Barack Obama of Sherwood Forest

Have you ever driven through a nice neighborhood and thought I wonder what that house looks like on the inside? Would you take the time to stop and admire one of the beautiful homes on the hill if it had an open house sign? It’s human nature to have an insatiable curiosity for how others live. Would you stop to look in the windows of a particularly beautiful home if you thought no one was home? What if you knew no one was home? Comfort level begins to go down a bit doesn’t it. Now you’ve gone from harmless curiosity to prying into someone else’s life. So what if you waited until night so you could see the lighted interior while you stand under cover of darkness. You wouldn’t have to actually get out of your car, you could just do a slow drive-by to get a peek inside that beautiful house. Wow, that’s a nice home isn’t it. I wonder how they got it?

They may have inherited more money than you. They may have a rich circle of cronies that help guide their career. They may have won the lottery. They may have earned it. It doesn’t really matter though does it? They have it and you don’t. It’s not fair. It’s not! It’s not! It’s not! Why should they live there and not you. Why should they get all the breaks and not you. Some body should spread the wealth around.

I wonder how many people think you have it better than they do? Are they justified then to take your possessions? That’s not fair, I’ve got what I have by legitimate means and it’s mine. Until somebody spreads YOUR wealth around, it sounds like a reasonable idea.

If you live in America you are wealthy. Face the facts. You have it pretty good compared to the rest of the world. Poor Americans have cable T.V., Microwave ovens, a car and a whole host of conveniences that others only dream of. Perhaps the UN should spread our nation’s wealth around, what? They already do? Well they don’t do enough of it or there would be no people in the world poorer than those here in America. What we really need to do is outlaw possession and then we could all share equally in the bounty of this rich green earth. Imagine all the people…

What if we just confiscate possessions from people who have more than me and give it to the poor people here in America and around the world? That sounds good. I like that idea, I can feed the poor and it doesn’t cost me a dime. It probably sounds good if you get your political news from Saturday Night Live.

What if the people who live on the hill don’t want to part with their possessions? What if they are unpatriotic enough to want to keep what is theirs? Should they be thrown in jail? Isn’t that already the penalty for tax evasion? The force of government already takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Fact of life is that you can’t get blood from a turnip, it isn’t there. Wealthy people pay taxes because they have the means to do so. Poor people don’t because they don’t have any money for the government to take. If you ever do become wealthy, I can assure you that Barack Obama or some politician like him will want to take it from you.

The Government doesn’t make money, it doesn’t create jobs, it doesn’t grow our economy. If it gives you something it took it away from some one else first. Some one who made money, created jobs, and grew our economy.

The funny thing about Robin Hood, he was still a thief. He was a thug, hoodlum, gangster, who took from the “rich,” and gave to the poor. Rich and poor all depend on perspective. I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.

Two World Views

Teeming masses of people surround you, a thin slice of blue above you is the only thing in sight that is not the product of man. To be heard you have to clamor, to be noticed you have to do something out of the ordinary. Towering masses of steel testify to the power, intellect, and sublime sense for surreal beauty that reside in man. What is beyond us if only we apply our self to it?

The rich soft soil gives a little underfoot, immense trees vanish into the fog above you. All is quiet all is calm. This is an ancient place a timeless place, there is no denying how incredibly brief you are. This forest needs no company but welcomes you to share in it’s wonder. A tendril of mist brushes a wet gossamer kiss across your cheek as if to say, if you ever lose your perspective, come visit again.

One world, two vastly different experiences. If you’ve ever seen a visual representation of voting preference by precinct or county there is no mistaking that rural and urban voters have a different world view. Why is this? How could living among many others so radically alter your political perceptions and expectations?

Is it the relative anonymity which masks your eccentricities among the many? Possibly. Is it the desire to fit into a peer group? That really could influence persons in either sphere. Maybe that is trending toward the truth, could an urbanite seek to avoid individual responsibility by being part of a consensus rather than the sole proprietor of their own destiny? I think this is the root of modern liberalism.

In a rural setting an individual’s failures are easily understood and painfully difficult to blame on external influences there being so few people around to deflect blame to. Understanding this is helpful to retain control of one’s life. It breeds a discipline that is directly attributable to an observation of the natural environment. A creature that is unable to acquire sustenance from it’s environment perishes and it does so with out intervention or compassion from the natural world. Self sufficiency is the core of individual success in nature as well as being a founding tenant of American Conservatism.

In this ABC News story, John Stossel notes that rural conservatives are far more giving than their urban liberal counterparts. ABC Amazing that this story specifically cites San Francisco in this test of Urban (San Francisco) versus Rural (Sioux Falls) attitudes on giving, the same venue where Barack Obama made his infamous “Bitter Clingers,” comment. Rural people tend to view charitable actions as an individual responsibility while urban people view it as a function of government.

If you venture into the wilds of America you are a fool if you are not prepared for the worst. If you are able contact some one for help, it will take them a while to arrive. If you are mugged in the city, it’s not the availability of human assistance that is the problem, it’s finding someone who will recognize that you are in need and are willing to take time out of their day to see that you get it.

The goal of Liberalism is to divorce voters from the consequences of their actions or lack thereof. How can I say voter, and not individuals, you see individuals are of little consequence to liberals. Individual unviable tissue masses can not vote. The victim of their inconvenient appearance with in her womb should be able to rid herself of the burden because she, the potential mother, can vote.

Reading the left is important to understand the direction they would lead our nation.

“But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.” Read the rest of Camille Paglia’s article here, Salon

The most troubling aspect of this quote is not that Camille is a pro-proponent of abortion, it is the ultimate disregard for the individual. So as people allow the government to assume their responsibilities they also relinquish their value as individual persons. Liberalism discourages individual success in favor of shared responsibility and collective control.

In rural places people are naturally valued for their scarcity. In urban places an abundance of people makes it easier for them to be viewed as a society instead of many individuals. Whether you walk among Redwoods or nameless crowds, the most telling perspective is not of your surroundings but of your self. Is government responsible for your welfare or are you? If your neighbor is in need do you offer assistance or more government? Think about it.

Media Matters, More Than They Should.

I just watched a creation of Hollywood from the incredible imagination of one of my child hood story telling favorites. Stan Lee. Yes, I’m from generation X-Men. Iron man stirred me up, so does the media.

The big media complex is in the tank for Obama. They don’t think that a military hero and a hockey mom can get the job done. Forget their accomplishments. Belittle their intelligence, they didn’t walk the halls of the Ivy league. What could they possibly bring to the leadership of our nation. Our nation of uneducated boobs, teetering on the brink of economic collapse they want, no they need, the “One.” A maverick senator and a small town mayor do not fit into the media narrative, “The Era of Obama.”

I never walked the halls of the Ivy league either, and I don’t need a savior, I found mine on my knees not at the Presidential Debates. I’m one of the millions of people who make this nation work. I don’t do it here at the key board, I work with my hands. My hands hurt when the weather changes, tell tale signs of a dozen injuries and a thousand indignities that would never be suffered by a pair of Ivy League hands.

In my idiocy I’ve noticed a couple of things about the way that things work in the Media Machine. They scoff at people like me. They think that I need them to form an educated opinion of how things work in the world. What could I possibly know with out them. How could I possibly comprehend the horrors of the failure of the Bush presidency or the need for Obama to save us from ourselves.

I've noticed that the Media expresses a great interest in our military when they suffer defeat, when they can be cast as pathetic losers, when they don’t live up to their own high standards. Can you say Abu Ghraib? Of course you can, even with the foreign spelling and pronunciation. When they can be shown as victims of the Bush Doctrine. Belittle them, they deserve no better, if they had studied harder they could have gone to journalism school and made a real difference in the world. They deserve better.

Outside of Hollywood there are no super heroes. There are farm boys and city boys that stand on the frontiers of freedom even when it’s not politically expedient for the Media to cover their sacrifices. They were out there before Bush became President. They miss holidays at home, tender anniversaries, first steps and ballgames and sometimes, even when they’ve done every thing right, for the right reasons, they lose their lives. They are every day iron men, they don’t have a cool special effects driven heart that powers their super human strength. They only have strength of character.

They witness horrible things, they weep for their comrades, they accomplish a thousand small advances of humanity that are totaling up to success in Iraq, and they view the Media with well deserved trepidation that they will make them infamous. You think I’m exaggerating. Ilario Pantano. Look him up. Read in “Lone Survivor” how Navy Seals consider how the media will portray them even as they make life and death decisions in the hills of Afghanistan.

I digress, back to the issue at hand.

In the last 24 hours I’ve been exposed to a couple of glaring Media reports. “Hoovervilles are springing up across the nation.” “President Bush wants to bailout Wall Street.” In the latter report we hear the President’s voice saying that “People on main street are hurting and we need to take action.” It doesn’t quite fit the intro but, they think I am too stupid to grasp the incongruity of the sound bite. Every thing Bush has done, from how his global acts of pre-emption have turned the world against us, to his failed economic policies, are brought to us with a doleful solemnity due to such a disastrous President. Didn’t Pelosi say, “Failed economic policies,” on the floor of the House the other day? Funny how the left of center politicians and the objective media sound so much a like. The Media narrative of the Bush Administration, he has by his great bumbling ineptitude brought us to this precipice where the last thing we need is a gung-ho war hero to continue his unpopular policies.

I’m no Bush kool-aid drinker. He’s made mistakes, every president in our history has made mistakes, you know what I haven’t seen? Since 9/11/01 I haven’t seen my fellow Americans plunging 80 stories to escape a hell on earth brought about by holy warriors.

Perhaps it’s time to tune out the static, perhaps it’s time to ignore the pundits and pay attention to the candidates. What? President Bush isn’t on the ticket? Who would have guessed it, certainly not any one in the media.

We all deserve better.

Obama Is the Agent Orange of Change

Barack Obama talks about hope. Barack Obama talks about change. Don’t look to close though, he’s really hoping that you won’t see past his empty rhetoric. He’s a very gifted politician. He also wants you to believe he’s something other than what he is. Socialism doesn’t make money. Socialism doesn’t create jobs. Socialism is the warm fuzzy bear hug that kills economies and smothers dreams. Barack Obama is a socialist.

Socialism is a utopian dream. You can have everything and some one else will pay for it. Tax cuts for 95% of Americans. You can have socialism but it will cost your individual liberty and it will bankrupt our Nation.

Our government got involved in the mortgage system and that went splendidly didn’t it?

Our government run schools are the envy of the world right? Even if you are raising a family in the inner city you don’t have to worry that your child will not receive the very best education that the Government can offer. Socialism smothers innovation by dictating via the dollar. You want federal money for your school? You had bettered believe there are strings attached.

Enron? Fannie Mae? They have nothing on the accounting practices of Social Security. The greatest ponsi scheme in American History has yet to go bust. But it will. Aside from the fact that socialism always promises more to its adherents than it can deliver, it also quashes choice. Liberty is the first casualty of socialism. I’m pretty sure I could manage to do better with 13%of my income than to send it to Social Security. I was never asked if I wanted to participate in it. I am forced to. So are you.

Say you want some pizza. You walk out your front door and find a gathering of your neighbors on the side walk, you overhear them talking about a community pizza party. You were wanting some pizza any way and it’s for the community so you decide to go in with them for a block party. You look in your wallet and the smallest bill you’ve got is a twenty, it’s more than other people are putting in, but it’s for your community so you shrug and put it in. It takes 15 minutes to decide which Pizza Joint to order from. Another 15 minutes to argue over what type of pizzas to order. Since it’s a large order, it takes 45 minutes before the pizza will be ready. Some one volunteers to go get the seven pizzas. They take their time and by the time the pizzas get there you are so hungry that you barely care that the pizza is cold. People from two blocks over come to share in the free food. By the time you’ve finished your first piece there are only six empty boxes left. You feel cheated. At least you didn’t have to go to the pizza place yourself right?

Socialism always leaves people hanging. It pools your individual choice with the collective concerns of the community and you always lose. You want socialized health care? Vote Obama. He’ll deliver that change and your grand children will wonder what you were thinking when you elected him.

Imagine You Are a Congressman

Facing re-election in five weeks. You know that you should vote for the bill to help salvage the mortgage mess because Congress is complicit in it’s creation and it’s what’s best for the American people. You’ve been getting e-mail that is 20-1 against the bill. You are going to bite the bullet and attempt to explain to your constituents that you did what was right for the nation.

You are in the chamber in a cold sweat because you may very well be committing political suicide when the Speaker of the House and one of the proponents of the bill gets to the podium and says very dramatically. “Seven Hundred Billion Dollars,” she makes point after point against the bill and calls for your vote. She just re-affirmed you constituents concerns over the bill and now she wants your vote.

What do you do?

We know what 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans did. They voted, “No,” and the rest is history.
Leaving off the Partisan claims and Pelosi’s calls for bi-partisan co-operation after she made blatantly partisan remarks, step back and view her floor exercise from the perspective that she was trying to get House members to vote against public opinion and ask if any rational person could believe that her comments made it easier for any Congressman to vote “Aye.”

Truly stupefying.

Obama Debates in Platitudes

Obama limped his way though the debate railing about greed and his proclaiming appreciation for the middle class. Bush is bad, really bad, McCain agrees with Bush. I hate to inform Sen. Obama that President Bush is barred by Constitutional Amendment from seeking a third term. His portrayal of Sen. McCain as a, “Yes man,” to the administration couldn’t be farther from the truth.

One thing that I thought was telling was his insistence that higher taxes will help the economic recovery. Taxes never stimulate an economy. He said he will tax the “Rich,” and corporations. Unfortunately he mistakenly believes that Corporations pay taxes at all. Any business entity that is regulated or taxed adds these expenses to the cost of the service that they provide. Consumers pay for government regulation and taxation. It always has been this way and it always will be. “Corporate greed. Wall St. Vs. Main St.” These are sentiments that are easy to demagogue. Tax a business long enough and you can cause it to go bankrupt. How so? You inflate their operating cost to the point where they can no longer compete in the global economy. They will either go somewhere else or they will cease to be.

Interfere in the Housing Market as the Government has and you can create a crisis that necessitates more government interference in the free market. Obama is on the wrong side of the Credit Crunch. He is a man who believes in the absolute purity of Government intentions regardless of the consequences. Wall St. is evil and Government is the solution. Government is the problem, not the solution. It’s easy to say that all of our woes are the result of “Greed.” It’s not nearly so easy to say that the current crisis was created by, “Well-intentioned but thoroughly misguided mandates which required lenders to extend credit to people who had not earned it.”

These mandates injected huge amounts of capital into the housing market which created the housing bubble. When the housing bubble burst, blame the people who were forced to make bad loans, rather than the people who did the Forcing. Politics as usual, certainly not “Change,” as Barak Obama has promised.

I do not think that McCain out debated Obama, but his foreign policy credentials tower over Obama’s. When Obama was confronted with specifics he deferred to McCain. Obama looked silly. Not in a Gotcha sort of sense. It was in a very real sense that anytime he was confronted with real world events his way out was to agree with McCain.

I can easily see how that people who do not dig into issues for themselves could say that Obama won the debate. It’s easy to spout platitudes, it is difficult to tackle the tough issues. When Obama attempted to respond to McCain’s bracelet comment he looked petty and hollow, the sad thing is that during the entire election he has come across as just that. It got him a primary win so why change now. The media is complicit in this success. They play gotcha with McCain and mouth anything that Democrats say. The scrutiny applied to Palin would devastate Obama and they well know it. That’s why it is so conspicuously absent.

Where are the Adults at the NY Times?

NY Times Article

Paul Krugman asks, “Where are all the grown-ups?” I know that answer to that one. Not at the NY Times.
He rails against the need to fix this housing bust but he never mentions how we got here in the first place. He is either misinformed or he’s being intellectually dishonest.

The Carter Administration passed the Community Reinvestment Act. The Clinton Administration expanded it and the Housing bubble was created. Now the chickens have come home to roost. The Government created the problem and the Government must fix the problem. Adults can acknowledge that. Can Paul Krugman?

Democrats want 20% of the money to go to ACORN. Who spent two years as a community organizer at the behest of ACORN? Wasn’t that Sarah Palin? Republicans object to this and so do I. 700 billion should only be used purchase the sub prime loans that Government mandated the lenders to make. It’s only fair.

No wonder Obama wants to be as far away from this stinking mess as possible. Especially since he got a lot of money from Fannie Mae. Just thought I’d through that in there.