The Next Generation

Some days it would be better to just stay in bed. Yesterday there was a story in the news about 6 girls in Florida who got pissed at another girl for some perceived insults posted on a MySpace page.

After luring her to one of the girl’s house they proceeded to take turns beating on this girl. She was knocked unconscious, she received a concussion, and evidently one of her eyes was hurt from this beating.

The thing is, they didn’t just beat this girl up, they taunted her to fight back, which she refused to do, while filming the entire episode to post on the internet. They wanted notoriety for this brutal attack.

The 6 girls who did this had planned it well. They knew when the house would be empty, and they had a couple of their boy friends posted outside as lookouts. They are being charged as adults.

While I am glad they are being charged as adults, I have to wonder whose fault this actually is. The answer that comes to me is that it is the liberal mind-set that has brought us to this point. We refuse to allow absolutes in this world because absolutes create barriers. We live in such a nanny state now that barriers to anything are not acceptable.

Moral relativism. I remember hearing that term back in the 1970’s, the 10 Commandments had already been taken out of our schools and many teachers were afraid to read the Bible in class. While I did have a few who did read the Bible to her students every day, most either gave up the practice totally, or changed it to a period of “meditation” instead.

Parents were being hauled in front of judges for abusing their kids for giving them a spanking. They were supposed to appeal to the little tyke’s better instincts instead. What society failed to realize is that kids don’t have a better instinct. Our instincts tell us that whatever we do that is pleasurable and has no consequences must be good. So long as no consequences are imposed on our actions we have no reason to change a behavior.

Oh sure, science knew that, but if we just used “Positive” reinforcement instead of punishment our little darlings would gravitate towards better behavior. Unfortunately, some kids just like the fun of the bad behavior more than the reinforcement. What science forgot is that there is built into all of us a mechanism designed (by God) to help us to learn proper behavior. It is called the ‘Survival Instinct.’ Coupled with pain, the survival instinct will mold our children into fine upstanding citizens.

We need to take our country back! Give our kids a good spanking and help them to become decent citizens of this wonderful nation.

The First Amendment. It’s in there.

Michael Richards – Back in the day, people were not allowed to bring recording devices into a live performance. The performer had rights to his / her material not being distributed without compensation. Evidently, those days are gone as evidenced by the YouTube video of Michael Richards going off on some hecklers at the comedy club where he was performing.

 

Had that been the case here, we would probably never have heard of the incident where Richards went off on a rant calling the hecklers nigger and acting stupid on stage. As it happened though, someone video taped the incident, decided they were offended by what was said, and tried to get some money out of the situation (if not money, at least some notoriety).

 

Was Michael showing good sense in going off on the hecklers? Certainly not. Was it his right to go off on them? It certainly was. Who was hurt by the incident? Michael Richards. He is the only one who was damaged in the least by his words. Were the hecklers hurt? No, they were trying to goad Michael into acting stupid, evidently they were not enjoying his comedy routine, understandable, but does that give them the right to ruin everyone else’s evening by shouting him down? I personally don’t think so, but hecklers have been a part of stand-up since its inception, so maybe my opinion doesn’t carry much weight on this topic.

 

What about the person who video taped the incident? If they were offended, it was their own fault as comedy clubs are a place to expect rude humor and offensive language. They were actually harming Richards by taping the incident. We also have to wonder how much of his act they were taping, were they trying to make money off of his routine by selling bootleg copies of the performance? We will never know the answer to that question, but before throwing Richards under the bus, it is something to consider.

 

Personally, I don’t think that Michael Richards’ type of comedy translates to stand-up well, but that is not for me to say. I do feel that he has been turned into a pariah unfairly by people who weren’t even there.

 

Somehow we managed to go from Michael Richards to Don Imus without batting an eye. Don never even uttered the notorious “N word” in his remarks about the Rutger’s girls basketball team. Don Imus did what he was paid for, and very handsomely at that. He pushed the edge of the envelope.

 

Evidently, the envelope he pushed that morning was on the desk of the self appointed spokesman for blacks everywhere, Al Sharpdon. Al got his posse on the case and managed to bring enough political correct pressure to bear to cause NBC to fire Imus, without cause.

 

Imus had a contract that required him, as a condition of employment to push the edge and be controversial, but pressure from some self-righteous bigot got him fired. Here again, I personally don’t care too much for Don Imus, I don’t care for the edgy humor, but the man has a Constitutional Right to do it so long as he has a platform and a desire to use it.

 

People like Al Sharpdon want to call what Richards and Imus said “hate speech,” and want it prohibited. When we start shredding the Constitution and censoring free speech, Al Sharpdon and his ilk need to beware. His speech is as hateful or more so than anything Richards uttered, and much more hateful than what Imus said.

Free Speech

I guess if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll tell you, I’m a conservative. Yep, that’s right, one of those gun totin‘, hate mongers that you hear about on the news. I’m not as far right as some, but far enough to annoy some liberals.

There are a lot of things that bother me about the direction our nation seems to be heading, and it seems that a lot of it stems from this idea of political correctness. As I said in a previous post, we used to have free speech in this country. That speech has been eroded over the years and the rate seems to be accelerating.

Growing up, we learned hymns in church. Hymns like Alas and did my Saviour Bleed, with the verbiage that the writer put in, “Would He devote that sacred head, for such a worm as I.” Words that empathized the vast difference between a Holy God, and sinful man. Check it out now, in a new edition of the hymnal, I assume most any denomination will have the same changes, but now, instead of ‘worm’, it reads ’sinner’. A huge difference? Maybe not, but neither is the difference noticeable when the Colorado river runs it’s normal course through the Grand Canyon, but the canyon itself is evidence of the changes wrought.

We have to apologize and qualify ourselves anytime we use a derogatory word, even if we are trying to chasten someone for using them. We just don’t seem to get it, the words are not bad, they are scratches on paper, dots on a screen, there is nothing inherently wrong with any word. Actions, on the other hand can be very wrong, and we have laws to protect us from the wrong actions of others. We cannot legislate morality, thoughts, or words. Certainly we can legislate actions, that is why you cannot yell ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre, we also have laws to prevent someone from inciting a riot. In the case of inciting a riot, there has to be intent in order for there to be a crime.

I am amazed when I see a movie on television where the word ‘nigger’ is bleeped out. It wasn’t used out of context, it was used in the way people hear it used everyday on the street, but to be politically correct, it is cut out, even when it is a major plot point. One scene comes immediately to mind from one of the Die Hard movies where our hero, John McCain is taken to Harlem and dropped off wearing nothing but a sandwich board which says “I hate niggers.” The words on the sandwich board were digitally blurred to blot them out.

If it is that offensive, just don’t show the movie for Pete’s sake! The writer and director put that in the movie for a purpose and now they are being censored. I am surprised that they let that pass without a fight. Ooops, I forgot, don’t step on anyone’s toes, don’t be a hate monger. Are we about to start taking words out of the dictionary to keep them from offending someone? That is the next step.

Barack Hussein Obama, a Delicate Flower

It has become a sorry state of affairs when a candidate for the highest office in the land and arguably the world wears his feelings on his sleeves and people in the media tip-toe around him to ensure they don’t hurt his delicate sensibilities.

It is not acceptable to call him by the name his parents gave him because it might have a negative connotation and turn off some potential voters. The main stream media are tripping all over themselves to accommodate his wishes. Anyone who doesn’t follow his wishes in this area is considered to be a hate monger or a racist.

Yesterday, Barack had to come down on his preacher, Jeremiah Wright. I don’t know about anyone else but I wasn’t blown away with his speech. I really didn’t like the way he dissed the founders for not stopping slavery, but that is another issue. He also didn’t distance himself from what Wright was saying, only that he now knew that these things were being said and he didn’t agree with them. That begs the question of why did he stay in this church if the values being espoused were so wrong in his opinion. Why did he not stand up to challenge the pastor’s rhetoric? I just don’t buy it.

The Line Item Budget Proposal

Let’s face it, our elected representatives have lost touch with the people they are hired to represent. (That’s us) But to be fair, many people in this country are enablers in this problem. Everyone would like to have something for nothing, look at the rise in state lotteries if you don’t believe me. What about the flood of casinos across the nation? Everyone seems to want a quick trip to Richville.

Our Constitution requires that a record of Congressional Activity be maintained and bound so that things are on record. Things aren’t being done behind closed doors so to speak. That is the reason we have the Congressional Record published daily whenever Congress is in session. This information is available bound, by subscription, but it is also available on line. Unfortunately, it is written in Congress-Speak, making it very difficult for the average citizen to wade through and make sense of.

Take the budget for instance. The current budget is around 3,500 pages long, and is loaded with many things that are required to keep a government running, and the military operating in an efficient manner. There are billions, yes billions of dollars though that are being spent for things that have no impact on running the Federal Government. Things of unquestionable importance like bike trails in Minnesota, Postal Museums in Las Vegas, rodent control in Alaska. Certainly these are all things that are big concerns to the mainstream of America, things which would cause devastation were they not included.

Earmarks are going to drive this country to the poorhouse. Why not put these items in a spreadsheet format showing the basic use of the money along with the amount of money being earmarked for the project. Publish these, along with the names of the Legislator who is proposing such a project and post this, on the internet and the Congressional Record so that we the people can see exactly where our money is being spent. Ideally, in time to allow the ire of the American people to rise up against Washington before they are tacked onto legislation, but spelled out clearly exactly what is going on, and how much it is costing us.

Personally, I live in Arkansas, and I have absolutely no interest in a bike trail in Minnesota, especially one that is costing me somewhere in the neighborhood of $700,000,000 to build. Yes, that is $700 MILLION . . . for a BICYCLE TRAIL! I think that if the people of Minnesota need such a trail, they should raise the money themselves and build it, but don’t steal money out of my pocket so you can ride your bike in Minnesota.

Likewise, why would I be concerned enough to spend $103 Million in order to control rodents in Alaska? Doesn’t Terminix have an office up there? Don’t private citizens have the funds to keep roaches and mice out of their homes? Someone needs to explain to me why I should subsidize this project.

A postal museum in Las Vegas? There is enough money in Vegas to build one if there is a need, and if there isn’t a need, don’t ask me to build it or maintain it for you. These are just a few of the unbelievable projects that are included in our new budget.

President Bush should veto this bill unless all of these earmarks are stripped out, but he won’t. Congress should give the President a line-item veto in order to allow him to strip out this garbage himself, but they won’t. Personally, I am fed up with sending my money to Washington just to have it wasted on this trash that is of no concern to me. We, as a people need to take a stand and demand this waste stop! NOW!

Service Flag

Who remembers World War II? As a kid, did you go to the movies and see newsreels of our troops fighting in Africa, Europe or the Pacific? Even those who aren’t old enough to remember it first hand have probably seen newsreels from the era. There was stock footage of our Troops in action, tanks rolling across the desert and a lot of footage of troops marching down the road.

 

I am too young to have seen this first hand myself, but I have seen newsreels and a lot of documentaries about World War II. I remember my father telling me stories of the things they had to do without during the war as they worked to produce food on the farm for the troops. I have listened to my mother tell of Church socials, dances and activities for the troops who were home on leave or stationed in the area.

They had days when they did not eat wheat, days without meat. Staples like sugar and eggs were rationed. It seems the entire country was at war. We had a common enemy, an enemy who dared to strike our homeland without provocation or warning. We were determined to win this war, and nothing, no amount of privation or heartache would prevent us from being victorious in this common venture.

Everyone knew someone who was in the service, every family had lost someone or knew someone close who had. Parents and families who had children in the service proudly let others know by placing a service star in their window, one star for every family member in the service of their country. If they lost a family member in the service, the blue star was covered by a gold star.

People were proud of their family members’ service, they were proud even when that service caused them to pay the ultimate price. Certainly they were not happy about it, no one is ever happy to lose someone they love, but they were still proud of them and believed they died for a cause that was worth the price paid.

Where did the pride go? When did we stop being proud of the service our young people were providing by placing themselves between us and a very real enemy? Newspapers used to print lists of the men who were wounded, killed or were missing in action every day. These lists somehow did not cause people to pull out a slide rule to see if we were paying too much for our freedom. They managed instead to strengthen our resolve, to make us even more determined to win the war.

I listen to the news today and I become heartsick, all the talk on the radio news or television news is bad. Not bad in a good way, but bad in a bad way. We aren’t getting the information of how we lost x number of men in action. We hear that the insurgents managed to blow up one of our vehicles killing x number of soldiers. There is no excuse for this.

Have we completely forgotten that we are in a war with a very real enemy? An enemy who has vowed to destroy us? An enemy who attacked us without provocation or warning? An enemy who kills civilians in preference to combatants?

These are the same people who flew commercial airplanes into skyscrapers in New York City. I don’t know where all of our military installations are, but I am pretty sure that we did not have an outpost in the World Trade Center. These were all civilians for pete’s sake! Our enemies are barbarians! They will stop at nothing to destroy our way of life, yet we want to constantly snipe at our military and keep telling everyone how well the enemy is doing their job.

Our media is giving aid and comfort to our enemy and we say nothing. We have people in Congress who have declared the war lost, and we don’t scream for their impeachment on the grounds of high treason!

Friends, our Constitution gives us great power, but as it was said in Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. We need to show that we understand and accept our responsibility by supporting our troops. Something to keep in mind is that it is impossible to support our troops by declaring the war lost. We must stop giving comfort to our enemy with our media. We need to proudly hang a star in our window to help others remember that there are sacrifices to be made, even if it isn’t Wheatless Thursdays.

 

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.

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.