Big Media, Big Government, and Manufactured Crises

Guess what? I have fun stuff to blog; but while I get the photos ready, lets' get the first of two major "See, I told you so"s out of the way first.

Last month, in a post about the BP-Obama Oil Spill, I shared the following important quote by Rahm Emanuel, mastermind behind the deceptive but brilliant tactics that put Nancy Pelosi in place as Speaker of the House in 2006, and current Chief of Staff to President Barack Hussein Obama (the first racist president in my lifetime, and the first I know of to have declared open war on the United States):

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

This quote came before the BP-Obama Oil Spill, but was validated as the central tenet of liberal political tactics as Obama's response to the spill consisted of refusing cleanup help offered graciously by foreign countries, forbidding Bobby Jindal from building sand berms, refusing to utilize cleanup boats from other parts of the country because "they might be needed where they are", and delaying BP from testing and using the cap that finally stopped the leak as long as possible. Meanwhile reporters were denied access to "oil-soaked" beaches, while Obama made an appearance between golf trips to a Gulf Coast beach to pick up tar balls (there are always tar balls on those beaches; they are a natural occurrence, due to natural seepage of oil that has nothing to do with drilling, and the recent oil spill consisted of light crude unlikely to form these balls!).

This "crisis", however, shows that the liberal philosophy goes far beyond simply capitalizing on a crisis. Rahm may as well have said "If there's not a crisis, but an opportunity to manufacture a fake one, don't let the opportunity to fool those stupid plebes that voted for us go to waste!" This was the perfect opportunity to use a net of lies to continue Barack Hussein Obama's war against America's private sector, and fire a volley of unconstitutional decrees aimed at destroying the economy of the Gulf Coast.

The BP-Obama Oil Spill was universally throughout the mainstream media and Big Government billed as the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States. The Obama Regime felt secure in making such outrageous claims because Big Media is always on the side of Big Government. In fact, Rush Limbaugh has coined a term far more descriptive of Big Media: Partisan Political Operatives.

There were several voices, either completely ignored by Partisan Political Operatives or dismissed as "anti-environment" or "crazy" or "invested in Big Oil", etc., who insisted that this "environmental crises" was anything but. I summarized it last month, a couple weeks before the leak was stopped:

"The Ixtoc I oil spill, about the same size as the BP-Obama spill and also in the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in 1979, and almost no-one remembers it today. This spill is bad, but it will be little more than a sentence or two in our children's history books. Even with the higher estimates of about 130 million gallons of leaked oil, the Mississippi River pours that much new water into the Gulf every 38 seconds. The Gulf is huge. Even without drilling, millions of gallons of oil naturally seep into the ocean daily, and the seawater destroys it. This is far more concentrated, but even with no action whatsoever on our part, in a couple decades it would be cleaned up naturally. The surface of the Gulf is 615,000 square miles, and the volume is 660,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 660 quadrillion gallons, more than any mind can conceive. This spill is tiny, and the Earth isn't even noticing it."

The current evidence from the Gulf of Mexico seems to show that even that was an understatement! Just days after the leak was finally stopped (by BP, not the government!), there are already very few signs that anything ever happened out there. It's such a drastic contrast that even the Partisan Political Operatives who pretend to report news can't ignore it. All over Big Media, they're all scratching their heads, saying "Where is the oil?", and are desperate to find any evidence they can of environmental harm, but it's just not there! The current media template is that "the oil seems to have rapidly evaporated and been broken down by bacteria, but there has to be some sort of long-term damage, and we need to wait to resume drilling until we figure out what it is." If the media had been doing the job they claim to do, reporting news rather than pushing the political agenda of the Obama Regime, they would have been saying all along that "once this is capped, nature will take care of it far better than we can, and in a few months all will be back to normal". Instead, it's a shock and a surprise!

Here it is from the New York Times, "On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay":

"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

"The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon. The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery."

"[...] understanding the effects of the spill on the shorelines that were hit, including Louisiana’s coastal marshes, is expected to occupy scientists for years."

"The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil."

You get the idea. This was known before the BP-Obama Oil Spill, so why were those voicing these opinions treated as fringe kooks? Because that opinion wouldn't hurt Big Oil the way the Obama Regime and his Partisan Political Operatives wanted. Now, the truth is inescapable, so suddenly these people have a voice, but "don't be too hasty saying this is done, 'cause there has to be a problem and we're going to investigate until we find one or make one up!"

From the Washington Post, "Majority of spilled oil in Gulf of Mexico unaccounted for in government data":

That would leave slightly less than 4 million barrels missing.

The best-case scenario is that much of this amount has been eaten by the gulf's natural stock of oil-munching microbes. Several scientists have said they are concerned that these microbes could cause their own problems, depleting the oxygen that gulf creatures need in the water.

But Wednesday, NOAA's Lubchenco said oxygen-free dead zones have not been detected so far. And Ed Overton, a professor at LSU, said he believed the microbial process, supercharged by summer heat, was helping. "We have made a gigantic biological treatment pond in the gulf," Overton said. Because of its work, he said, "we're well, well over the hump. I would say that the acute damage -- we've seen it, it's [already] been done. And that the environment is in the recovery stage."

Notice how they set the tone right from the beginning, suggesting that this is a mystery, and not obvious. The oil is "missing", "unaccounted for", not broken down by bacteria and taken care of by nature, even though the quotes shared say that's what happened. Don't let facts and evidence get in the way of the message!

Another Washington Post article, "Oil in gulf is degrading, becoming harder to find, NOAA head says", says this:

"The light crude oil is biodegrading quickly," NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said during the response team daily briefing. "We know that a significant amount of the oil has dispersed and been biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria."

Lubchenco said, however, that both the near- and long-term environmental effects of the release of several million barrels of oil remain serious and to some extent unpredictable.

"The sheer volume of oil that's out there has to mean there are some pretty significant impacts," she said. "What we have yet to determine is the full impact the oil will have not just on the shoreline, not just on wildlife, but beneath the surface."

But much of the oil appears to have been broken down into tiny, microscopic particles that are being consumed by bacteria. Little or none of the oil is on seafloor, she said, but is instead floating in the gulf waters.

The head of the NOAA is herself a Partisan Political Operative (that's how you get that job), and so of course is a good source for Big Media, saying here "yeah, looks like the seawater is taking care of it, but... there has to be significant impact, and we're going to look 'till we find it!"

It's not a surprise. Those of us with perspective of history and previous similar events and a dose of common sense knew this was a tiny blip in the big picture, and nothing remotely resembling an environmental crisis. The real crisis is the war being waged on American prosperity by the very man whose responsibility it is to represent the country he despises. Barack Hussein Obama, you and your big ears may have won this battle, but the war will be decided November 2010, and the Last Battle for America will be fought November 2012 (I'm starting to think the Mayans were right, and the world will end in 2012, but it won't be with tidal waves and solar flares, but with the last free country conquered by socialist dictators!).

Meanwhile, here's something ironic: It seems ethanol production isn't so good for the environment, but since ethanol is supported by the Regime and the Partisan Political Operatives, stories like this are rare: From the San Francisco Chronicle, "Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production".

(I thought of a clever t-shirt/bumper sticker: "Ethanol: Goes in your mouth, not in your car!")

Independence Day 2010

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

If there is a single sentence that embodies the essence of the United States of America, it is this one, near the beginning of the Declaration of Independence more than 200 years ago. It is the statement on which our nation was founded. The Declaration goes on to say that the sole purpose of government is to protect these rights. These rights are given to us not by any man or group of man, not by any government or institution; it is made quite clear in our founding document that these unalienable rights are given to us by God. It is made clearer in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution that the government's role is not to grant rights, but to protect them; and that the purpose of our founding documents were to protect the people against abuses of power by government:

The Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

It cannot be made clearer that government is to be limited. A bloody war was fought to throw off the chains of an oppressive government, and it would all be a waste if we were to become as oppressive ourselves as that government so many sacrificed their lives to free ourselves from.

Sadly, we are doing just that. As we prepare to celebrate our independence from the British Empire, our Congress is preparing to confirm to the Supreme Court Barack Hussein Obama's nominee, Elena Kagan. When asked her opinion of "natural rights" not specifically stated in the Constitution, Elena Kagan responded, "To be honest with you, I don't have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution." In other words, if it's not stated in the Constitution, it's not a right of the people.

But this is the opposite of what the Constitution actually says! Many states refused to ratify the Constitution without the inclusion of a Bill of Rights to specifically limit the government from taking powers, concerned that if the Constitution didn't say the people had a certain right, the government may someday assume it wasn't a right at all. Others countered that if the Constitution did contain mentions of specific rights, that the government might someday assume that those not specifically mentioned were up for grabs. We'll never know what course our history would have taken without the Bill of Rights, but it is clear now that those who argued against the inclusion of a Bill of Rights were justified in their fears.

The one and only purpose of the Supreme Court is to be sure that the Constitution is upheld. Yet we have a Supreme Court who recently only upheld the Second Amendment (right to bear arms) by a margin of a single vote when called on to judge the Constitutionality of an illegal ban on guns in Chicago; and now we are about to confirm a Justice who refuses to acknowledge the specific wording of the Declaration of Independence and the Ninth and Tenth amendments.

This Independence Day, it is time to look back not just to the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence. I'd like to quote Abraham Lincoln in a speech given in Peoria, Illinois on October 16, 1854:

"Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government." [...] Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. [...] Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. [...] If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving."

Read it again. Lincoln's thoughts at the time were in regards to abolishing slavery, but it is every bit as relevant today. In exchange for government benefits we have bit by bit surrendered freedoms to those whose purpose is to protect those freedoms, and have come to a tipping point at which we may soon lose them all or fight to save them. To quote Tom Waits, "There's always free cheddar in a mousetrap; it's a deal, it's a deal!"

Read Lincoln's words again:

"Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. [...] If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving."

In short, my point is this: Nathan's makes delicious hot dogs, but I don't like sauerkraut.

(click for full-size)

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

It's time to name this disaster for what it is. Calling it the BP Oil Spill is not entirely accurate. From now on I am calling it the BP-Obama Oil Spill; BP because that's whose rig it was, and Obama because that's who has assumed responsibility for control of the aftermath and is profiting most from this crisis. Wait, profiting? How dare I make such a claim! Oh, but it's not just me; listen to the man who is the brains behind the Obama Regime in his own words (the relevant quote is in the first twelve seconds of video, but the whole clip is interesting):

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

These words were spoken long before the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico, but they are revealing of the mindset of not just the Obama regime, but of liberals in general. Crisis = Opportunity. To Barack Hussein Obama, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is not a crisis, but an opportunity to do something he was not able to do before, which is to cut "Big Oil" down to size, and grab power far ahead of schedule. This follows a pattern with this regime: Housing Crisis = opportunity to seize and control banks and loan agencies; GM Bankruptcy = opportunity to gain control over a major car company; Health Care Crisis = opportunity to seize massive, near complete control over private sector insurance, hospitals, and many aspects of the way we live our personal lives right down to what we eat and whether our children are breast-fed, as well as an opportunity for massive tax increases.

The pattern boils down to this: Any crisis is an opportunity to increase the dependence of the people on the government. It is a self-sustaining pattern, as well. The more people depend on their government for help, the more often they will look to their government to bail them out. This is what I meant a year and a half ago when I wrote, as it was announced that Barack Hussein Obama had won the election, that we had officially voted ourselves a totalitarian socialist government. What frightens me is how quickly Obama is dismantling our economy and subverting the rule of law. In fact, it is amazing that I am frightened at all! I have never before had to say that I am afraid of my government, but now I am.

Back to the BP-Obama Oil Spill. How do I justify my statement that Obama is profiting from this? Just look at his (in)action. It was more than a month before he actually began to do anything. Meanwhile, though the CEO of BP gets raked over the coals for daring to participate in a yacht race during this crisis, Obama gets a pass for spending so much of his time golfing or bowling. He was already working on pushing through cap and trade legislation aimed at seizing control of the energy sector when this oil spill gave him the golden opportunity to paint Big Oil as a very visible villain and put this power grab on the fast track. Ever tar ball, every picture of an oil-soaked pelican, every minute of live coverage of oil gushing from the sea floor is another victory for Obama at the expense of the American people.

But it hasn't been complete inaction. To his credit, Obama has acted on this spill. What has he done? First off, he refused aid from other countries, offered as pure good will, to clean up the spill. It is estimated that cleanup using US ships alone will take nine months, as opposed to four months if aid from thirteen countries that offered it had been accepted. Why did he do this? Because the paperwork from the countries offering aid wasn't in compliance with the Jones Act, which was passed in 1920 to protect union jobs from being outsourced to other countries. If Obama cared about the solution, rather than the bad PR for Big Oil the longer this thing lasts, the Jones Act would never have come up.

The rest of Obama's time has been largely spent propping up BP as a villain. Yes, rather than solve the problem, the Obama regime prefers to point fingers. It's bad enough when the president of our country can fire a CEO of an American company, but now Obama has brought his Chicago mobster political tactics against a foreign company. Joe Barton was absolutely right to call Obama's treatment of BP as a "shakedown". Let's hear more of Rahm Emanuel's words:

"BP originally was going to do one relief well. We forced them to do a second relief well. They weren't going to do that. BP originally had a plan on -- on capturing, uh, a certain amount of oil. We forced that, as you know, today's reports they're up to 25,000. They originally weren't thinking about $20 billion and they originally weren't thinking about an escrow account and forcing them to do that. There are certain things that they had to be pushed -- not certain things, a lot of things that they had to be pushed -- to do."

That's right, our government "forced" BP to do what they have done. BP is an oil company. They know about oil. Rahm Emanuel and Barack Hussein Obama are politicians. They know nothing about oil. It's hard to understand, but some people actually believe that Big Oil is evil, that they care for nothing but profits. Even if that were true, it is in the best interest of BP's financial bottom line to have this crisis over and done with as soon as possible. They were already above the obligatory amount paid to victims of the disaster, with more money to come, and were already working to drill the single necessary relief well. No one knows exactly what words were said in their meeting with Mobster Obama, but it was enough to extort an unprecedented $20 billion. Make no mistake, this money was not needed for any relief effort; this money was needed to punish BP. This was not due process of law, this was extortion. Meanwhile, I don't see any fuel tax money going to pay for this, and I don't see Obama offering the one million in campaign donations from BP to clean this up. Thank goodness for "obscene" oil profits, or there would be no money to clean up the spill!

More recently Obama's regime has taken action to stop Louisiana from building berms to protect their coasts from oil, because of a dispute over where they were dredging for sand! So, you can't clean up the environment, because that's... bad for the environment.

Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, has pulled a page from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's playbook, by requesting a comprehensive report from scientists, and adding at the last minute a recommendation that drilling be halted for six months in the Gulf. This is after the scientists had signed the report! Naturally, these scientists are quite upset, and have spoken out against the moratorium on drilling as short-sighted, and a bad idea.

But if drilling caused this disaster in the first place, how can a moratorium be bad? First, it will completely destroy the Gulf Coast economy, which is dependent on petroleum. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Second, the equipment will go somewhere else to drill. It won't just sit there or in a dock, wasted! These rigs will go to South America or elsewhere, and drill wells for Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile, Americans will still need oil, so we'll have to import it! Remember Exxon-Valdez? Tankers are a spill threat, too, and we'll see more of them if we don't drill our own oil. In six months, the moratorium would be lifted, but the equipment would already be engaged elsewhere. Fortunately, we have a hero, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who is willing to declare the moratorium beyond the scope of the executive branch, and a bad idea. Thank you, Judge Feldman! Don't back down!

There is so much more to say, but this post is already running long, so one more thing to close. We need to put this spill in perspective. Yes, it is bad. It is a disaster. There is nothing good about millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the gulf, and causing damage to the environment, not to mention the economic loss even before Obama capitalizes on this crisis. But we need the proper perspective so we don't panic and handle this poorly. As bad as this spill is, it isn't that bad. It's easy to show pictures of oil-soaked birds and real-time feed of the spill at its source, but it isn't that bad. Here's what I mean:

The Ixtoc I oil spill, about the same size as the BP-Obama spill and also in the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in 1979, and almost no-one remembers it today. This spill is bad, but it will be little more than a sentence or two in our children's history books. Even with the higher estimates of about 130 million gallons of leaked oil, the Mississippi River pours that much new water into the Gulf every 38 seconds. The Gulf is huge. Even without drilling, millions of gallons of oil naturally seep into the ocean daily, and the seawater destroys it. This is far more concentrated, but even with no action whatsoever on our part, in a couple decades it would be cleaned up naturally. The surface of the Gulf is 615,000 square miles, and the volume is 660,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 660 quadrillion gallons, more than any mind can conceive. This spill is tiny, and the Earth isn't even noticing it.

Bottom line, this is nothing to panic over. It is bad, but it's not that bad. Not worth hasty actions that will have a lasting impact on the U.S. economy without any measurable environmental benefit. Many people are calling Obama incompetent. I wish that were the case. Obama is successfully carrying out his real agenda, the strategic dismantling of the United States so it can be rebuilt in His Image. Obama's actions (and inactions) are purely evil. BP is not the villain. Our own government is.

Meanwhile, this man's idea to stop the leak by meditating the well closed is a far more realistic and effective idea than any action taken by our government.

Remember the Obama Regime's philosophy: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

100th Post

Guess what? As of this posting, I have written in my blog 100 times. Funny how this comes in the middle of me hardly posting anything at all... I don't really have any special or amazing Earthshaking topic to write about. I figured instead, considering that my audience of loyal followers has drastically increased since I started blogging last year (increased by several hundred percent if you look at it one way, increased from one to three or four if you look at it another way), I will highlight a few of my favorite posts over the last year and a half. Since every single post is brilliant and worth re-reading multiple times, I will have to be very choosy to select only a few to highlight.

So where do I begin? Google Analytics says that my extra-important post about Velociraptor Awareness Day has recently surpassed my post about the threat imposed on mankind by Polar Bears as my most visited post. Both are masterpieces of online journalism if I may say so myself. Also popular are my report on the Apocalyptica concert my wife and I attended, and the one about the health benefits of rhinotillexomania (eating boogers), even though I only mention eating boogers at the end of the post. In fact, this one gets Googled quite a bit, and it's funny to see how many ways people search for it. I bet most of those people leave as soon as they see I start by talking about the Olympics and Hiroshima.

But what are my favorite posts? Other than all of them, here is a top ten best ever posts in my blog, chosen by me, in reverse chronological order:

Pogonology (8/5/2009): Probably my most (as in only) anticipated blog post ever. Photos of my beard from a couple years ago, photos of my extremely huge five-month beard from this year, and interesting photos of me taking it off in stages. My favorite is the Ambrose Burnside look. As a bonus, more pictures of beards I admire than anyone ever asked for!

Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance (5/4/2009): This one mostly makes this list because of how proud I am that I came up with such a clever title for the post, meshing together the names of all four Die Hard movies. I justify putting it in this list because it's an excellent (I say) review of four very good movies.

Velociraptor Awareness Day (4/18/2009): This was just way too fun, and it's fun to see people Google image searching "velociraptor" and ending up here, because I did that search to find those images and put the best ones in this post. I still recommend doing an assessment of your Velociraptor attack preparedness, and joining the Velociraptor Awareness Coalition (VAC) on Facebook. You can never be too prepared.

Apocalyptica (10/26/2008): This is by far the coolest concert I've ever been to, not that I've been to a whole lot of this type of concert. These guys are one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and put on an awesome show, running around on stage with electric cellos, head banging with long hair to speed metal music played on cello. I never thought I could temporarily lose some of my hearing because of cellos, but it's possible. If you don't know these guys, watch some of the YouTube videos in the post (some may be taken off YouTube by now, who knows), and if you do know them, you will still enjoy watching.

Polar Bears: Number One Threat to America! (8/23/2008): This is one of my pet peeve topics, Global Warming. It is one of the four main ways socialists are trying to take over America (the other ways are through government health care, the minimum wage, and the judicial system, though I'm sure there are more ways as well). The science has been pushed aside and drowned in politics, and the issue has been obfuscated to death. It is not, and never has been, about saving the Earth (which does not need saving and we couldn't if we needed to), but about power and control through the redistribution of wealth, and this power is gained by spreading fear and misinformation. This post is still relevant a year later, and will be for years to come, and it was also fun to write. This is a very important issue for every American to be educated on. I like all my political posts, but I try to space them out so this doesn't turn into a purely political blog, and I decided only to put a couple of those posts in my top ten list.

Peace through Superior Firepower (8/6/2008): Another important issue that people tend to be ignorant of. People like to say how horrible it was that we nuked Japan, not knowing how many millions of innocent lives were saved by ending that war as soon as possible with the complete unconditional surrender of Japan being the only viable option. Negotiation only works when you have something to back up your words. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or, as the villain in National Treasure says (roughly paraphrased), "the thing about bluffing is that sometimes you have to be holding all the cards." Saddam Hussein made a bad move bluffing to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when he didn't... it led to the toppling of his evil government and his death (better late than never). The world can only be stable if America is holding all the cards, i.e. has all the weapons.

Good Books and Bad Books (8/2/2008): Another great controversial post, about a topic I absolutely hate but can't get away from: Twilight (I like to pronounce it twih-ligt, like Dwigt). I really, really hate these books. They're not just annoying, they are detrimental to society. I am not happy about the fact that all four books are in my house on my bookshelf, but there's nothing I can do about it. I did, believe it or not, watch the movie, but I haven't reviewed it yet. It wasn't so bad, but is still not the amazing better-than-Harry-Potter thing that everyone says it is (that's what brought it to my attention, is that unforgivable comparison). I'm sure I'll have to see New Moon, but at least I don't have to read any more of the books. I may write more on this in the near future, since I have comments on the movie that I think are interesting and relevant to movie critiquing in general. Meanwhile, I will continue to boycott these books (not ban them, I am against banning these things on principle).

Fun with Global Warming (6/29/2008): This isn't the heavy political post you might think it is, though there's a bit of important social commentary that goes along with it. This is actually a humor post. It's a bunch of unintentionally funny statements from college students who, frighteningly enough, will be future elementary school teachers. This is worth a read if you want a good laugh. I actually have a new batch of these coming in the near future. I think so, anyway...

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart? (6/18/2009) and follow-up (6/19/2008): Another one of my pet peeve topics, the blaming of big, successful corporations for all of America's problems rather than giving them the credit they deserve for making our economy go. I hate hearing good companies made into scapegoats. Wal-Mart, Halliburton, McDonald's, every big oil company ever, etc. Without these companies our economy would grind to a halt, but successes like these threaten the dependence of us common folk on Big Government, the true source of all our problems.

Iceland (5/22/2008), More Iceland (6/19/2008), and More Photos of Iceland (10/11/2008): I am obsessed with Iceland. I will visit there someday. I love the music, I love the geology, and I love the scenery. Björk, Emilíana Torrini, Sigur Rós, múm, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds are all from there, just to name a few amazing musicians. These are quick reads, because all you really have to do is look at the pictures. You won't regret it. I'll probably find more photos of Iceland in the future.

So what is in store for this blog in the near future? Will I succeed in reviving it from its moribund state? I think so. I have many old posts to follow up on with new exciting things to say, and I have several dozen movies I want to talk about. I've also been very frustrated with the prospect of writing a political post, since things are moving along so fast and the destruction of this country by the most America-hating President we've ever had (i.e. the first one, who still hasn't proven he's even a citizen of the country he is governing) is just depressing to think about. I don't know where to start! This health care fight is the most important war our country has ever fought, and we are fighting our own President. We really may become the American Socialist Republic very soon unless Obama's inevitable overreaching happens soon enough. Enough of that... I'll save it for a future post.

Don't worry, if all goes well this blog will be alive and well very soon!

Independence Day 2009

Well, it's been a month since I've posted here, and lots has happened, but I've been way too busy to post about it. I've had a post half-written about beards for a few weeks now, but no time to finish it. There's more to say about my internship, and pictures of Pennsylvania to post, several movies and some books to review, lots of political goings-on I want to opine about, and many general updates to... update. Also, I'm nearly done with field camp, and that means I have several hundred photos to go through so I can post the best ones here. I am so super behind! This will all come soon. This post is mostly to say it's coming soon, and to say something quick about one of my favorite holidays.

I've decided Independence Day is much more fun when your country isn't in the process of being taken over by a tyrant. I'm looking forward to a new Independence Day, when America wakes up and realizes that when the President can fire the CEO of a major corporation just because, we are not living in a free country any more. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government our founding fathers had managed to set up, his reply was "A Republic, if you can keep it." We kept it for over 200 years, but we are selling it now for corporate bailouts, "free" health care, and to shrink our carbon footprint to solve a problem that doesn't exist. While much of Europe is shifting toward more conservative government, America is quickly becoming one of the most socialist nations in the world. Independence Day is much more enjoyable when you don't have to be afraid of your government, or when the head of your government at least has a single shred of pride in his own country instead of aggressively touring the world and apologizing for our greatness. It makes me sick.

On a brighter note, while I couldn't afford any fireworks myself on account of all my money is gone because of cars trouble, Kate and I managed to meet up with some old friends and watch the fireworks show in Idaho Falls this year, which is so much better than the show in Rexburg. That was fun. Also, the Mustangs flew overhead during Rexburg's lame parade, so I got to see them again.

Okay, now back to packing for field camp. Two weeks left!

Compulsive Commenter

Okay, so my last three posts in a row have had titles along the lines of "Something Day". Time to break that streak! This has been an interesting past couple days for me. Today, within minutes of coming to work I was in a political debate with both of my coworkers (my usual coworker, Dawn, and a trainee, Derek). Mainly it was over whether Obama's plans were good for the economy, the merits of Obama as president, and the economy in general. What I found most interesting was the completely pessimistic attitude of one of my coworkers, who claimed he had no more faith in humanity, and that whoever was president it can only go badly. If everyone was pessimistic, things would only go badly! That is why the economy suffered as little as it did after 9/11, because our country remained optimistic under Bush's leadership, and his encouragement to continue spending money kept us afloat. Note that individuals spending real money is quite different from the Obama plan of the government spending money that doesn't exist, and is the true economic stimulus.

A face-to-face, rapid-fire vocal debate is quite the adrenaline rush, and I hadn't had a good one in a long time! It's good to keep the wits sharp, sparring with someone with opposing views, much more satisfying than the typical conversation with a fellow Republican, which can quickly devolve into "Aren't Democrats dumb?" "Yeah, Democrats suck!" It doesn't always go that way, but it can in any conversation on a hot topic with a like-minded person. This is part of why I so much enjoyed the year I worked at Barnes & Noble, which is hostile territory for conservatives. I loved the job and my coworkers, got along great with them, and had many interesting, friendly debates. At one point, tired of them blaming everything bad on George W. Bush, I began to take it a step further with comments such as "Damn that George Bush, icing up the roads like that! It took me forever to get to work because of George Bush!" Occasionally they would catch themselves almost agreeing with me reflexively, which was always fun.

Yesterday, upon arriving at work, I logged into Facebook and immediately found myself in three political debates all along the same topic. No good debates in many months, and suddenly four in two days! It occurred to me that the thousands (probably closer to five or six) of people who follow my blog regularly, eagerly awaiting the next brilliant post, are probably dying to know the outcome of these debates, and are also wondering exactly how good are my debating skills. Well, I'm no professional at it, but I can hold my own, thanks to the sage tutelage of Professor Rush Limbaugh of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, at which I have been a student for many, many years. More than half my life, in fact! There are no graduates, no degrees, just continuous learning of conservative principles from the Master of Democracy.

So how well have I learned from Rush? It occurred to me that the thousands of people (closer to five or six) who regularly read my blog, every day eagerly awaiting the next brilliant post, must be dying to know how my Facebook debates went. So, because I've been so flooded with requests (I requested of myself that I do this), I am posting the most interesting and involved of these debates yesterday, which began when I commented on my friend Beth's status, and one of her liberal friends (with whom I debated) commented back. I have made no edits beyond formatting for the blog, a minor censor of one of my posts to clean up the language slightly for some of my more sensitive readers, and I have removed most of the names. My full name remains, and Beth's first name, but all other commenters are referred to only by their first initial. I think I caught it all. You will see that I am a compulsive commenter; I can't keep my comments to myself. I love leaving feedback almost as much as I love receiving it. It feeds my ego! I say several times in the debate that it is my last comment, then I leave a dozen more. So read away, and I will leave it to you to judge the merits of the arguments on either side, and whether I managed to hold ground in the debate or not.

Enjoy:

Beth is sickened by liberals
Yesterday at 12:02am · Comment · Unlike
You and P like this.

L: I agree

Dan Little: I'm sickened by the liberals in power, and baffled and saddened by the well-intentioned but misled liberals who vote for them.

D: That's alright. We're sickened by conservatives. Personally, I'm sickened by this, "us against them" mentality, with the perpetual disregard for the differences within each party, and the constant blindness by everyone to how bad things actually are for most families just because they haven't personally experienced it.

Dan Little: Haha, read my comment more carefully, D, you'd be surprised how many conservatives agree it isn't "us against them". Many of my closest friends are liberal, and they don't sicken me, I feel they are misguided but well-intentioned and I hope they come around at some point. It is the Nancy Pelosis, Tom Daschles, Harry Reids, Barney Franks, Ted Kennedys, Hillary Clintons and Barack Obamas of the world that truly sicken me. I honestly believe all those names I mentioned are truly evil people. Oh, and John McCain pretty much sickens me as well.

D: See, I disagree strongly. I think you're the misguided one. I admire Obama in particular because of his community service work. He's actually been on the streets and has seen how people are living. Or you could take the entire RNC, who laughed and insulted him over his community work. You've obviously never had to listen to your children crying because you couldn't feed them, or worried about losing your house because you can't make your rent. No, the current "conservative" movement is all about greed and selfishness. THAT is evil.

P: They're going to hell and we're not. That's all that matters.

Dan Little: No children yet, but I grew up in poverty. Look at our senators, the rich, greedy ones are nearly all Democrats. I have a lot of compassion for the poor, and even though until recent months I have worried every single month that I can't pay my rent, I have never failed to give 10% of all I earn to my church, whose judgement in assisting the poor I trust far more than the government's pork spending. Governments are wasteful, and are there to get in a man's way, not to help. Charitable spending is always higher in times with lower taxes, as was proven in the 80s, the so-called "Decade of Greed". I don't want to depend on government, live my life the way they tell me, just for a pitiful handout at the expense of my freedom and independence.

D: Frankly, there are rich greedy bastards on both sides. To say they're mainly in one party is just not true. Churches are just as bad as any government when they have enough power. Jus look to the middle ages, or any modern theocracy to see that. Even then, I disagree that a church is the best place for charity. How many mouths could the LDS church have fed with the money they spent fighting gay marriage? How many roofs could they have built for the homeless? Regardless of your feelings on that subject, there are about a thousand better things they could have spent it on. No one is saying that you need to give up freedoms; taxes are specifically for using to help the common good. Don't forget that a government is just an organization created for the purpose of helping as many people as it can, be it through traditional charity, defence or public works. It isn't just there to control and be reviled.

P: Wow D, you're awful judgemental about how LDS has been spending their charity money when what we should be focusing on is the wasteful spending of the United States government.

Dan Little: You're misunderstanding me again. It is of those in power that I accuse liberals of being greedier, not us common folk. Remember, liberals vote every time for more control over your money and mine, with the arrogant attitude that they're smarter than you and I at spending it. Even if they are, it isn't their right. Conservatives (I'm tired of Democrat vs. Republican because so few Republicans are conservatives anymore) want less control over our money, leaving it more in our hands. Don't forget that before I accused liberals in power of being greedier, you made the assumption that since I am a Republican I never experienced poverty. The difference is that a liberal looks to government to save him from poverty while a conservative looks to himself and his network of friends and family. Guess which one has his best interests in mind? If not for high taxes, not only would my rent in every case have been less, but I would have had more cash in hand to pay it. Taxes hurt everyone.

Dan Little: http://darkcenteroftheuniverseblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/tax-day.html

D: I simply chose that as an example because it was a very recent spending spree by a church that I can think of. Others have examples too, I'm sure. I agree that the government should cut spending, but this was a counter argument to the idea that churches are a better option than government.

Dan Little: Red Herring.

First you assumed that since I am a Republican I have never experienced poverty.

D: Incorrect. My assumption was that you knew Beth through work and had done the standard parents -> college -> decent job thing.

Dan Little: Wrong either way. I am happy for Beth that she is doing so well financially, and though I am struggling, I don't resent her affluence. I don't feel that because she chose to work very hard at a career that pays well the government needs to decide she makes more than she needs and I make less than I need and therefore her money after a certain point goes to me. That would only make her work less hard, meaning less "excess" money for me, and make me not need to try so hard since my basic necessities are paid for by someone who has more. You cannot tax the productive part of the economy, reward the unproductive part, and expect anyone to benefit.

I'm working on the parent -> college -> decent job thing.

If you really want to know what I think, I'm tired, so read that link, feel free to let me have it, and watch this guy say what I'd like to the British PM what I'd like to say to Obama:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3axC6pmF4cY

D: I apologize for the incorrect assumption. But for many people it still stands. They honestly don't know what it's like to have no recourse, nothing to fall back on. I grew up in a VERY small rural MO town, and I know plenty of Republicans barely scraping by. And it saddens me to see them vote to give millionaires tax breaks while screaming about liberals wanting to give them healthcare.

D: The problem is, those wealthy people aren't "productive." most of them fell into there jobs or wealth, and with the exception of a few, they're using that money to buy polititions to keep everyone else down while writing themselves loopholes. Heavy taxes on the poor hurt us, but no taxes hurt us more.

Saw the video, honestly didn't see a big deal of it.

Dan Little: I agree, it is sad. But you can't give a tax break to a poor man who doesn't pay them, you can only give it to those who actually pay taxes, and the rich pay more than their fair share. I say this much better in the link I posted, but most rich people aren't Scrooges. They employ people, and when you tax them, they pass it on to the consumer and employee, by raising prices, lowering wages, and hiring fewer. Taxes on the rich hurt the poor more than the rich. It seems counter-intuitive at first, and I honestly respect those of you who see the poor and want to help them; I just think you are looking to the wrong source.

Most of the rich are not Kennedys, who fall into their wealth, and most who do don't manage it well and lose it. Most work from "some", a few from "none" to achieve true affluence. Even if that wasn't the case, it is not the government's right to mandate generosity.

D: The problem with trickle down economics is that the rich don't do those things. They hoard the money instead. I think that education, hralthcare, and public works do infinitely more for helping people. You're making the assumption that the people getting the help just don't want to be productive. I was a teenage father trying to support my family. If I hadn't gotten help through food stamps and college grants and loans, I'd still be poor and barely scraping by. Because of that help, NOT because of tax breaks, I can make good money now, donate to charities, and can volunteer my time.

Dan Little: If you honestly think that the rich hoard the money, there is nothing I can do here. I have never been employed by a poor person. Even if the rich hoard their money, the government has no right to tell them not to. It is not the government's money.

D: They do. That's why the first Bush got elected by arguing against Reaganomics. I suspect we'll never see eye to eye on this. You're not just conservative; you're an anarchist. Taxes are a necessary evil (think funding EMS for example), and that necessitates taking funding.

Dan Little: Haha, I'm no anarchist.... "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." - Thomas Paine
I am a Reagan conservative. Believe it or not, the reason Bush's approval ended so low was that he was NOT a conservative, and had by the end alienated conservatives such as myself, who were only glad he was President because it meant Kerry and Gore weren't. Reaganomics works, and he proved it in the 80s. He brought the top marginal rate down from around 70% to around 30%, which put more rich people money in the economy, and increased IRS revenues from about 440 billion in '81 to about 950 billion in '89. Charitable giving also went up in the 80s, since people had more of their money in their pocket. If lowering taxes raises IRS revenue by encouraging more spending, I think that proves that it is raising taxes that causes the rich to hoard their money against the fear of losing it to the government.

D: And honestly, you've probably never been hired by a rich person, either. Most people are hired by corporations: organizations of people working together to make money.

Dan Little: Who runs corporations? Rich people. Who invests in new technologies and new businesses, even small ones? Rich people. Who buys the fancy new electronic gadgets before they are affordable to the general market, thus providing the capital to launch mass production (i.e. cell phones and TVs and every other thing you and I take for granted).

D: That quote can be used in nearly any context. I could use it to support universal healthcare. I could use it to support a dictatorship. I like the quote, but it's open to be used in whatever context you want.

I wasn't talking about the second Bush, FYI. Conservatives are a relatively small portion of the populous, and not enough to explain his popularity alone. Anyway, not worth arguing over.

Quite frankly, you can't say the government has no right to tax without being an anarchist. Sorry, you're an anarchist.

Only the largest corporations are run by rich people. And most of those shouldn't have been allowed to get that large (microsoft for example, abuses it's size horrendously) and they keep other small corporations from competing.

Dan Little: Whoa! Labels! No, not an anarchist, just want as little government as possible to do the job, which is to protect our freedoms (not grant them, not limit them) and defend our borders (don't take that as an immigration comment). You'd be surprised how many conservatives there are, even among Democrats. I'd say we're 50/50 in this country.

Even smaller corporations get their starts often from investments from rich people. I have never felt threatened by Microsoft, either, I have always had the option to use a Mac. It is consumers who decide which businesses live and which die (and now Obama decides), Wal-Mart has driven no company out of business. Consumers such as myself do that.

You're right that "best state" of government is debatable, but there is no ambiguity in that quote as to how much power a government should have. If it is a necessary evil, it should have as little power as possible, be it dictatorship or democracy or whatever.

D: I agree with a minimal necessary government, but a government can't exist without taxes. If you believe the government shouldn't tax, you believe the government shouldn't exist. Believing that governments shouldn't exist is anarchy. Therefore, you're an anarchist according to your statment that the government doesn't have that right.

You've been harmed more by Microsoft than you realize. They've abused their monopoly significantly, mainly as a weapon against corporations that wanted to use other operating systems of programs. You think most people use Windows because they thought it was the best choice? Or Internet Explorer? They're pretty much constantly in court. They've even been ordered by the US courts to break up for violating monopoly laws once (second Bush stopped that, oddly).

I agree with you on Walmart though.

D: Last poll I saw on how people identify had 33% conservatives in the US, 41% moderate, 18% liberal, 8% chose not to identify.

So given party sizes, yeah, that's a significant numer of Democrats (Democratic party is quite a bit larger than the Republican party for whatever reason)

Dan Little: Holy [crap], you agree with me on Wal-Mart? I am very pleasantly surprised! Common ground at last. :)

I have been harmed zero by Microsoft. I have always had the choice to use Apple, and so has everyone else. It is Apple's fault they didn't corner the market, because they have often made bad business choices despite making amazing products. Apple almost went under at one point because of stupid decisions by Apple, not because of any pressure from Microsoft, ever. I use MacOSX because it is the best, and Safari because it is the best, and at school I use Windows because that's what the school bought. You think with that statement I lost my argument, but more and more schools and businesses are realizing they have a choice, and Apple's market share has done nothing but grow since Steve Jobs came back. That is all on Apple, none on Microsoft. There are always options. As much as I despise Microsoft products, I wish people would vote with their dollars instead of taking them to court.

Dan Little: Yes, but conservative candidates get a lot of votes, which is how I judge that (lots of people like to say they're "moderate" no matter what), which is how Democrats got control of Congress recently: by nominating relatively conservative Democrats.

The Republican Party will shrink even more if they nominate another Democrat like John McCain in 2012. They will lose me for sure if they continue down their path of getting along by compromising beliefs.

Jindal/Palin 2012!

Dan Little: Anyway, we've found SOME common ground, and I have exhausted my willingness to debate for now. I will continue letting the rich be rich and hoping I can be well-off someday, not looking to the government for help, using Apple products, shopping at Wal-Mart, complaining about taxes, voting for conservatives, counting down Obama's days in office, and you're welcome to think I'm wrong on any or all of those things. Live and let live, but I hope someday you will see as I do, or if I am truly wrong, that I will realize it. I don't think I'm wrong, though. :)

Dan Little: Thanks for the good debate, it keeps my wits sharp, and I was bored today.

D: True about the Democrats. Honestly, I've been expecting the Democrats to absorb enough Republicans that the Republican party will die and eventually break off of the Democratic party again later. Who knows?

I'd agree with McCain from this last race. I liked him in 2000.

/shudder. Just say no to Jindal/Palin. Please make sure your preferred candidates have a basic sense of geography before letting them run ;-)

D: It's been fun, at least :-D

Dan Little: Hahaha, no, 90% of the crap you hear about Palin is dirty politics by the McCain campaign, making her the scapegoat, which is most of why I am so disgusted by McCain. I hated him since he started playing dirty in 2000 when he lost the nomination. I'm a huge fan of Palin, but sadly I don't expect her to run again. She can just continue doing well in Alaska. At least she didn't ever claim to have campaigned in 57 states.... ;)

Dan Little: Okay, done for reals! I am so easily goaded into debate, hahaha. :)

Beth: Wow. I just got home from work and Facebook said I had 36 comments on my status. Nice going, guys. Dan, your arguments are beautiful. D, you arguments are flawed and uninformed. I still like you, though. :)

D: Ha! The only flaws in my arguments are typos from doing that all on my phone ;-)

Don't you just feel loved with that much e-mail though? :-D

Dan Little: Haha, it kept me occupied for four hours during my usual boring day at work. :)
I haven't had a good debate like that in awhile.

Beth: D, I know what it's like to not have money. Growing up, my family never had extra money. My daddy is a car mechanic and my mom is a part-time teacher. I got a job that paid $5.50/hr the minute I turned 16 years old. I worked for 3 years there washing dishes. I then worked at a gas station, a school, and a restaurant during college. I have NEVER been without a job since I was 16. Because of my work ethic, I was able to save for college and pay my way through. I had NO monetary help from my family. I got a BS in Nuclear Engineering with only $8000 in school loans to pay off. I'm now making good money because of my thrift and hard work. This is the American Dream. Its not a dream of handouts; but of hard work and reaping the benefits of Capitalism.

Beth: Wow! You did all that on your phone? I'm really impressed. And yes, I do feel loved.

Dan Little: Wow! Beth, that is amazing. I was better off when starting school, yet have racked up more loans and it'll be awhile before I make as much as you, if ever!

By the way, I think everyone should watch "Pursuit of Happyness". It is an AMAZING true story of rags to riches, with NO government help. Plus, Will Smith is just an incredible actor and all-around person.

Beth: I love that movie!!

D: Imagine proud you pulled it off, and it's less common than it should be, but you didn't have it that badly.

Ever try it while raising kids? Without a home? Did you honestly do it without any grants or unsubsidized loans? You know the government paid half your tuition anyway, because you went to a government school? Did you do it with out using government property?

I agree, it's hard, and what you did is something to be proud of. But it SHOULDN'T be hard. Everyone should be granted an equal chance. If they blow it, fine, but we have to help people get there, first. As is, children are going hungry, primary and secondary schools are in disrepair, programs are cancelled constantly, limiting options they can even learn about.

How can future kids work to be nuclear engineers if they don't even know what an atom is?

Dan Little: Blech. I have only one more comment, and that is that government subsidies raise prices to the point that they are unaffordable without government subsidies.

D: Anyway, let's agree to disagree.

My phone is going to die soon, but this has made this train trip less boring. :-d

Beth: I never said that I had it badly. I grew up well taken care of, but I wasn't spoiled with any frills, and my parents never gave me any money. And yes, I honestly did not have any grants (my parents "made too much", ironically, for any government aid). I believe I had one unsubsidized loan of $300, and the rest were unsubsidized. I had about 30% of my tuition paid for by scholarships, which I worked hard to earn. I think it should be hard, otherwise we would take things for granted. What do you value more, something that was easily given to you, or something you toiled long and hard for? People should have a sense of pride, and they can't have that with handouts. I agree that some have to work harder, but everyone still has a chance. You're proposing that everyone starts out the same, with "equal" chances. Well, that's impossible unless we have a complete redistribution of wealth so that everyone makes the same amount of money. (I'm afraid we're not that far away from that.)

Beth: The truth is, not everyone is going to be a doctor or lawyer. We need people flipping burgers at McDonalds, otherwise where will we get our Quarter Pounders? We need people as janitors otherwise we live in filth. Everyone's job has a purpose, be it with or without education. The cool thing about America, though, is that janitors have oppurtunities to go to college if they choose, through thrift, saving, and hard work. The oppurtunities in the country are limitless.

Dan Little: Supply and demand applies to labor as well as goods. Fortunately, the burger flipping jobs are typically entry level to the workforce, occupied by high school and college students for the most part. McDonald's was my first job.

Pride in ownership is what the original Pilgrims learned that first hard winter. They tried to have everything common, everyone equal, and found that no one was motivated, no one worked hard, and they almost all died. So they threw out the original charter, divvied up the land, imposed personal ownership, found pride in what they produced and traded, and began immediately to thrive. Why do we never learn even from our own history?

D: I find your last statement pretty funny. The opportunities are very limited in some places.

And we're nowhere near equal redistribution of money. That vast majority of money in this nation belongs to less than 1% of the population. I suppose we're near it if you think an exponential curve looks the same as a horizontal line.

Some people have it FAR worse. (I had it pretty good, luckily, and of was hard as hell.)

Dan Little: Ironic that the majority of the tax burden also falls on 1% of the population.... "plurality" I should say. The majority falls on the top 10%.

Dan Little: Ah! I keep saying "this is the last comment" but I'm a compulsive commenter, with easy to find buttons to push to make me respond! ;)

D: Why do you think a janitor has the options you did? Worst cast you'd have gone back, lived with your parents while saving cash to go to school.

What if the janitor is supporting his family? How much of that janitor's income goes to feeding children and paying rent? About 300%. Most likely, he and his wife are both working two jobs. They not only barely have the money to feed themselves, but because they're working multiple jobs they don't even have time to go to get a higher education.

I happen to be a big fan of food stamps and government support for childcare (it's tax free), because this I'd VERY common.

D: Unrelated note, my signal sucks and battery is under 10%. ;-)

Dan Little: It's not tax free, it's tax paid.

D: Sorry, I meant tax deductible.

The End.

Tax Day

So yesterday was tax day. My taxes were done awhile ago, but I wish I could have participated on one of these "Tea Parties" instead of being bored at work. I'd love to be part of a real, meaningful protest, it sounds like fun. Plus, it's a way to "stick it to The Man", who, ironically, is now a black man.

I don't want to say too much on taxes, because I'm already tired of the subject, and it is very frustrating to see the level of ignorance that is out there. On the other hand, it's frustrating enough that I have to say something.

I hate hearing people call for government to tax "the rich" because they can afford it, and to tax corporations because they exploit the lay man. Even if a corporation gives its executives large bonuses while the company is failing, what right does the government have to dictate how that money is spent? It is not the government's money. And if we tax a corporation that the government decides needs to be punished, how does that help the people at the bottom? There is no such thing as a corporate tax. As with every other expense, it gets passed on to the employees and the consumer. Plus, as has already been seen, once the government starts deciding how an individual or corporation should spend its money, the government has gained control over our lives that it won't give up easily. If the President of the United States can fire a CEO on a whim, what's next? This is power our government was never meant to have, and it is frightening.

And what about the rich? If one person decides to pursue a particular lifestyle, why should the government stand in the way? Because one person has more ability than another? More drive, more diligence? This is the land of opportunity, and the last thing we need to preserve our freedom is for the government to put a cap on achievement. Looking out for those who are in unfortunate circumstances is one thing, but cutting down those at the top helps nobody. If Donald Trump wants the headache of managing billions of dollars, why should that bother me? I don't want it. The great thing about this country is that I can be successful if I want to, and I can measure that success in my own way. And if I want to earn money, who can offer me a job, and pay me? Not those at the bottom, it's those at the top.

The thing that Obama and so many others don't realize (or do, and resent, and want to keep us ignorant of) is that rich people move this economy. Rich people buy cool gadgets when they're brand new and ridiculously expensive, investing in the technology and bringing it to us ordinary guys. If no one had bought a cell phone or a flat screen TV when they were still impractical, they could never have been mass produced for me to afford one. I couldn't afford a cell phone fifteen years ago, but Rush Limbaugh could, and that made the technology work. Not the government, not those of us on the bottom, though we have our part in the economy as well. We also have the opportunity, if we want to, to rise in this economy if we are willing to put forward the work necessary. Chance is involved, too, but most success stories involve diligence in times of hard luck. (If you haven't, please watch The Pursuit of Happyness; it is an excellent true story of this kind of success.)

Taxes are harmful to the economy, and this has been proven time and again. The best example that comes to mind is in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan doubled IRS revenues in eight years by dramatically lowering the top marginal tax rate. But if you dig deep enough, it is not about money to Obama and his people, it is about fairness. When a liberal defines fairness, they usually mean everyone ends up the same. When a conservative defines fairness, we mean that their reward is proportional to their contribution. Some people honestly cannot contribute, and contrary to popular belief, we conservatives do not want them to suffer, and would gladly contribute to charitable causes. The more we are taxed, however, the less money there is for charity, and the more money goes to pork spending. What if the government steps aside and people don't help the poor on their own? If that is the case, then we have problems beyond what can be solved by government. Fortunately, this is not the case in this country.

I could go on with facts and figures and numbers to support my case, but the bottom line is that the government has grown to powerful and intrusive in our lives, and even assuming government has our best interests in mind, it is dangerous to give a government this much power. The government has always squandered money that didn't belong to it, and now it is making up for a lack of money by spending money that doesn't exist in amounts never before seen. It's like paying the fee for a bounced check by writing another bad check. It won't fix this economy, it will and is making it worse.

There is one object lesson that is of value, and it is happening in New York. Governor David Paterson recently signed a major tax increase on "millionaires" that was the final straw for Rush Limbaugh, who is getting rid of his assets in New York. Paterson laughed it off, saying "If I knew that would be the result, I would've thought about the taxes earlier!" Why is this important? I'm sure a lot of people think it's great that taxes can chase away such an awful person as Rush Limbaugh, though I'm not one of them, being obviously a fan of Rush. Here is an excerpt of a recent article by Neil Cavuto, one of my personal heroes and the economics genius on Fox News:

"Clearly, the gov's not a fan of Rush. But I suspect he is a fan of Rush's money. He's going to need it. And now he won't have it. And if other rich guys join Rush, guys like Donald Trump....he won't have a lot of it, or them.

Then what will become of the governor's millionaire tax for which $300,000 is enough to qualify? If you can't stick it to the rich who are bolting, how much lower on the financial food chain are you going to have to be moving? Because you better move fast, governor.

I suspect what happened with Rush won't stay with Rush. But the governor chooses not to pick a fight with Donald, just Rush. Even though others will be wandering, who have nowhere near the money of Rush.

But Governor Paterson, you don't see that. You see Rush. And you want the always compliant media to see Rush. And only Rush. And then laugh at Rush. And their hatred of Rush. And their love of anything hated by Rush.

If only they'd stop rushing to conclusions. Because this isn't about a broadcaster who could easily afford to keep a pad here but won't, but many who barely could and are wondering now if they will.

If they follow Rush, it won't be funny, governor. For you and your state, it won't be funny, at all.

Sad, yes. Funny, no."

He's exactly right. The very small number of rich people, both in New York and in the United States as a whole, bear the vast majority of the tax burden. The "poor" don't pay taxes. The more we tax the rich, the more ways they find to hide the money they have worked so hard to earn, and with which they pay their employees and manage their companies. Even when the rich don't leave to avoid the burden of taxes, if they stay they have to deal with the financial hit, which means they cut back on hours for their employees, lay people off, and raise prices in order to keep their company from going completely under. If we punish the part of the population that moves our economy, then we are dead in the water. Taxes hurt everyone. Say no to higher taxes!

I wish I could have gone to one of those tea parties.







By the way, even if you absolutely hate Rush Limbaugh and everything he stands for, this interview on Neil Cavuto's show should be very informative, even if all you get from it is an insight into how rich people think, which is helpful in understanding how harmful these taxes really are: