs. When he returns to Washington, Mr. Obama will undoubtedly appoint a Pirate Czar to oversee swashbuckling policy.

So, in summary: America is arrogant and responsible for piracy. No problem, cuz most Americans are more than happy to use their childrens' money to pay the pirates off, thus incentivizing them to not work. The price tag for this won't amount to a drop in the bucket of President Obama's spending plans, so it's a bargain. And it involves both pirates and czars, which is very exciting.


Oh, and one more thing: I'd like to formally and preemptively apologize to pirates, Europeans, the UN and the Muslim world for writing this rant. I was arrogant and wrong to do so. Can I offer you some money?