Fertilizing the Tree of Freedom

Those who cling to the untrue doctrine that violence never settles anything would be advised to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. ::Robert A. HeinleinRemember, it is the blood of patriots that fertilizes the tree of freedom and that if we do not finish what we started, that life blood will have been shed in vain. We must be victorious. We have the manpower, the technology, and the equipment, the only thing that may be lacking is the determination.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Well there is a place now for all of the hate mongering homo phobes in this country. Iran. According to Ahmadinejad, they do not have homosexuals in Iran. What he fails to point out is that they have a tendency to execute them in Iran.

Controversy surrounded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University yesterday. People all across the nation were divided over his right to be there and speak before the students. Those that cried that it was his right to free speech seem to have forgotten an important detail. The first amendment right that they are trying to confer upon Ahmadinejad is a right guaranteed to citizens of this nation and he has no 1st amendment right to free speech in this country.

It’s funny somehow, we will confer our rights onto those who are not eligible for them and deny them to those that have them by citizenship. Again, we live in a squirrelly world.

Congress: a definition of sorts

Congress. I looked it up on Dictionary.Com and these are the definitions that came up:

1. (initial capital letter)

a. the national legislative body of the U.S., consisting of the Senate, or upper house, and the House of Representatives, or lower house, as a continuous institution.

b. this body as it exists for a period of two years during which it has the same membership: the 96^th Congress.

c. a session of this body: to speak in Congress

2. the national legislative body of a nation, esp. of a republic

3. a formal meeting or assembly of representatives for the discussion, arrangement of promotion of some matter of common interest

4. the act of coming together, an encounter, meeting

5. an association, esp. one composed of representatives of various organizations.

6. familiar relations; dealings; intercourse.

7. coitus; sexual intercourse

–verb (used without object)

8. to assemble together; meet in congress.

While the common usage is the first definition, it is beginning to feel to me that the 7^th definition is the one in practice.

June 2007, the American People made a loud statement that we did not want to give amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens in this country. Congress listened! They said no to cloture. Then they went on vacation. As soon as they got back from vacation they decided to see if they could do it again, and dreamt up the dream amendment.

Do they not listen or just don’t care? At this point it is hard to tell. I received a lengthy missive from one of my Senators bemoaning the fact that it would take over 100 years to deport the aliens we now have in our country illegally, so instead of getting started with a tough job, let’s just let them stay. It has gotten ridiculous.

Quick Update

I called customer service yesterday to check on my television. Actually, I tried to call the day before and was kept on hold for 15 minutes listening to the encouraging message that my call was important then I was hung up on. Yesterday though, I got to speak to someone and they found out that my television was zipping right along in a UPS truck headed for my house and should be here on Friday.

I’ll let you know if it works through the weekend.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
-Albert Einstein

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
-Robert A. Heinlein

Bankruptcy: by Clinton

It was just Friday when I wrote a piece on Big Brother and Health Care. I woke up this morning and the following piece was listed in the news of the day. If we don’t wake up to what these people are proposing, and raise our voices those idiots in Washington will make the assumption that their proposals, no matter how asinine, were what propelled them into office. They will take it as a mandate of the people. Take a look at what Clinton is proposing:

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton will roll out a health care reform plan on Monday that would require all Americans to have health insurance,[emphasis added] Clinton campaign sources said.

The Clinton proposal will be unveiled during a what was billed as a major health care policy speech in Iowa. No estimate on the plan’s cost was immediately available. [emphasis added]

Under the plan, federal subsidies would be provided for those who are not able to afford insurance, and large businesses would be required to provide or help pay for their employees’ insurance.

Clinton’s package would also require insurers to provide coverage for anyone who applies for it and would also bar insurance companies from charging people with greater health care costs more for their premiums.

The campaign of fellow Democrat John Edwards, which has already put out a detailed a health care plan, will up the ante Monday during a speech to the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Chicago, Illinois, campaign sources said.

The Edwards proposal would cut off health care for the president, Congress and all political appointees in mid 2009, if a universal health care plan for all Americans has not been passed by then.

Edwards is expected to outline “basic principles” the health care plan would have to meet, the sources said.

This is nothing less than socialism. We need to realize that our Government is our servant and not our mother. We are supposed to be the adult and we are supposed to exercise common sense. If we sit back and do nothing, we will end up in the same boat as Europe and Canada as far as health care goes.

And what will be next? What social problem is laying in wait to rear its ugly head?

Health Care and Big Brother

I have a right to health care and by gum I expect you to pay for it!

That may not be the exact verbiage, but that is certainly the meaning of the cries we hear on the news every night, and the rhetoric we are hearing in Washington these days. I have looked, several times in fact, but I just do not see health care in our bill of rights. I wish some one would point it out to me. Maybe some think it is the natural extension of our right to Life, that Jefferson so eloquently placed in the constitution. If that is the case, I can think of a few other things that come before health care in order to maintain life. One would be food, if I have a right to health care, shouldn’t I have the same right to have food on the table?

And of course if I have a right to food on the table I should be able to expect the government to provide it for me don’t you think?

All kidding aside, I do not want the government involved in health care. They can’t take care of the things they are in charge of as it is, do you really want your life and death decisions made by committees in Washington D.C.? Remember, the definition of a committee is a creature with 6 or more legs and no brain. It is beyond my comprehension to understand how people can cry for socialized health care when, 1) People who enjoy ‘free’ health care are flocking to this country to pay for operations here because they can’t get them in a timely fashion where they live, or the doctor they are required to use is incompetent or any of a number of other reasons. 2) The same people who cry for government sponsored health care are the same ones who decry the government’s response to situations like Hurricane Katrina. Don’t forget, that the same government who would be managing your health care is the same government that created the IRS, the driver’s license bureau, the highway administration, testaments all to the efficiency of government bureaucracies.

Remember too, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, free health care isn’t either. First, the government has no money except that which we give to it, so we have to pay for anything the government hands out, it isn’t free. Not only isn’t it free, since it is not controlled by a free market, it is by nature more expensive than it should be. Government bureaucracies always grow beyond their needs and never seem to stop. Second, without a free market to create competition, why should anyone do their job any better than they absolutely have to? There is no incentive to do good work, or to keep costs down. Look at Soviet Russia in the 1970’s is that what you want in health care? Please move to a country that will provide it for you if that is the case. I want my doctor to be skilled, and able to charge as much as the market will bear for his or her services, the market will cull the dogs out of the pack.

Certainly there are people who feel disenfranchised when it comes to health care, but we have choices of what we want to spend our money on, if health care isn’t on the list, then accept your decision and move on. Do not come crying to me that you want me to pay for your health care because you had other things you wanted to spend your money on. Conversely, if I choose not to purchase health insurance, I don’t want the government or anyone else trying to force me to spend my money on something that I do not want.

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL, an acronym for, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” This was coined by the Award Winning Science Fiction Writer Robert Anson Heinlein. It was used first in his novel,”The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” and it seemed to show up off and on in several of his works. TANSTAAFL actually came into the popular vernacular years ago although I think that its use has faded, probably more because people don’t want to believe it than because it isn’t factual, because it is.

I think this country is in dire need of remembering that term, and coming to grips with the simple truth it contains. Nothing in this world is free, yet every day in the streets and on the news people are complaining about how they have been mistreated and how they have a right to this or that. I would like to know who was passing out these rights and why I wasn’t in line when they were being distributed.

I was watching the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I normally don’t watch that news program as I like CNN Headline News’ Erica Hill much better. Anyway, that isn’t the point, the thing that caught my attention was a story they did on protesters marching on their mortgage lender. These were people caught up in the sub-prime mortgage crisis this country is facing right now.

One woman was interviewed who said that she wasn’t looking for help because her husband lost his job, or (and she actually said this) because they didn’t read the contracts they were signing, but it was because there was a crisis in this country and the country needed to help them out. Personally, I had a little trouble understanding that.

First, I had always thought that losing a job was one of the major reasons people would lose their home. Suddenly they couldn’t afford it any longer, they would default and the bank would foreclose. Certainly heartbreaking for the individual family, but that isn’t cause for a national crisis.

Second, I can certainly understand how stupidity and ignorance could be the root cause of a national education system crisis, but how does this translate into a national mortgage crisis that I am supposed to be concerned with? I don’t see the connection between someone’s greed and my pocketbook.

It has always been my understanding that the interest rate people are charged is to pay the lender for the risk of the loan. Lower rates are applied to loans with less risk, higher rates to those with greater risk. That is how the industry pays its’ bills. Now while Mrs. Grundy may not have been smart enough to read the contract, the underwriter certainly was and should have known better.

Now we are marching in the streets and saying that the Government has to bail them out of the mess they made. Hogwash! If the underwriter doesn’t want to renegotiate the loan, and the buyer can’t make the payments, let the underwriter foreclose and try to move the property themselves. That is the risk they assumed when they wrote bad loans. That is the risk that they were very aware of when their greed caused them to get people in debt over their capacity to pay.

It wasn’t my idea to provide money to people who did not have the capability to repay it, and I have received not one thin dime in interest for those loans. The mortgage company made the money on those loans so they should be the ones to absorb any losses.

Back to Mrs. Grundy. Let’s stop and think for a moment, okay? Was she living on the street before she purchased a house beyond her means? Wasn’t she paying rent to someone somewhere? Of course she was. How is she hurt by this? Her credit has a stain on it. Ooops! I forgot, she didn’t have good credit before they lent her the money for the house or it wouldn’t have been a sub-prime. She has lost nothing and has actually had a couple of years in a better house than she was renting before all this took place.

Again, not my problem. The mortgage lender knew and accepted the risks involved in writing these sub-prime loans. The borrowers, while it is unfortunate, would have still been paying someone rent during this time period so they aren’t truly out anything. It looks like a wash to me. If the mortgage lenders go out of business, they are the ones at fault in the first place and need to step up and assume the loss if needed.

 

A Phone Call from Walmart

Last night as I was sitting here in front of my computer I received a phone call. It was from a young lady from Wal-Mart asking to speak with me. I told her that she was in fact speaking with me and that she could now consider her quest fulfilled, she seemed unimpressed, but that is her lookout.

She told me she was calling in reference to the letter I had sent to the President’s office in Bentonville. What?! Something in regard to my television problem? She wanted me to go over the details with her about the entire situation. I told her the story of the HDTV in 4 part harmony complete with details of the emailed call-tag that was never emailed, and their promise to replace the television the second time followed by their claim that they never did that in their response to my Better Business Bureau complaint.

She was evidently looking at some type of warranty on her end that said that ILO provides in-home service on their televisions which their customer service department contradicted when they told me that the only way to get a television serviced was to ship it back to them. I thought this was fairly interesting and was wishing at this point that I hadn’t shipped the TV back the second time.

She was very nice and told me that if she could help in any way that she would be available. She also gave me the watts line number for the in-home service at ILO. Hopefully, I will never have to use it, but I am certainly disgusted with the quality of products being offered for sale these days.

 

Six Years Later Yet Another Day Closer

Yesterday, the sixth anniversary of the attacks by terrorists on the United States has come and gone. A new message from Osama Bin Laden marked the anniversary, but nothing out of the ordinary took place. There were memorial services in New York, Washington DC, and in Pennsylvania for those lost in the attacks, and at fire and police stations all around the country to remember fallen brothers.

We remember, yet thanks to God, pain fades and we are able to get on with our lives. We must be careful though lest we not only let the pain fade from memory, but the memory itself. The memory of what happened needs to remain, to stay in our consciousness to help keep us vigilant. One thing we can be sure of is that this fight is not over. It was not one of our choosing, but it must be one we are willing to finish.

Yes, it has been six years since those dastardly attacks, but it is also one day closer to the next one, there have been several failed attempts over the past year or so. Some have been successful worldwide, some not so much, but they should all point out that we have an implacable foe who will stop at nothing to reach their goals.

Certainly we should get on with our lives. We can accomplish nothing if we sit in the corner wringing our hands crying “Woe is me!” We need to be hard and determined to defeat this enemy, while maintaining our compassion for each other. Let us get behind the efforts to kill our enemies, the same ones who want to kill us, and keep our homeland safe for our children.