...on being just too irresistable.

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...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?

...on being forced to pay for my unfair advantage

As a nation, we've decided that we no longer trust the free market. We've been burned! The market failed to protect us from our own greed and rank stupidity. So from here on out, we've decided (or at least the politicians who 'represent' us have decided) to put the government in charge of the markets.

WHAT????!!!!!!

What has government ever done--EVER--that would lead us to believe that this is a good idea? Ever? The short answer is NOTHING. But rather than engage in a subjective analysis of history, let me direct the wrath of this rant at what the government is doing with our tax money today.

Today the government has turned its attention to the housing crisis. A brief history: Basically, a whole bunch of greedy, short-sighted financial institutions driven by government legislation, gave out exotic home loans to a whole bunch of unqualified and even more short-sighted people who had absolutely no business buying a house (much less the houses they bought) and couldn't afford to pay the mortgages. This under the negligent eye of the Bush administration and on the wings of legislation championed by Barney Frank to help the "economically disadvantaged" get into a home loan. The result is the present deep and deepening recession. Who would have thunk? Both the financiers and those they over-financed were profoundly unwise and deserve to be dropped on their financial noggins.

But is the government going to let the market run its course and allow stupid financial institutions to fail and stupid house buyers to default? No, it would be too painful and the market cannot be trusted. Barney Frank and his congressional cronies, on the other hand, can. Mysterious.

The plan is to bail-out the people who can't afford to pay their mortgages. And who's going to bail them out? The government? And where does the government get is money? That's right, from people like me. Hard working people who were smart enough not to buy what we couldn't afford with money that wasn't ours. So now we'll be paying our mortgages and the mortgages of a bunch of instant-self-gratification idiots who got in over their heads in homes they couldn't have afforded with a -4% interest rate.

Back when he was pushing his loans-for-everybody legislation through congress, Barney Frank--one of the small, truly disappointing figures in all of congressional history--was concerned with being fair to all the economically disadvantaged out there who couldn't afford a house. Never mind that there were good reasons they couldn't afford a house. The government needed to ensure equality!

And since its plan for equality then has backfired, the government's plan for equality now is to penalize people like me who have unfair advantages. So now, in the name of fairness and equality, I'm being forced to pay for the unfair advantage my HARD WORK and COMMON SENSE have given me.

What an absolute crock! Hey Barney, if I stop paying my mortgage now, can I get some of that government bailout money, you retarded Elmer Fudd Oompa-Loompa?

Seriously, what are we doing here? We're promoting bad behavior by rewarding it! Once upon a time in America, it was embarrassing to take a handout. Now it's a legislated expectation. Oh, I know. I've seen the talking heads on TV explaining how we're all in this together and if the government doesn't take money from people like me to bail out the flunkies then we'll all go down together.

Well, I've thought about that and you know what...let's dance! If it's a choice between getting my teeth kicked in now and being bled dry paying for flunkies over the next 50 years, then I say bring the pain! Let's get this over with! Let's all go down together--flunkies too! It's about time somebody who actually deserves to pay for their mistakes starts paying. And if that means I have to suffer along side the idiots, so be it. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life--nor do I want my children to spend the duration of theirs--paying off immoral imbecile debt. Let's do this now!

But we won't, will we Barney, you beady-eyed lilliputian? No, we'll rob from productive people to underwrite sloth and indigence, and go socialist in the process.

...on being there when my children were sold into slavery

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams


Niro is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. Likewise, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flew to Rome after pushing-through a partisan spending bill that effectively sells our children and grandchildren into financial slavery. How symbolically ironic that this happened during the tenure and at the behest of our first black president, Barak Obama.

It is perhaps too harsh and unfair to evoke the imagery of slavery here. Indeed, future generations of Americans will not be whipped, shacked, starved or denied their civil and and human rights. They will, however, and in a very real sense, be fiscally indentured to the large and rising creditor nations of the world who are now purchasing our debt.

My children don't know this, of course. They don't realize that they'll grow up in a very different, less friendly world where the Untied States is no longer an economically, politically and socially dominant stabilizing force. They don't understand that they'll toil and be heavily taxed their entire lives in a desperate bid to somehow pay the burgeoning interest on US government debt to China, Russia and other foreign and domestic bond holders. But if they look at today's passage of a near-trillion dollar, pork-filled, politically motivated spending bill with childlike ignorance, they are not alone.

In a nation that increasingly looks to government to solve their problems, and especially during times of crisis, reality is often slow to set in. But I think that a few people get it. Or at least are trying to grasp the magnitude of what's happening. Others--too many--are simply content to shut their eyes, cross their fingers, take the money and run.

Gone are the days of Patrick Henry, who rightly observed, "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." On this day, when the worst has come, we the people proved unwilling to understand and know it, and willing to sell our childrens' inheritance for a proverbial mess of pottage.

Yes, we're deep in a recession and there's plenty of blame to go around as to how we got here. There are good arguments to be made (though few arguments thus far have been good) that the government needs to do something. But why a trillion dollars when less than a quarter of it will be distributed within the first year? Would it have been asking too much to approach this crisis in a reasoned, thoughtful, measured way? Would it have killed Pelosi to--as she and the Democrats promised--allow the American people to actually read the bill before agreeing to it? Such was Pelosi's rush that not a single congressman was able to read the final version of the 1,071 page bill that they voted for and passed today. Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver lamented, “We all cast our votes with one hand and crossed our fingers with the other.”

But pass it they did, and not a moment too soon. Nancy Pelosi had just enough time to get in a photo opp and catch her flight to Rome. Whew! And when the gargantuan spending bill finally passed both houses of congress--this urgent bill that had to be passed RIGHT NOW, never mind reading it--President Obama, rather than signing it, took a three day vacation to Chicago. Guess it wasn't that urgent after all. Honestly, you can't even make this stuff up.

Pelosi, Reid, Obama and all those who rammed this colossal spending bill through congress and down our throats at the expense of our children, have killed the proverbial albatross and I intend to be part of the electoral movement that hangs it around their collective neck in 2010.

"I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy." - Thomas Jefferson

...on being willing to give my children's money to stupid people

I'll start this rant with a quote from South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford: "[This bailout is] what you see in Russia or Venezuela or Zimbabwe or places like that where it matters not how good your product is to the consumer but what your political connection is to those in power. That is quite different than a market-based economy where some rise and some fall but there’s a consequence to making a stupid decision. A lot of people who’ve made some very stupid decisions are being bailed out by the population at large."

I'm like millions of other Americans in being absolutely appalled by the events that lead our economy to the present recession. And I'm no less disgusted by the frantic, heavy handed and, as Governor Sanford puts it, "stupid" rush to give trillions of dollars to screw-ups and special interests in the name of bailing out the economy. But am I surprised?

No.

Surprise occurs when something unpredictable and out of the ordinary happens. And that's simply not the case here.

Today the story broke that General Motors will spend $1 billion of its tax payer bailout money on investments in Brazil. This news has, of course, been met with stunned disbelief and outrage by the American public. I say 'of course,' but who can seriously be surprised by this? Is there anything that the GM executive team has done in the recent past that would make this move surprising? No. These are the geniuses who flew their corporate jets to Washington to ask for money. They've made stupid decisions in the past and are merely continuing on course. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO STUPID PEOPLE.

Speaking of corporate jets, until they were shamed and bullied into canceling the order, Citigroup planned on using part of their $45 billion in tax payer bailout money to purchase a new, state-of-the-art corporate jet. People were shocked and appalled. I was appalled too, but I must say that the whole jet thing is very consistent with Citigroup's track record. Oh, and did I mention, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO STUPID PEOPLE.

No sooner did Bank of America get its $24 billion in bailout money then it bought a bank in China for $7 billion. Then followed this up by laying-off 32,000 employees. It's shocking, until you remember that this is the same Bank of America that gives credit cards to people who don't have social security numbers. Then it all makes sense: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO STUPID PEOPLE.

The week after tax payers spent $85 billion bailing out AIG, company executives spent a half million dollars of it on a luxurious corporate retreat. The Huffington Post indignantly proclaimed, "They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill." Indeed, but let me ask you this: Is there anything in AIG's past actions that would cause you to expect a different course of action? Hmmmmm...well then I'm going to have to say, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO STUPID PEOPLE.

John A. Thain, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, leads a pack of flunky Wall Street bosses who have handed out billions in bonuses to their executive teams despite the fact that their institutions have lost billions for investors, are no longer independently viable and have received billions in tax payer bailouts from the government. And yet news outlets nationwide marvel at how these organizations got into the mess in the first place? How could it have happened with such steady hands at the tiller? Are you serious? Thain spent $1.2 million to redecorate his office! HIS OFFICE!!!! And are you seriously taken aback by the billions in bonuses to executives who should have been summarily dismissed for piss poor performance? Come on! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO STUPID PEOPLE!!!

Is there anyone out there who's beginning to see the pattern here? Anybody need a few more examples? Because I've got 'em. How about just one more--the proverbial icing on the stupidity cake.

We just elected a man who vowed to replace the "politics of fear with the politics of hope." Two weeks later he's appointed a tax cheat to run the IRS and goes on TV daily with doomsday forecasts aimed at intimidating Congress and frightening the American public into passing a pork-filled, trillion dollar spending package. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! The bill was drafted behind closed doors by a handful of congressmen from one party lead by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who recently claimed that, "five hundred million Americans lose their job every month"). Now they're pressing hard to pass the bill in the name of expediency and expect us to believe that a) it's a good bill, b) it will fix the problem, and c) it has to be passed right now, as is or we're doomed as a nation.

I have my doubts. And why shouldn't I when it comes to Congress? This is a group who earns their single digit approval rating year in and year out. Gross, bureaucratic incompetence is their hallmark. And these are the very people to whom we pay taxes--who decide where our money goes. And they've decided to use it (plus a bunch more money that they'll have to borrow and a bunch more that they're going to print) to bailout, and thus socialize, the economy. Sorry, but I wouldn't trust Nancy Pelosi to hand out the condoms she claims will stimulate our economy, much less trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. But she's going to. And our children and grandchildren will be saddled with a crippling debt, paving the way for creditor nations like China to takeover the political and economic leadership role in the world.

It sickens me. It really does. I'm angry, disgusted, embarrassed, outraged, saddened, nauseated, fed-up and pissed-off. But I'm not surprised. And I'm not saying don't pay your taxes. All I'm saying is.....THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE MONEY TO STUPID PEOPLE!!!

...on being misinformed

I was un-American, but now I'm just misinformed. That according to Hollywood's best and brightest.

First it was Tom Hanks pronouncing Mormon supporters of California Proposition 8 "un-American," a comment for which he later apologized. Now Samuel L. Jackson, while discussing the same topic, said, "I wouldn't go so far as to calling them [Mormons] un-American. I'd just call them misinformed."

Well of course we're misinformed, Sam! Anybody who disagrees with you must be misinformed. There's no other explanation. If we were informed, we'd agree with you. Period. Unless you disagreed with Tom Hanks, in which case we'd have to agree with him. He does have a couple Oscars.

It's just delicious to listen as statements like these pass as authoritative. Or better yet, as rational arguments. I'm not sure if it says more about Hollywood or about us. After all, we're the ones who listen to them.

I don't mean to pick on these two actors. I think they're nice, talented guys and I assume they're every bit as sincere in their ideas and beliefs as I am in mine. I'm not going to boycott their movies because their views on Mormons' views. I just think it's funny.

I'm also amused and a bit mystified by the fact that everybody's singling out the Mormons on this issue. Is anybody going to mention any other religion? Ever? I mean, pretty much every religion in California supported Prop 8. So why aren't Catholics or Methodists or Lutherans un-American or misinformed? Why isn't anybody demonstrating in front of their churches? Curious, that's all.

What's even more curious to me is when Tom Hanks said, "I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper." Sounds good, but isn't that what laws do? Doesn't every single law ever written discriminate against somebody or something? I think so...but then I may just be misinformed. I'm not sure, but I'll bet Samuel L. Jackson could tell me.

...on being intolerant

The idea of political correctness has been around for a while now, but it doesn't pack the devastating punch that it did when it was freshly coined. It's no longer damning enough to be politically incorrect; the stigma isn't powerful enough to get you banned from society at large. In fact, political incorrectness is becoming somewhat trendy. Being politically incorrect is edgy and marks one as a free-thinking independent. Not bad, which is exactly why the PC activists have moved on to new words like "intolerant" and "discriminate". Words whose connotation is almost universally negative and whose stigma is a social scarlet letter.

In today's America, unless you're willing to tolerate anything, you're intolerant. And I'm simply not willing to tolerate anything. And I do discriminate and vote for discriminatory laws. I'm intolerant, for example, of theft. I think it's wrong and won't put up with it. And I'll vote to pass laws that will discriminate against anybody who steels (BTW, show me a non-discriminatory law--no such thing).

Now, that sounds reasonable, until one of my ideas or opinions runs counter to the idea or opinion of an activist with a cause and a chip on his shoulder. That's the tipping point, if you will. It's at that point that I become intolerant, which, in a connotative sense at least, is only a hop skip and a jump from bigoted, racist and hateful.

Building on my previous example of theft, I believe that illegal immigration is a form of theft--that people who enter a place illegally and steel another person's identification for personal gain are thieves. That's not the sum total of all they are, but it's something they're doing and I won't tolerate it. I'll vote to pass laws and measures that discriminate against people who come here illegally and steel other people's identifications.

Is this not a reasonable position to take? To the open borders activist, it is not. He or she can no doubt explain why they disagree with my point of view. But instead of debating the issues, or leaving the outcome up to voters, many activists resort to name calling.

It's been said that the best way to win a fist fight is with a gun. Likewise, modern activists excel at using labels and charged rhetoric to trump mutual discourse. As I've stated before, the beauty of labels lies not only in their egregiously negative connotations but in their ease of use. Like a big stick, labels pack a punch and their use requires no training or skill. No facts, figures, logic or arguments are necessary to use a label like "intolerant." In fact, the lack of a substantive argument is the best possible time to use labels. It immediately puts your opponent on the defensive and changes the debate from issues to whether or not your opponent is, for example, an intolerant, bigoted hatemonger.

The recent passage of California Proposition 8 is an excellent example. Both sides had legitimate arguments to make, but the gay rights activists--especially after they lost--chose to hurl labels and engage in name calling. They singled out the Mormon church and quickly labeled Utah a "hate state." This, despite the fact that California Mormons made up just over 2% of the Prop 8 votes, and Utah citizens--Mormon or otherwise--can't and didn't vote in California.

Interestingly, the activists chose not to attack and demean California's African-American community, 70% of whose voters favored Prop 8. But attacking them would have backfired and earned the activists a label of their own: Racist. Instead, they went after a small, historically unpopular religion. Easy target, easy label, easy bypass of any arguments that might be mistaken as legitimate.

The irony here, of course, is that the gay rights activists are demanding tolerance from the Mormons (and others), but are completely unwilling to tolerate the Mormons (or anybody else) who disagree with them. The message seems to be, "Anybody who disagrees with us is a hater...and we hate haters!!!" You just can't make this stuff up.

The bottom line, as always, is that activists apply labels when it suits them. That is, when somebody else disagrees with them. If you agree with them, you're off the hook. Ridiculous? Yes. Juvenile? Yes. A complete double standard? Yes. But it's also effective. The activists will likely continue to use labels until we stop buying into their hypocrisy.

...on being mentally enslaved

This Christmas season, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire (phone: 360-902-4111) has allowed the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) to display in the capital rotunda a sign that reads:

"At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail.
There are no gods, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world.
Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

I don't know what the good governor believes, but she's not a stupid politician. She knows Washington, one of the most secular states in the union populated by a largely non-religious, progressive electorate. She also knows that it will be four years before that electorate gets another shot at her. And she's betting that even those voters disturbed by state sponsorship of anti-religious rhetoric will probably forget all about it in four years time.

I will not. I disagree with the Governor's decision and contend that, besides being in horrifically poor taste, the whole thing is illogical, undemocratic, and embarrassingly ironic in both its attempted promotion of equality and its call for reason. Allow me to offer five specific points in defense of this assertion.

First, regardless of what you believe about religion, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. It's in the name: CHRIST-mas. You may not believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God, or even that there is a God. You may not even believe that Jesus of Nazareth was an actual historic figure. The fact remains that Christmas is a celebration of His birthday. What's more, the United States government has made Christmas a federal holiday.

Defending the FFRF anti-religion display, co-founder Dan Barker claimed that, "Our members want equal time...to have a place at the table." But I would ask, what table? There is no table. This is not a debate. It's Jesus's birthday party, and if you're concerned about equal time for your bigoted views then pick one of the other 364 days of the year and throw your own party.

Second, the other displays in the capital rotunda are symbols, not written statements. The Christians have displayed the nativity, the Jews the Menorah. Even the secular "holiday tree" is symbolic of a season of good will and giving, regardless of belief or religious affiliation. Contrast this with the atheist group's verbose diatribe, which is a statement with an agenda rather than a seasonal symbol. It's clear to see, as we all learned from Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. And yet all displays are being treated as equals by Governor Gregoire. Maybe she didn't watch Sesame Street as a child.

Third, while the other displays are positive, seasonal professions of belief, the FFRF sign is a pointed and purposely negative attack. The other displays celebrate; the anti-religion display denigrates. When interviewed, Dan Barker admitted that their sign in the capital, "is an attack on religion." I can see the government wanting to be politically correct and fair, but allowing an attack ad parity with Christmas displays is not promoting equality. Ironically, it's just the opposite. Again, one of these things is not like the others.

Fourth, a display attacking religion is not the democratic way to separate church and state at Christmas time. Christmas is a federal holiday by popular consent of the citizenry of a representative democracy. If you don't like Christmas and don't want the U.S. government to give it federal holiday status, then sponsor legislation to have Christmas removed from the list of federal holidays. Get such legislation passed by elected representatives of the people and signed into law and your winter solstice worries are over. But if you can't get such legislation passed (and let's be honest, you can't) then you need to respect the will of the people. That's democracy.

Fifth and finally, the atheist's anti-religion display is, by its own verbiage and logic, ironic and a red-faced embarrassment to reason. How can one call for the prevalence of reason, then summarily rule out possibilities that have, at the very least, not been disproven? How can a reasonable person put forth "our natural world" as the sum total of all that is, when we know so very little about our natural world and the universe in which it resides? And when we are making theory-bending, knowledge-expanding discoveries about the nature of nature every day? How can any reasonable person decry religion as "superstition" today when not too many yesterdays ago things like the spherical shape of the earth, atoms, germs and much more were also decried as superstition? How indeed can any reasonable person lay mental enslavement at the door step of religion, then, with a straight face, put up a sign dictating what his fellow man should and should not believe? It is both high irony and base hypocrisy.

Carl Segan famously declared that, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." But even if it were, that's no excuse for bad manners at Christmas time. As I contemplate the anti-religion display in my state's capital rotunda this Christmas, I can only hope that it backfires; that others will see through the intolerance and opportunistic sniping of Dan Barker and his atheist activists; that they will see that Governor Gregoire's spineless attempt at equality has produced just the opposite and cast a negative light on both the state and the season; that they will be reminded of what Christmas really is and be ever more determined to keep Christ at the center of the holiday that commemorates his birth and bears his name.

And to Dan Barker, wherever you are, merry Christmas to you.