Way Out Charlotte Pike

Definition of Terms: Zero Sum Game

2012-01-23T06:16:00.000-06:00

In a recent post entitled "Barack Obama is not a socialist" I clarified the terms "socialism" and "fascism" which are constantly misused.

"Zero Sum Game" is another term one hears frequently these days. There are actually two meanings for this term. One is best exemplified by a game of monopoly. In Monopoly you can only win as many money as comes with the Monopoly game. The more you take from your opponents, the more you have and the less there is in the pot, but the total amount of money available never changes.

That's how a lot of people think of our economy. The more money we make in the U.S., the less money the rest of the world has because, in this faulty way of economic thinking, there is only so much wealth to go around. That is one definition of Zero Sum Game.

The truth, however, is that economics is like weather. It is constantly changing and nothing about it is finite. It is entirely possible for wealth to increase for everyone at the same time, as it more or less did during the Reagan years, just as it is possible for wealth to disappear for everyone, just as it did during the Roosevelt years.

That loss of wealth during the Roosevelt years brings to mind the second definition of Zero Sum Game. It's the process by all the productive people of the world end up with no money if Barack Obama wins a second term.

Happy Government Workers Holiday!

2012-01-16T05:29:00.000-06:00

Or more appropriately, Happy Government Workers and Intimidated Businesses Day!

I admire Martin Luther King as an exceptional American who helped our country come around the corner to repair the damage caused by slavery. But this holiday is a joke.

I think Dr. King would have been pleased with the ways that the doors of opportunity have opened to people of all stripes who, until he forced the country to face the problem in the sixties, found those doors closed more often than not.

But I suspect Dr. King would have been disgusted with what many of the most obvious heirs to his struggle have done with the prize he bequeathed them, including some who marched with him. The civil rights struggle has degenerated into a farce where underachievement is championed and overachievement is denigrated. For a man of achievement and a man of the people like Dr. King, it would bring tears to his eyes to see the headlong rush into welfare state dependancy to which such a large proportion of the black community has been led by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama.

I will celebrate Dr. King's legacy today by keeping my hindquarters and those of my employees at work. In a fully integrated workplace, by the way--one of choice, not of government mandate.

Barack Obama is not a socialist.

2012-01-09T06:27:00.001-06:00

As we all try to define exactly what the shadowy president Barack Obama really is, it is important that we be careful with our terminology.

It is a disservice to socialists everywhere to call Barack Obama a socialist. He is no more a socialist than is Hugo Chavez. Socialists are well-meaning Robin Hood utopians who believe you can take from the rich to give to the poor and everyone will be happier. The continent of Europe and its hapless financial plight is proof enough that this kind of idealism cannot be sustained.

For the Barack Obamas and Hugo Chavezes of the world, socialism is merely a convenient cover for their real purposes. Socialism gains the support of the underachieving half of all societies (a half which grows to a majority in a socialist economy) and it seduces the productive, successful class by appealing to their Judeo-Christian principles. Thus a Barack Obama can undermine the most successful elements in a capitalistic society for his own ends while his supporters think they're helping him create a society just overflowing with peace and justice and a higher consciousness and all that tripe...

What Barack is really about is consolidating government and corporate power in one. It is no accident that the same Wall Street he has attacked as the root of all evil has been the greatest beneficiary of the bailout money, nor is it an accident that GM and GE and all those corrupt "green" companies are morphing into quasi-governmental agencies.

So far the oil companies have been strong enough to fend off such attacks, even after the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But they have seen what just happened to Exxon in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez accused Exxon of cheating the Venezuelan people, then nationalized its assets in Venezuela. Exxon had spent nearly a billion dollars there but had not yet started enjoying profits from its investment. With an oil crisis - perhaps aided by President Obama's friends in Iran - American oil companies are vulnerable to just the same fate. They will be accused of exploiting Americans through high gas prices and then taken over by the government as soon as they feel they can get away with it.

When governments nationalize corporations it is known as fascism. The word derives from a Roman term that essentially means "bundling". Most simply put it is a bundling of state power with corporate power to minimize the economic and political power of the individual and thus completely dominate a society.

But be careful to understand fascism correctly. Fascism is not the same as Nazism, though there has never been a more successful fascist state than Nazi Germany. Though the Nazi Party purported to be socialist (that's what the Z stands for in Nazi), it was really fascist. It was through this consolidation of both political and corporate power that Hitler was able to squelch the voices opposed to him in Germany and wage war against the free societies of Europe and beyond.

Though most of us who might call Barack Obama a socialist mean it in a disparaging way, we should recognize that Barack Obama loves to be called a socialist. As long as we complain that he is a socialist he can work his fascist aims more effectively.

2012: Year of New Consciousness?

2012-01-02T07:38:00.001-06:00

Lest we get too excited about what 2012 might portend, consider Ecclesiastes 1:9...

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

I would like to think that human beings will come out of this coming year with a better love for one another, a higher consciousness, and a unity of spirit that will take us to a higher plain.

But we must remember that we are not God nor any kind of god. We are just people. We are imperfect and sinful and rather than wishing we were otherwise, we should each try to make the best of it for ourselves and those around us.

I find that a happy challenge, not a disappointment... and I'm glad to be around for another year of seeking perfection even if I know I'll never achieve it.

So happy new year!

The Cain Train Derailed

2011-12-05T04:57:00.001-06:00

I certainly don't regret backing Herman Cain all the way through. He has been the strongest voice of free market American exceptionalism to emerge in this run up to the presidential election. That he has been taken down via gossip and character assassination is unfortunately no surprise.

But regardless how it happened, he is gone and the next question is whom to support next.

I took a poll of the mostly young people at the dinner table yesterday. There was little agreement about whom to support. But the unanimous outcome was "Anyone but Obama."

I'll vote for that!

The Cain Train Chugs On...

2011-12-01T06:19:00.000-06:00

I am amazed that Herman Cain is still in the race. A lesser man would have wilted under the relentless assault on his integrity, especially after this week's latest, most unsavory bimbo eruption.

Although I would gladly vote for any other Republican in the race over the despicable Barack Obama in a general election, it is clear that Herman Cain is the truest conservative, free market, American exceptionalist candidate in the race. If he falls out, we have to accept second best.

No one but Herman Cain knows the whole story on the various allegations against him. But I can say this for sure: they did not occur in a vaccuum. There are forces helping them to the surface that absolutely, positively do not want the ultimate political outsider Herman Cain to run against the ultimate political insider Barack Obama.

If we don't support Herman Cain now, he will run out of money and have no choice but to drop out of the race, removing the one true conservative from contention.

Unless there is some proof that the bimbos are telling the truth and Herman Cain is lying, or unless Herman Cain lays down the banner himself, I am sticking with him. In fact I made another contribution this morning. I think no small number of true believers in conservativism are doing so as well.

Are you?

Getting Back on the Cain Train

2011-11-28T02:56:00.003-06:00

I never left the Cain Train. But I’m glad to see that many who were temporarily distracted by the bimbo eruptions and the desperate reach for Newt Gingrich are moving back to Cain instead of the other candidates they’ve flirted with in the debate marathon before the primaries.

Here’s why:

Although she is revered by Tea Party types as a true conservative and even though she is far more eloquent than Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman just hasn’t quite mustered the charisma necessary to stir the electorate.

Ron Paul is smart and good and unfortunately the Ralph Nader of the Republican Party. His stand on principle is admirable, but he’s so dogmatic in his libertarianism as to be unelectable.

Rick Perry has the presidential look to attract attention and a solid record of achievement in Texas, but that comment about being heartless if you don’t agree with him on immigration policy lost the Tea Party crowd like the trust that evaporates when an unfaithful spouse is exposed.

Newt Gingrich is just too smart by half. If he didn’t have that extra half, he wouldn’t have made TV commercials with Nancy Pelosi, wouldn’t have been sucked in even briefly by the manmade global warming crowd, nor pontificated in the recent debate about illegal immigration in such a way that was meant to be thoughtful but was spelled like A-M-N-E-S-T-Y.

And Mitt Romney—well, it’s obvious that’s who the Obama team wants to carry the banner for the Republicans. He cannot effectively attack Obama’s Achilles heel—Obamacare—because its inspiration was Romneycare. Not to mention how easy it is to mock him for his off-center faith. Or to call him a “One Per Center” for his corporate success.

Among those who have garnered double digit poll support this season, that leaves Herman Cain. But he’s not the candidate of default. I think even Tea Partiers would support ANY of the other Republican candidates in a general election over the hapless, incompetent, maladjusted Barack Obama.

Herman Cain leads the pack because he is the very candidate that the Democrats fear most.

Herman Cain’s race defuses the white-guilt factor that got Obama elected.
Herman Cain is an articulate and forceful public speaker. He does not need teleprompters.
Herman Cain has pulled himself up by his bootstraps and racked up achievement after achievement in the real world of business in direct contrast to Barack Obama, who has done nothing outside of academia and government work.
Herman Cain has weathered a powerful smear campaign by remaining cool, calm, collected and resolute.
Herman Cain has a specific, real plan for getting the economy back on track so that all boats will float on a rising tide—9-9-9. He understands that the best way to help the disadvantaged is through a vigorous, healthy free enterprise system, not through welfare.

The man is Herman Cain. All aboard the train!

LOOTUS

2011-11-11T06:49:00.003-06:00

Obama hands the Middle East to Iran.

2011-10-21T19:34:00.000-05:00

President Obama has completed his mission of "leading from behind" in Libya - six months of pummeling the country with explosives while bragging that we had no boots on the ground - culminating in the assassination by mob of Moamar Khaddafi. Now, as in Egypt, Obama the great Nobel Peace Prize winner will hand yet one more country over to the Islamist militants of Iran, just as he did with Egypt. Just as he is doing in Syria by conspicuously leaving the genocidal Assad family in power. Just as, announced today, he will do at the end of the year by removing our troops from Iraq.

God save Israel today, Europe tomorrow, and us the day after that from the Islamist hordes and the psychopaths who exploit them that our very own President empowers more each day...

It takes a village...

2011-10-19T07:09:00.000-05:00

of Palestinians, 1,027 of them to be exact, to add up to the moral equivalent of one Israeli.

Congratulations, Benjamin Netanyahu, for taking a position of apparent weakness and turning it into one of strength, a singularly amazing talent of the Israeli people.

You muffed it, Warren Buffett.

2011-08-16T06:07:00.002-05:00

An Op-Ed piece by Warren Buffett has been published in the New York Times this week in which he advocates for higher taxes on rich people like himself.

As others have pointed out, he can donate all he wants to the federal government, but all he does by pushing this Obama theme is increase the likelihood that taxes will be raised on people like you and me.

Because, as has amply been pointed out by others, the federal government could confiscate all the wealth of the Warren Buffetts of the world and not make a dent in the deficit.

It's all about cash flow. Progressives (and the faux Republicans who enable them) do not care about our balance sheet. They care only about keeping the money flowing to special interests and voter blocs, many of whom pay no income tax at all. And it is through the middle class where most of the cash flows because, at least for now, there are so many of us and we're the ones who pay the lion's share of the taxes in terms of dollars if not percentages.

It's the middle class that those who want to raise taxes are after, not the Warren Buffetts of the world. Warren Buffett suffers from the same malady that attacks many suddenly rich celebrities and children of the rich: wealth-guilt. They realize that they have just been luckier than most, so they try to look generous by carrying the banner for redistributing other people's wealth.

Warren Buffett would serve society better by putting pressure on Obama and the whole Washington class to curtail their spending, a la the head of Starbucks. But if he can't do that, then I suggest he do this:

Stuff it, Warren Buffett.

Standard & Poor's is bumbling and slow-witted

2011-08-07T08:08:00.002-05:00

So if Standard & Poor's is supposed to be so prescient about credit-worthiness, what took them so long to recognize what the market saw right off hand when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States?

The graph at left measures my company's FedEx package count. I posted it on the wall in my office to serve as a daily reminder of what we're up against. It is not that we lack credit. It is not that we don't have diversity in our work force. It is not that we don't do green business. Rather it shows exactly what happened in November 2009: 35% of our business disappeared virtually overnight. Thanks to regretfully shedding employees, cutting costs, and working much longer, harder hours, we've stayed in business and recovered a portion of our former volume. But it's no thanks to the socialists who have supposedly had a laser-like focus on "creating" and "saving" jobs.

Now it's nearly three years later and Standard & Poor's has just figured out that if America were strictly a business, it has been handed down to the incompetent, profligate son-in-law because none of the spoiled children of the founders stepped up and took charge?

The Republican establishment are those spoiled children. Time and time again, they have caved to the most atavistic of Democrat tendencies in the name of "civility" and "compromise", claiming false achievements to cover up their own lack of spine. Case in point: our Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander says about the recent Debt Deal that it "cuts cuts cuts" when in effect it does almost nothing nothing nothing to reduce debt and deficits. And now, Standard and Poor's downgrade is even being used to rationalize the tax hikes after which Obama, Pelosi, and Reid lust so passionately.

Believe me, my actual income is not rich. I pay an obscene amount of taxes. But just because of my company's gross receipts I qualify as one of those rich people that the Democrats want to tax yet more...

Who represents me in Congress?

If the Senator Alexanders of the Republican Party are not going to take the momentum of the Tea Party and run with it, then it is time they retire and give a chance to someone with fire in their belly to take their place.

Voters to Mayor Karl Dean: Bug Off!

2011-08-05T08:08:00.000-05:00

Sure, Nashville "progressive" Mayor Karl Dean won reelection yesterday. He was unopposed other than a homeless guy and a couple of other fringe candidates. And the incumbent council members he supported won their races, as incumbents are wont to do.

But the bottom line from yesterday's election was that Nashvillians generally don't care for Dean's penchant for sticking it to the city's taxpayers and traditions. Each of the challengers he supported lost their bids to unseat his political opponents, and of course his lame-brain idea for raping the Fairgrounds was trounced in a landslide by referendum. Would that we could have put his other big, expensive lame-brain idea, the new convention center, to the same test.

Mayor Dean, like Barack Obama, waltzed into office on the strength of assets he did not earn and a glib style that fooled a lot of people, supported by other moochers and looters like Megan Barry and Ronnie Steine. I hope his unopposed win to a second term is not an omen for the 2012 presidential election. The voters have turned against him, yet he wins...

The Tea Party Carries the Torch

2011-08-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

Assuming that the debt ceiling deal passes Congress, which I think is still a big assumption, it is no win for Barack Obama, but it is a save. If it doesn't pass, it is not the disaster for the U.S. economy that the Democrats have predicted. But it will be a disaster for Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and all the rest of them.

Either way this whole ugly struggle has been a great moral victory for conservatives. It has forced the Democrats to confront this question in the eyes of all taxpaying Americans:

What's so hard to understand about spending less?

Passing this debt ceiling extension will take the pressure off the Democrats to answer that question. They cannot answer it. They must be thanking their lucky stars that John Boehner would deal with them at all.

Spending less means they don't get reelected. That's what all the screaming and squealing has been about for the past month of "gridlock".

If we had to rely on the Republican Party alone to get us here, the Lindsey Grahams and John McCains and Lamar Alexanders of the Senate, and even torchbearer John Boehner in the House, we would never have gotten here. Their nature is to go along to get along. They would have caved weeks ago, with no real spending cuts at all and no second stage to force the issue again.

There was nothing sweeter I heard in all this debate than the day the media was reporting that the Tea Party House members couldn't be bought: They didn't want favors and didn't particularly care if they got reelected. They came to Congress simply to do what their constituents sent them to do. How cool is that!

In the past few days I have heard the Tea Party derided by a reporter as part of a regular news report on NBC Nightly News as obstructionist. I have defended the Tea Party to a good friend who is as conservative as can be but was panicking that the markets couldn't handle the disruption. I have listened to Van Jones on NPR deriding the Tea Party for being unpatriotic. I have listened to the faux expert Howard Bloom on Coast to Coast A.M. still invoking Keynesian Economics even in the face of the abysmal failure of the Stimulus as the only strategy to save the economy! It has been maddening!

But there's no denying the bottom line:

We have the Tea Party movement to thank for finally forcing Washington to reduce its spending.

A Capitol Fourth 2011

2011-07-16T14:50:00.005-05:00

Ten years ago I took my kids to Washington D.C. for the 4th of July. America had lost its innocence the year before in the 9/11 attacks but my kids were still in the halcyon days of their pre-teen, cell phone-free childhood, so it was an exciting adventure for us all. In fact my memories of that trip are so fond that this year, much in need of a shot of patriotic adrenaline, I decided to catch the 4th in D.C. again on my way to Wilmington, Delaware, where I had some personal business to conduct.

Leaving Nashville on the 2nd I decided to take the long way up through the middle of Kentucky on I-65. I stopped in Elizabethtown for lunch and found Jerry's J-Boy restaurant just off the exit. It features oldies music decor and has life size statues of the Blues Brothers in the dining room. I had a philly steak sandwich with real thick french fries, a totally delicous culinary experience.

From there I headed up 65 until heading east on a state highway in search of an ethanol free gas station that I could not find as advertised in Taylorsville. It seems that Kentucky has few such gas stations, perhaps due to the importance of corn to the local agriculture. Undaunted I filled up with whiskey-grade gasoline and headed north until I hit I-64 east toward Lexington and on to West Virginia, a low traffic, beautiful ride through Daniel Boone National Forest and on to the mountains leading in to Charleston, West Virginia. Charleston has a gorgeous domed state capitol building nestled in the mountains by a winding river. It seems like it would be a fun place to spend a Saturday night, but all I can say is if you stop at the exit that has a Knight's Inn and Day's Inn, spend the extra few bucks to stay at the latter. (And by the way, it is no problem to find ethanol free gasoline in Virginia and Tennessee. I especially enjoyed the Patriot stations in Virginia on the trip back, all of which carry pure gas.)

The next day, the 3rd, I drove on into Maryland, again a very scenic and easy route until you get up around the D.C. area, where it gets a bit crowded. I made my way over to the town of Laurel, between D.C. and Baltimore, where I was delighted to find the Quality Inn where I had stayed ten years before, still clean, comfortable, and economical as before, and within a short walk of the train station where you can catch the train to D.C. or to the Metro Station. Here's a tip: leave your car and take the train and/or metro to visit D.C. The train doesn't run on the 4th but it just takes a few minutes to drive to the Greenbelt Metro station where there is plenty of free parking and the fare for an all-day Metro pass was just $9.00. You can take the train all the way in to Union Station in D.C. on weekdays.

By the way, I stumbled onto the best seafood restaurant I've ever encountered right behind the hotel: Bottom of the Bay Seafood. Go hungry. Prepare to encounter a crowd. Don't bother to dress up. It's just long tables covered with kraft paper and garnished with rolls of paper towels where big eaters sit shoulder to shoulder devouring piles of crabs. Personally I did not want to get messy from the crab cracking frenzy and ordered the seafood feast. I could barely walk when I left and could not clean my plate.

Once you get to D.C. virtually everything is free. There is too much to do! I got there early, before the crowds, and walked the mall. Later in the day it would be hot and crowded with people attending the Folk Life Festival, but in the morning it was still comfortable and good for just meandering. When the kids and I went we saw Condoleeza Rice, but I didn't see anyone famous this time except Abe Lincoln, riding in a golf cart. I took in the fife and drum ceremony at the National Archives building, pictured at left, while eating a Kielbasa dog bought from a street vendor. Delicious!

Next I headed toward the Washington Monument and beyond it, the Lincoln Memorial. I found a couple of interesting factoids in the free map of the mall you can get at an information stand. The construction of the monument was slowed for a long time in the mid-nineteenth century because the anti-foreign Know-Nothing party seized it in 1854 to protest the contribution of a memorial stone by Pope Pius IX! Also, it is a little off center because of sandy soil in just the right spot.

They are reconstructing the reflection pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, so you have to take a long walk around it for now, but that takes you to the bridge to Arlington if you stay to the left side of the construction zone. It is sobering to stand at JFK's grave, below which I made this photo, but somehow I was even more touched by seeing Mary Todd and Robert Lincoln's graves, along with numerous Supreme Court Justices and of course, the thousands of soldiers.

I can't go into everything I saw and felt that day, but I can tell you this: You would have to be a complete idiot, an utter dolt, an unfeeling blob, to experience D.C. like this on the 4th of July and not be deeply affected by it. My daughter reminded me that when we went in 2001, she wept when the fireworks went off, and she is no drama queen. It is that kind of place and that kind of day. The Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the new WWII Memorial - each could provide a day or more of reflection by themselves.

Alas, by the time I got through Arlington, I was sweaty and tired. My back and feet and even my hips hurt from all the walking and I was jealously eyeing the folks who had rented bicycles, but glad I didn't have to fool with them every time I wanted to dart in some place. I made my way back across the bridge over to Constitution Avenue for the parade. There were marching bands and floats like this one celebrating the freedom that Vietnamese have found in the U.S., the Budweiser horses and the Wells Fargo coach and even the Hershey's Kiss mobile.

After that I had to have air conditioning. I worked for a while on a report for my work blog in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History until the crowds drove me back out into the suffocating heat and I had to again seek A/C, this time in the pavilion restaurant at the Hirshorn Sculpture Garden back near the National Archives. The sculpture garden is a must-see. My favorite is the stainless steel tree. Finally after that, I made my way to the Capitol. See those people sitting on the steps? That was my ultimate destination.

From those steps I took this picture later that night. That's Little Richard on the big screen, bringing on the fireworks over the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument in between. I sat with thousands of others at the Capitol Lawn for hours waiting for the A Capitol Fourth concert which was broadcast on PBS. Steve Martin, Josh Groban, and Kelli O'Hara also performed, all of them great, but Steve Martin's fiddle player absolutely brought the crowd to its feet with his rendition of "Orange Blossom Special."

From the Capitol all the way down and past the Lincoln Memorial there were hundreds of thousands of us cheering on the good ol' U.S.A. There was every color of skin and every imaginable language and accent spoken all around me all day. It is hard if not impossible not to be proud of our country in the midst of such an experience. If you have never been to Washington D.C. on the 4th of July, I implore you... do it!

John Edwards Was Right

2011-06-26T07:23:00.002-05:00

John Edwards lost his presidential ambitions in 2008 to Barack Obama's ascendancy and now has lost his Father of the Year ambitions to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he was right on about one thing:

There are two Americas.

Of course John Edwards meant that there is an America made up of Haves and Have-Nots. But the truer picture is that America is composed of Knows and Know-Nots. That is, those who know and live what made the United States the greatest country in the history of the world, and those who don't know that, but do live off it.

In John Edwards lottery-winning trial lawyer world, the Have-Nots are hopelessly oppressed and can only be saved by smarter people like him. In truth, this class warfare take on America is the essence of the Know-Not world. It is fueled by an ever growing underclass of people who thrive on being victims and who look to the government for everything in life from their cell phone service to their health care, coupled with a fat upper class of over-educated, over-served, self-idolizing manipulators like John Edwards (in the best tradition of Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton, leading straight through to Barack Obama) who are using the ignorant, malleable masses to maintain political power.

In the middle between those two extremes lies the "real America," the one that rebelled against British oppression, that settled the Original Sin of its nearly perfect Constitution in a civil war, that snuffed out European Nazism and Asian empiricism by shedding its own sons' blood, and then defeated Stalininism with moral and economic superiority. The real America is a collection of self-reliant individualists who get up with an alarm clock, go the extra mile, have strong faith, adhere to a strict moral code, and are good neighbors. The sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts in real America because the American system of freedom and opportunity and limited government makes everyone an over-achiever.

As a business owner, I must by nature be an optimist. But also as a business owner I must be a realist. I don't easily admit defeat, nor do I keep plodding on starry-eyed in the face of defeat. Even if I wanted to, the bottom line reality of running a business would keep me from doing so.

So as an optimist I do think that ultimately the individual human spirit will prevail but here is the realism that I think we all must now face:

The battle for America is lost to the Know-Nots.

Even if a conservative candidate wins the presidency in 2012, even if both houses of Congress are won by conservatives, the moral compass of the country, the hearts and minds of the plurality of its population if not of its electorate, has been corrupted so thoroughly by the Know-Nots that we will not recover before America has lost its place as the leader of the world and we have become a third world country. And in such a weakened state, we are ripe to lose our sovereignty. Anything could happen. China looms. Russia crouches. Islamists theaten. The prospect is bleak.

The evidence of our decline is too great to enumerate in detail, but just a sampling of the news suffices, I think, to bolster my point:

We have a president who refuses to embrace victory, won't protect our borders, despises capitalism, bows to foreign leaders, and pointedly eschews the exceptionalism not only of America but of Judeo-Christian civilization altogether. We have a politically correct system that rewards poor performance and punishes excellence. We have a government that is growing in leaps and bounds, paying higher wages than the private sector, spending us into bankruptcy, and enacting a spider web of oppressive federal laws that dictate the very light bulbs and washing machines we can purchase! It is taxing the producers and redistributing the wealth created by their sweat and toil to the 50% who pay no tax at all. And we have every possible class of minorities demanding special treatment such that even sodomists are winning forced acceptance of their sexual perversion on par with traditional marriage and parenting. The rates of divorce, abuse, and addiction among society as a whole are debilitating, draining billions of dollars a year from the economy and creating children who grow up more often than not it seems rootless, insecure, spineless and anything but ready to take on adult responsibilities.

I could go on, but won't. If you are among the Know-Nots, you won't get it. If you are among the other America, you will find no end of examples yourself.

Here's my bottom line:

Even if the war for America is lost for the country as a whole, those of us who love it for what made it great should fight on anyway. That way, though America as we have known it may be defeated in this century, the American spirit will never die. And my faith tells me that even after America falls flat on its face, the American spirit will bring it to greatness again.

That is not what is known as liberation theology! It is, rather, a messianic faith in the resurrection of good over evil.

John Edwards' fall from grace serving as just one example of exactly how that works...

Geert Wilders in Nashville

2011-05-15T09:32:00.002-05:00

When I told a friend about seeing Geert Wilders speak in Nashville the night before, she said she'd seen him on the news and thought, "I would like to hear what he has to say."

She expressed his charisma perfectly.

Geert Wilders cuts a unique and striking figure, tall, tanned and lean, serious though with a youthful face which is accentuated by bleached-blond hair swept back as if he's Hermes sprinting through the world.

In the Netherlands Wilders is the leader of the Party of Freedom, the third leading party in Parliament, and is considered a favorite to be the Netherlands' next prime minister. He is a vocal opponent of Islamist influences on traditional Dutch culture and of acceptance of Sharia law.

Thursday night at Cornerstone Church in Nashville Geert Wilders walked onstage with purpose and wasted no time in his speech delivery, hammering point after point, pausing only in deference to the applause of the thousands who showed up to hear him.

The police carried at least one protester out of the auditorium in the midst of the speech. He hollered something I couldn't make out and bing bada boom he was gone. It did not slow Wilders down.

Wilders is on trial in the Netherlands for "hate speech" involving his politically incorrect messages about Islam, but I never heard a word that sounded hateful in his speech. Rather, he was blunt. The truth, as he suggested, is hard to swallow. He noted that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also being sued in Germany for praising the recent demise of Osama Bin Laden. Free speech, apparently, is a uniquely American if endangered concept.

Wilders noted that thank God, there are many moderate Muslims, but the problem is that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Mohammed was a violent, perverted figure. What he could not achieve through persuasion he forced by the sword. Wilders urged the audience not to shrink from judging Islam not as a religion but as an inferior, dangerous ideology. He urged Americans not to stand idly by while Islamists use our tolerant natures to impose their intolerant ideology. He stressed the importance of defending Israel and he challenged Islamist countries such as Saudi Arabia to allow religious freedom as in the west. The full text of his speech is available on Wilders' web site.

The evening included the showing of a video detailing Islamist activity in Nashville and warmup speeches by Bill Warner, a local professional, and Sam Solomon, a former Muslim and scholar. All were effective presentations.

But it was Geert Wilders who really shined as Hermes bringing an explicit, urgent warning to America.

The Palin-hatin', Trump-hatin', Self-loathin' Crowd

2011-05-01T07:59:00.000-05:00

That is a country song.

Or at least a country club song. Not that everyone who is a member of a country club is exactly the same. Some just do it because they can.

I'm fine with that!

But so many of this type have their entire self-worth calculated by their membership. Or if it's not the club, it's the car (Lexus, Beemers, Range Rovers, Mercedes...), the clothes, the jewelry, the vanity surgery, the private schools, the gated community...

Again, there are people who simply like some of these things and they've earned them.

I'm fine with that!

Earned them. That's the key word.

And by the way, not all of these people call themselves liberals.

I have something to add to that old saw that if a man's not a liberal at 20 he has no heart, and if not a conservative at 40 he has no brain.

I would add that if he has a big inheritance (or married money), he'll call himself a conservative but really be a liberal. That's how people like Lamar Alexander and Lindsey Graham get elected.

Many people have noted that the problem with the health care system in America is that the consumer has gradually been separated from the provider by a third party, the health insurance providers. Thus the dollar value of a visit to the doctor has become meaningless. Going to the doctor on copays has made it like going into the Chinese buffet and loading your plate up with crab legs and lobster.

The same has happened regarding life in general with a huge segment of my generation. Our parents did so well, and we have suffered so little for the blessings we have, that few of us really know the meaning of a dollar any more. Few of us have started businesses. Few of us have financed our houses out of our own pocket. Or our cars. Or tuition to private schools. Or our credit card debt.

It all came from mommy and daddy. Or at least all the over-the-top stuff did.

If these folks were left on their own in the real world, they would sink, not swim. And if you strip away all the pretense you will find that they loath themselves for their own incompetence and attack others to compensate.

The first sign of such people is that they hate Sarah Palin. The second sign is that they hate Donald Trump.

For between the two of them, Palin and Trump completely negate the inflated self-worth of the country club set. Palin, by starting with nothing and making something of herself. Trump, by starting with something and being willing to risk it all to make it bigger. And succeeding.

Palin's and Trump's achievements completely pop the status bubble of the country club set. Palin can laugh at their political correctness from her earned stature on the outside, and Trump can sit right among them on the inside, seeing right through them, making them all look small.

It's no wonder the country club set recoils and sneers when either name is mentioned.

Most of the folks of my generation in this "country club set" have not earned a bit of what they've got that makes them feel set apart from average Joe. And in fact they have nothing in common with the average Joe. But it's not that the Lexus or the club membership or the pedicures and massage therapy that makes them better than the average Joe. In fact, they are worse. They are what is know as white trash, be they white, black, Asian, natural blondes, or otherwise.

Rather, it's more likely the average Joe that goes to church and tithes to serve his Maker and help his neighbor. It's more likely the average Joe who doesn't just lament the fate of the poor victims of the tornadoes but actually gets down there and works a help center. It's more likely the average Joe who serves his country in the armed forces and is proud if his children do. It's more likely the average Joe who can be counted on at any time, under any conditions. It's more likely the average Joe who is willing to get his hands dirty creating a business out of his garage these days. It's the average Joe who may only earn $10 an hour, but by God he's earned what he's got.

It's the average Joe who looks at Barack Obama and recognizes him for the incompetent prig he is.

It's the average Joe who responds to Sarah Palin and Donald Trump with cheers.

It's the average Joe who will vote his conscience, not whatever is cool at the club.

And I'm fine with that!

John McCain is in Libya

2011-04-22T07:19:00.000-05:00

He's riding around in an armored Mercedes and calling the rebels his heroes.

He's the Obama administration version of an unmanned drone.

It's time to retire, Sen. McCain.

Review of "Atlas Shrugged Part I"

2011-04-17T09:43:00.000-05:00

I found myself wondering what it would be like if I didn't know the book so well as I watched "Atlas Shrugged Part I" yesterday.

It was the second day of the movie's release, the matinee feature on a Saturday afternoon. A month or so ago the movie had only been booked into about a dozen theaters. It opened Friday in about three hundred theaters. Reports were that the first showings were selling out everywhere.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the theater at Hundred Oaks here in Nashville had it showing in two of its twenty-seven theaters and that by showtime, even for a matinee, nearly every seat was taken.

I had read that the movie, independently produced, was low-budget at $15 million. (Coincidentally I watched a documentary recently about the making of "Dr. Zhivago" in 1965. Its $15 million budget was considered outlandish!) Some critics have panned the film for not having the production values that a more expensive undertaking would have.

But I was immediately disabused of the notion that the story suffered from the film's budget. The opening scenes cleverly update Ayn Rand's 50's story smack into the here and now. The urgency of struggling to make a difference as an individual against a tide of social rot is swiftly introduced in the superbly cast and acted characters of Dagny Taggart and Henry Reardon and Ellis Wyatt. And the rot is richly represented by Dagny's spineless brother James, Henry's despicably materialistic wife Lillian and especially the very personification of all things lobbyistic, Wesley Mouch.

It's right after the opening, and before Dagny starts working on her own railroad, that the film stumbles a bit. That's where I was really wondering how someone unfamiliar with the story from reading the book could stay involved. The book takes its time, patiently assembling numerous character type to exemplify the looters and moochers and the producers and to complicate the plot, but the movie has to gallop through a lot of that. I think the movie could have been stronger by having fewer characters in the first half and instead focusing only on a hand full.

But once Dagny starts building her railroad, the movie takes off like the high speed train she's fixing to run on it. And by the time the end suddenly comes, you want more, more, more!

And especially, you want to know who the heck is John Galt?

Let's hope we get part 2, soon.

To see scenes from the movie and to find a theater showing it near you, visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site.

Ok, Maybe Boehner Not Da Man

2011-04-17T08:17:00.000-05:00

I think I've heard every possible side of the supposed budget cut deal from last week. That it in fact stops $39 billion in government spending this year, that it in fact will only result in something over $250 million in savings, that Obama got clocked, that Boehner got clocked... and I now have no idea what the truth of the matter is.

Regardless of all that, I was at best premature in declaring John Boehner "Da Man" in my entry last week.

I am really not sure what to think of John Boehner. Personally I admire him for his Horation Alger life and his clear love of country. Although I think men crying publicly is generally pathetic, I think his tears are sincere and people are small to mock him or belittle him for it.

On the other hand I cannot get away from a nagging feeling that he is compromised. There have been rumors for months in the leftist media that he has had affairs that are chronically on the verge of being exposed in the New York Times. The way he acts makes me think that someone on the other side may indeed be holding that sword over his head. For he talks tough, seems to push hard, but then the results are always ambiguous.

It's as if he sat down with Obama and Obama said, "Ok, John, I know you've got to placate the Tea Party. You've got to actually look like you're winning the fight from time to time. If not, you the freshmen reps won't let you keep the leadership. But you cannot actually win the fight. If you do, I will let the dogs out about your personal life and destroy you. So we will make deals that make it look like you won to your side and make it look like I won to my side. That we you keep your Speakership and I keep my agenda afloat. Deal? Deal."

Donald Trump recently said that if it turns out Obama has deceived the nation about his birth legitimacy it will go down as one of the greatest con jobs in history.

If it turns out John Boehner is sacrificing political effectiveness for personal honor at this crucial point, it will go down as one of the greatest personal failures in history.

You Da Man, John Boehner.

2011-04-10T16:08:00.000-05:00

From what I can see, no matter how the Obama administration tries to spin it, John Boehner played his hand perfectly in the budget negotiations last week.

Calmly, repeatedly to the point of inanity, Boehner declared that a government shutdown was not an option, yet he held out against Harry Reid and Barack Obama's ridiculous defense of support for genocide in the form of Planned Parenthood funding as an excuse for refusing to lower the federal budget.

In doing so, even to those in the middle who might otherwise be fooled by the Democrats' claim that funding the abortion mills was a defense of "women's health rights," the President and his comrades looked hypocritical, shallow, and worst of all, like the petty, conniving liars that they are.

New polling indicates that even Obama's blind support among blacks is finally eroding. Millions of Americans who work in the private sector and have generally liked the idea of Obama as president found little sympathy for the government and union workers whose unproductive jobs an ever-increasing federal budget protects. They've lived the reality of the constricted free market, the jobs lost, the business owners working long hours with diminished staff and shrinking sales. They might not yet blame government policy for it, but they know something's not right when the Feds just keep adding bureaucrats and IRS agents. All while so many of us are writing checks shelling unbelievable amounts of tax this week and wondering, what the hell am I getting back for this? And why the hell are so many of my fellow citizens not paying taxes and taking so much from the public till?

$39 billion is just a drop in the bucket and a long way from the goalposts that Congressman Paul Wright's real debt reduction plan puts in sight. The Obama administration has still got our backs against our own goal line. But by holding firm this past week, John Boehner has put us back in the possession of the ball and given us confidence in our quarterback.

You da man, John Boehner.

Trump to Obama: You're Fired! Not.

2011-03-27T08:47:00.001-05:00

Nowadays most people are more enthusiastic about scheduling a colonoscopy than watching a presidential election debate, but it wasn't always that way.

Debates in recent years have suffered from the effects of political correctness and an overabundance of candidate handlers, such that the candidates themselves are so careful they can hardly land a punch on the other.

But it wasn't always that way. In the earlier years of my lifetime I can remember three major game changing moments in presidential election debates.

In the 1988 vice presidential debate, George H.W. Bush's running mate Dan Quayle, a relatively young Senator at 41 years old, defended his inexperience by noting that he had more years in Congress than John Kennedy did when he ran for president. His opponent, Lloyd Bentsen, responded by saying, "Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." The cutting remark could not save the disastrous Dukakis/Bentsen campaign but indeed it was the only bright spot for the Democrats that year. Doubts about Quayle's fitness dogged him throughout his term as vice president and certainly helped lose the 1992 campaign for the Bush-Quayle ticket.

Gerald Ford, who was Richard Nixon's "unelected" vice president (he had been picked by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew, who had to resign due to a business scandal), didn't even need any help from opponent Jimmy Carter to stumble badly in a 1976 presidential debate. Responding to a moderator's question about the Cold War, he claimed that there was "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe". He knew better, of course, but he was trying to make the point that Eastern Europe, though under communist control, was free at heart. Too fine a point. The blunder help put the second most incompetent president we've ever had in office.

Just four years later Ronald Reagan turned the tables in a presidential debate by delivering perhaps the most famously devastating one-liner of all to the hapless incumbent Jimmy Carter. Responding to Barney Fife-like attacks on his record by Carter, Reagan smilingly retorted, "There you go again." As simple as the phrasing and the response, it was devastating, highlighting Carter's petty and strident nature and Reagan's self-confidence. Reagan won the general election by a huge margin and subsequently saved the U.S. economy and brought the U.S. to victory in the Cold War.

Now consider the possible Republican candidates for president. Listing them all would take up too much space. Hopefully there is a sleeper among them who will rise to the top. But it seems they are nearly all more like yawners.

Except for two. One of whom is detested by many on both the left and the right: Sarah Palin.

I can tell you why they both hate her. It is not her screechy voice. It is not her Idaho accent. It is not her hairdo or her glasses or her good looks or the fact that she resigned as governor of Alaska.

It is because she has actually done something with her life. The people who criticize her left and right are almost universally the types who are big on the talk but not the walk. They have inherited or married money, they have gone to all the right schools and been in all the right clubs thanks to somebody else's money and achievements, but they have done little themselves. They recognize a Sarah Palin as the biggest threat to the self-aggrandizing bubble of the lives they live.

Nowhere was Palin's power as a do-er to devastate non-do-ers more evident than in one line of her speech accepting the nomination as John McCain's running mate in 2008: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." Like Lloyd Bentzen's zinger directed at Dan Quayle, Palin provided the one bright spot in an otherwise pathetic campaign by McCain who refused to go for the jugular to defeat his opponent.

Some have said that Palin's additon to the ticket sank McCain's campaign. The truth is that had McCain chosen a running mate anything like his middling self, he would have lost two to one.

The thing is, left or right or middle, the American people respond to leadership, not tact.

Despite the constant mantra from pundits that a Palin candidacy would be a disaster, and despite unrelenting attacks on her from left and right, academics and journalists, politicians and bureaucrats and other moochers and looters, her candidacy could galvanize a powerful backlash against the leftist disaster that is the Obama presidency.

Evidence so far is that there is only one other candidate who can do that: Donald Trump.

He too is a do-er and he does not pull punches. With either Palin or Trump running on the Republican ticket, Obama is doomed. That is why you hear so many of the sissy-britches on that side squealing like piggies whenever either Donald Trump or Sarah Palin is mentioned.

But... I hate to disappoint. You will never hear Donald Trump say "You're fired" to Barack Obama in a presidential debate. It's too obvious, for one thing. Like my title above, a million different blogs have already come up with the idea.

No. Should either Donald Trump or Sarah Palin emerge as the candidate, they will come up with something even better.

U.S. Attack on Libya: Huge Mistake

2011-03-18T07:21:00.003-05:00

Many have criticized Ronald Reagan for pulling our Marines out of Beirut in 1983 after an Islamist suicide bomber killed 241 American military men by driving a bomb laden water delivery truck into a U.S. Marine barracks. We were there to try to keep the lid on the civil war in Lebanon. The suicide bomber, it turned out, belonged to Hezbollah, "Party of God" translated from Arabic as Donald Rumsfeld points out in his new book, Known and Unknown.

Critics called the withdrawal a sign of weakness. It was quite the opposite. Reagan simply recognized that there was no use inserting ourselves in a no-win situation. You go to win a war, or you don't go at all. As he showed in Grenada.

It seems that Reagan was the last President for a while to understand this concept.

In 1999 we inserted ourselves into the Kosovo debacle, attempting to keep peace between the Albanian Muslims and the native Serbs after Tito's death led parts of the former Yugoslavia into violence - um, those parts where Muslims lived. The rest of Yugoslavia made a relatively peaceful transition into the free world. We had as many as 12,000 troops there at the turn of the century, and they're still there, presumably protecting the Albanians from genocide. But it was precisely one of those Albanians we were protecting who attacked and killed some of our soldiers in the Frankfurt airport just a few weeks ago. We can't extricate ourselves from the Kosovo tarbaby. If we stay, we are hated by both sides. If we leave, we are blamed for unleashing chaos.

Now we're joining a U.N. brainstorming/ barnstorming production in Libya, a so-called no-fly zone. Late in the game. When Khadafi has nearly re-won his entire country from the rebels after President Obama pronounced that Khadafi has "lost his legitimacy". Hunh? He was legitimate before, but now he's not? And we are not at all certain of exactly who these rebels are. In fact, I suppose President Obama is glad attention has shifted from Egypt where he was quick to badmouth weak, ailing old President Mubarak and look like a champion of the people. Those "people" now in charge have already resulted in the Israelis having to interdict one Egyptian ship loaded to the gills with weapons and amunition for the Palestinians. That would be the same Palestinians who spawned Hezbollah, whence President Reagan learned his lesson twenty-five years ago.

Speaking of lessons, the last no-fly zone I recall was the one put in place by the first President Bush after pushing Iraq back from Kuwait in 1990. We successfully kept Iraqi jets out of the sky but we allowed helicopters to fly for "humanitarian reasons." The principle "humanitarian" aid that Saddam delivered with those helicopters was euthenasia. He used them to kill thousands of his own people who rose in revolt against him, assuming we would help them overthrow their dictator. We didn't. Quite the opposite. The very no-fly zone that was supposed to help protect them, doomed their cause.

As I type this, so far there are no reports of attacks underway on Libya. I hope our military leadership is pushing back hard against the incompetent political leadership now in charge, delayinig or better yet preventing actual bloodshed at our hands. Because one thing's for sure. Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan. He can neither win a just war, nor have the guts to abandon an impossible one.

Atlas Shrugged Opens April 15

2011-03-11T05:58:00.001-06:00

You think it's coincidence that the first part of the Atlas Shrugged movie is opening on tax day?

I heard about the novel first in in high school. I've been a passionate fan of the novel since I finally read it about fifteen years ago. In a re-reading just a couple of years ago, I was amazed at the parallels with what is going on in the U.S. right now. I wrote a blog entry here about it at the time.

I've bought extra copies several times and given the book away to anyone who would take it and hopefully read it - a daunting task, as it is a thick book. The reward is an original, clever, riveting story and a rush of inspiration for anyone who is a do-er in this life - as opposed to a moocher or a looter, of course.

An independent production that I've heard is scrupulously faithful to the book (and thus released in parts), the movie at this date seems to have very limited distribution, but there are tools available online to show interest in the film to help secure theaters all over.

You can find those tools, the movie trailer, and much more at the official Atlas Shrugged Movie web site.

If it's not showing in a theater near me, I'm traveling whatever distance it takes to see it.

What's Wrong with Collective Bargaining?

2011-03-05T06:55:00.001-06:00

It's a fair question. So is: "What's wrong with monopolies?"

The answer is that both subvert the free market system by compromising individual achievement in the name of "rights" which are not really rights. Trying to justify collective bargaining (especially in the timely context of public sector employees which is the root of the Wisconsin and other protests) or monopolies is like trying to offer 1930s Germany or a popular vote in Afghanistan for imposition of Sharia Law as good examples of democracy.

Collective bargaining is not a right. It is a privilege granted the union movement on a state by state basis. States can revoke the privilege as certainly as they can revoke a driver license from a DUI offender. And now that in the dismal Obama economy the destructive results of years of expanding union rights are apparent, any state that does not work to reverse the trend is foolish.

Collective bargaining is especially toxic in states that do not have right to work laws. We're lucky here in Tennessee that we are a right to work state: no one has to join a union to hold a job. That at least keeps the unions somewhat honest.

But in states like Wisconsin where a union can not only claim the power to bargain for the renumeration and benefits of every single worker in its industry but also can force every single one of the workers in that industry to pay whatever dues it deems necessary, the situation is exactly the same as an economy where monopolies are allowed.

Think Bell before it was busted up as a monopoly, for example. Basically it controlled all telephone service nationwide. Its service stank. Technological advances were slow. Rates were high. And if someone came along with a better idea? Forget it. If it didn't make money for Bell, it was a non-starter.

Same with unions which have collective bargaining power and captive workers. The dynamic turns from what is good for the worker, especially the highly productive worker, to what is good for the union.

And what is good for the union is no better for the taxpayer than a monopoly like Bell was for the telephone customer.

Ethanol Free Gasoline

2011-02-28T05:32:00.003-06:00

Ethanol is primarily made from corn. Petroleum industry workers disdainfully refer to ethanol laced gasoline as "whiskey grade."
Word on the streets lately is that the government is fixing to increase the corn based ethanol content in gasoline to 15% from the current 10%.

This is a curious development since we're supposed to be going green but ethanol in gasoline decreases fuel efficiency and costs much more to bring to market. There is no pipeline for it in place throughout the country as for real gasoline. It is also one more drain on our tax money, as the way the government gets gas stations to sell gasoline with ethanol is through money incentives. Not to mention that using corn to make ethanol has driven up food prices worldwide, a particular hardship on third world countries where a small change in food prices can make the difference between life and starvation.

Interestingly, the ethanol is trucked from wherever it is made to distributors, then mixed in right before they fill the tanker trucks you see delivering gas to your local station. The truck driver simply tells the distributor whether his load is supposed to have ethanol or not and they switch it on or not right there when they fill up the tanker.

From what I can tell listening and reading around, there's also an issue with plastic components in the fuel lines of older cars and small engine appliances like lawnmowers, weedeaters, compressors, etc. The ethanol has a tendency to eat through the parts if they're not made out of the right kind of plastic. The car companies, long used to dealing with government pinheads, have accommodated ethanol in the newer model vehicles now that they know it's pretty much the rule of the road, making parts out of Teflon instead of plastic. Ever wonder why it costs so much to buy a car and then buy parts for it for repairs? Thank your federal government.

Luckily it's not yet completely the rule of the road. You can still find no-ethanol gasoline if you look for it. And from what I hear, many drivers do seek it out. That's why some gas stations choose to sell ethanol free gas - all other things being equal, it's a marketing advantage.

I drive an older model car. I started using ethanol free gasoline a few weeks ago. I have seen a marked difference in my gas mileage and engine performance in general. Word is that ethanol produces half the energy of regular gasoline and can degrade gas mileage by about 10%. I haven't done an exact comparison, like driving a full tank of ethanol gas and then comparing it to a full tank of no-ethanol, but from what I'm seeing, 10% or maybe more seems about right. Using the no-ethanol gas also seems to have cut down on the ping in my engine, as if I were using higher octane gasoline.

Here's a link to a listing of ethanol free gas stations in the U.S. I've checked it out locally and found it to be accurate. I recommend you try a tank or two of real unadulterated gasoline. And if I were running a no ethanol gas station, I think I'd have a nice big display of 100 watt incandescent light bulbs for sale before the government ban on them goes into effect in 2012...

Why Egypt Matters

2011-01-30T08:07:00.001-06:00

It occurs to me that that the people who were of age in the 1970s are increasingly becoming the old folks in the mix. That would basically be anyone 50 and older. Assuming 70 as the upper range of a generation's prime, those of us in our 50s and 60s - i.e, those who were around for Jimmy Carter's presidency - are in the diminishing half of the population. Thus those who are on-coming, those from 21 through their forties, have no real memory of the Vietnam War, the Arab oil imbargo, Watergate, Jimmy Carter, or Pat Paulsen for that matter.

The mistakes of the 1970s are still festering and history is repeating itself in places like Egypt today, thanks to those who have not learned the right lessons from those mistakes.

In a way this can all be blamed on Richard Nixon. I don't think he had much choice but to cut and run from Vietnam after Johnson escalated then botched the whole thing. But worse than that, Nixon's lamebrained handling of the Watergate burglary brought the honor of the presidency to such a low level that it ushered in Jimmy Carter.

The American people voted for Carter because he represented virtue in their minds after the dirty business of Nixon. Unfortunately they overlooked his incomeptence. Events proved him to be arguably the weakest, most misguided president in the history of the country. Nothing exemplified that more than the Iranian Islamist Revolution, first that it happened at all, and on top of that, that Carter posed himself as taking the high road of democracy when in fact he was paving the way for the draconian rule of the Islamists.

The Shah was certainly a weak sister who ran an ugly regime, but God help you if you were a woman, a Jew, an atheist, or a Christian in Iran after the Shah was gone. Flash forward thirty or so years and here we are with Iran poised to have nuclear weaponry all the while calling for the destruction of Israel, while the world sits on its hands. And our president is focusing on high speed rail and new bridges as the most critical task for our country in his State of the Union address.

So... now the dictator of Egypt is about to fall. He has ruled with an iron fist. He has denied democratic process. There is little to praise about Mubarak. Except that that under his rule the Islamists have been kept at bay. Under his rule Egypt has helped secure the tenuous peace in the region between Israel and its neighbors by living up to its agreements. Under his rule Egypt has not sought nuclear weaponry. Under his rule non-Muslims have had freedom to worship or not in Egypt and women have had freedom to live as relatively equal human beings to men.

When the Iranian revolution took place, it was not all on account of the Islamists. There were millions of Iranians, many of them leftists but all of them hopeful, who thought it would usher in democracy again for the country. But what did happen is that the violence and chaos in he wake of the Shah's departure created a power vacuum and the Islamists marched right in, knowing that America had a weak president who would not oppose them.

I think it is reasonable to argue that a large proportion of the problems that world has had from the Middle East for the last forty years has been a result of the Iranian Revolution. It all came about because Jimmy Carter was a weak and overly idealistic president. Most of my generation who lived through it know that now - that is if they are not in denial, prefering to judge Jimmy Carter as a president by the Habitat houses he has built sicne rather than what he really did at the time.

Now those of you who are up and coming: Examine the atmosphere that has brought this situatin in Egypt to bear. Do we have a strong president, one who says what he means and means what he says? Do we have a president who is unequivocally on the side of freedom? Do we have a president who can see black and white when it comes to moral questions?

The fall of Egypt, no matter how bad Mubarak may be, will not result in democracy and human rights. It will result in another Islamist regime. They will walk right in and take control from the vaccuum created by Mubarak's loss of power and America's lack of will.

It's Jimmy Carter all over again.

Thank you, President Obama.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-26T09:27:00.000-06:00

Now that Christmas is past, it is a perfectly appropriate greeting, comrades.

Do Tell

2010-12-19T10:10:00.000-06:00

I've just finished reading Robert E. Lee: A Life by Roy Blount, Jr. I don't really know Mr. Blount's political attitude. I presume it is left-leaning based on his close association with NPR. But I like his sense of humor and figured the book would be a good read. It is.

Mr. Blount's purpose might have been to strip General Lee of some of his iconic mystique and explore him as a person. I don't get the impression that Mr. Blount holds him in awe so much as in fascination. And I further get the idea that he really wants to find some dirt on Lee if there is any to find. If so, he finds none. You can't help but admire General Lee. He was imperfect, as befits a human, but he was also a great leader of men, brave, virtuous, and thoughtful.

And beautiful. Mr. Bount spends a great deal of time on General Lee's physical attributes, assembling a multitude of contemporaneous admirations of him from both men and women for both his handsome face and fine form of limb as well as his inspiring posture.

In the course of this pinup discourse on General Lee and speculation about even the male admiration for him physically, Mr. Blount makes a very telling statement: 'This was a time," he writes, "when homoeroticism was regarded as such an unspeakable abomination that a respectable man could indulge in it without being suspected of it."

How true! And how telling of our times. Other contemporary historians have even theorized that Abe Lincoln might have been homosexual. In the nineteenth century, no one questioned men sleeping together as Lincoln did with other penny-pinching lawyers traveling the judicial circuit in Kentucky. But somehow in today's jaundiced culture, such an event has to be homoerotic.

My guess is that the sleeping arrangement was quite unpleasant for all involved, especially the gangly Mr. Lincoln's bed partners, who had precious little space to sleep once he got under the covers. And given the sanitation of the times, let's not even think about the smells.

Be that as it may, now Congress has seen fit to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, to my mind the most practical accommodation of cultural mores in the military that could have existed. The policy recognized that different people have different tastes, but that in the military, consistency is a hallmark of discipline and personal tastes must take a back seat. What you do on your own time is your own business as long as it doesn't get in the way of the military life, so keep it discreet and we'll all get along.

Congress sees it differently. Congress (and a president like Obama), i.e. the federal government, is short on common sense. That's how they end up having hearings on doping in professional baseball. That's how they limit and prohibit oil drilling within our own lands and off our own coasts. That's how they refuse to protect our borders while practically strip searching grannies at airports. That's how they rationalize earmarks. How they raise taxes on the most productive and hand the proceeds out to the least productive. Insert your own example of their folly. There's at least one per day when they're on duty, especially in this lame duck session of Congress.

Mr. Lee was infamous not only for his military genius but also for his humility. He was not a stern leader; in fact, he was if anything lax in matters of discipline. (Read the book!) But he was a practical man and an effective leader. Is there anyone like him in a position of power today?

Do tell!

President Obama's Gestapo?

2010-11-28T09:08:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago while I was driving down Charlotte Pike near Pep Boys, I noticed a large white SUV with the word POLICE in big blue block letters stenciled on the sides. It was pulling onto Charlotte right in front of me, in my direction.

I knew right away from the graphics styling that it wasn't Metro. It didn't seem to be something you'd see from Brentwood or Hendersonville or one of the other satellite communities. And it seemed too large and intimidating to be from a rentacop security company, though its styling kind of reminded me of one of those: close enough to a real police vehicle to make you think it was one.

I couldn't get right up to the vehicle but I got close enough to see this: it was marked as a Department of Homeland Security vehicle and said something about federal law enforcement. It turned off Charlotte at the moment I caught a glance of those words.

Excuse the seeming melodrama, but seeing this federal police vehicle on the streets of my city made my blood run cold. My mind immediately jumped to police states I have known from history and experience, specifically my years working in Mexico where the Federals were all over the place (look how well that's working out today) and thirty years ago, behind the Iron Curtain, which looked then like one huge prison yard compared to the West.

Although the very spot where I saw this POLICE vehicle was flooded with several feet of water back in May, there's certainly no disaster needing federal law enforcement there now. There is no terrorist threat to Nashville. And we have all we need of Metro, Capitol Hill police, and state troopers.

I don't think you need to be a very creative thinker to connect the dots between President Obama's campaign pledge to form a "civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded" as the military. I believe the President may have come to office thinking he'd have to start such a "national security force" from scratch. He probably learned a quick lesson about that when he saw how quickly ACORN was scuttled. But in Homeland Security, he has found just what he was looking for.

Just look at what the TSA is doing in airports. Just look at how ICE has been used on the borders. Neither one has demonstrably done a thing in President Obama's two years in office to get a leg up on terrorism. Terrorist incidents discovered after the plots were already underway on our soil have risen manifold over the time since President Bush was in office, yet only luck has prevented most of them from from success in killing people and damaging property on our soil.

Like the billions of dollars that have been pumped into education "for the children" and misused to strengthen unions, dilute morality and core curriculum values, and enrich government leeches who profit from wasted government money, billions more are now being pumped into Homeland Security in the name of fighting terrorism but instead are being misused to strengthen the federal government's hold over its own citizens.

Watch for a Homeland Security POLICE vehicle coming to a street near you.

The Great White Whale

2010-11-06T09:45:00.000-05:00

If you've never read Moby Dick, or haven't read it since you were perhaps forced to as a student, I highly recommend it. Like all great novels, it has timeless lessons. The whaling industry out of New Bedford, Massachusetts no longer exists, but man's struggles against nature and his own nature sure do. For today, that story of Captain Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale and another story out of that part of Massachusetts, Scott Brown's recent election as Senator, offer good instruction for us.

For those of us who believe that the free market and individual responsibility are the bedrock of the American system, this week's election results were encouraging. Sixty seats shifting to the conservative side of the divide in Congress is big news. The relatively few high profile and highly irritating losses on our side--e.g., Harry Reid--are easily swallowed in comparison to the total control of Congress that the left has had up to now.

There are plenty of warnings out there that the Tea Party's work is not done. We cannot let up holding the newly elected Reps feet to the fire. We must make sure they are not swallowed up by the viper pit known as Washington. I agree with that wholeheartedly. While I believe that there were many true believers elected, there were no doubt some Lindsey Grahams among the pack, too. They need to be purged as soon as they reveal themselves.

But there's an equally dangerous threat from the left that I don't think is getting proper notice. Many have noted already President Obama's 60 Minutes interview in which he reveals that he does not get it. He thinks the Democrats lost so big because they just didn't communicate the value of their policies well enough to the electorate. And already Nancy Pelosi is confirming that she wants to be the minority leader. She is apparently unaware that this election was as much a repudiation of what she has done to pass Obamacare as of Obama's work himself.

It is not that these people are stupid, nor even just tone deaf. What they are, like Captain Ahab, is megalomaniacs. Nothing will stop them from killing the great white whale.

If we sometimes doubt that, for instance when President Obama feigns humility in a carefully staged and worded press interview, we need only remember the aftermath of Scott Brown's election to the Senate. All logical thinking said that the message had been delivered and the Democrats would abandon their quest for Obamacare as political suicide. Yet within weeks, by hook, crook, and no limit of corrupition, it was passed.

President Obama has a knack for presenting himself as a "good guy." He can talk the talk and walk the walk of both worlds which make up his roots. But a good guy he is not. He is determined to turn the country and its exceptional tradition upside down and inside out.

Here is where I diverge from others, or at least from what other mainstream commentators are willing to say: I believe if President Obama cannot undo America in four years, he will do whatever it takes to get another four, in the tradition of Castro and Chavez. In that context, I believe the Tea Party doesn't just have to police its own, but it better not take its eye off the ball of tyranny that Obama embodies.

Let President Obama, like Ahab, go down with the great white whale of liberalism if he will, but not with our ship of state.

I just voted.

2010-11-02T07:36:00.001-05:00

It feels like Christmas.

Gold & the Stock Market

2010-10-08T06:02:00.000-05:00

It's nice to see the stock market poised to climb past 11000 at long last, but...

Why is gold climbing at the same time as the stock market?

That's not supposed to happen. Gold is a safe haven investment. The worse things get, the more valuable gold becomes. For example, if we had a president who repeatedly and systematically attacked free enterprise thus tanking the economy, one would expect gold to rise. It is now at a record high.

In the past two years, individual investors have fled the stock market in a big way. People like me have taken their retirement savings out of the stock market and put their nest egg into anything to protect it from the inevitable crash. If you read the Wall Street Journal, you know that trading volume on the stock market is way down.

So again I ask, with gold climbing and volume down, why is the stock market climbing?

Well... I've heard various theories. One, that the Federal Reserve is doing Obama's bidding, propping the market up each time it starts to slide. Another is that despite the bad economy, institutional investors see hope ahead in the November elections, so in this low volume market, their moves have more impact than normal, driving prices up. Plus the dollar is weakening, so it takes more dollars to maintain the same value in the market relative to world currencies, but that gets into economic theories I can't keep my brain wrapped around.

Personally I think it may be partly all of the above; plus, watching the numbers pretty closely throughout every day, I notice the market keeps moving in lurches. Rarely does a rally last more than a day, nor a slide.

I suspect that there are some key money people with a vested interest in the success of the current administration who are hedging their bets, stepping in when things start to slide and stepping out again as soon as they stem a slide.

Whatever the case, the current rise in the stock market is fool's gold. Better to have your money in real gold. Or the mattress. Because the big slide is going to come, and by the time you realize it's happening, it will be too late to get out.

The Rutgers Tragedy

2010-09-30T05:48:00.000-05:00

Today's news features perhaps one of the most disturbing stories I've heard among a plethora of news stories of human folly. A Rutgers University freshman was filmed by his roommate having a sexual encounter with another male. The roommate shared the episode on the web. When the young man discovered that his indiscretion was public, he committed suicide.

It's not the homosexual activity that is so tragic. Homosexuality is nothing new, and it's certainly not exceptional in today's upside down society. We are confronted with it constantly.

Thomas Sowell said in a recent column that it takes a high IQ to evade the obvious. The constant pressure by gay activists to try to force the idea that this particular perversion is normal, and society's relatively quiet acceptance of it, is a perfect example of such fallacious thinking. No doubt many young people who would not otherwise consider it an option, do so. And no doubt many young people, and some further along in life, are seduced into the lifestyle by the relatively easy sex, at least in the short run, that is characteristic of it. In the throes of hormonal passion of youth and the no holds barred nature of civilization today, it is now an easier mistake to make than ever.

But the real tragedy is that the roommate was so unthinking, so unable to identify with his roommate, that he would reveal and broadcast for all to see what should have remained the young man's private struggle. This episode reveals the dark downside of the information explosion enabled by the new media and the inadequate tools our youth have to handle the power of it. And we in the baby boom generation reveal an incompetence to guide them in this new environment.

Reason for Optimism

2010-09-03T05:43:00.001-05:00

For the first time in a long time I don't think gold is that good of an investment. At least in the short term. For the time being.

Despite the awful shape of the economy I believe that the chaff has for the most part been separated from the wheat. I believe that the bulk of businesses still operating are just like mine: they are not doing well but they are not about to fail. They have gotten really good at treading water. And has been widely reported they are for the most part in a better cash position than before the downturn due to running so lean.

As are consumers. Despite the downturn in property values they have been shedding debt like crazy.

Thus as this recession drags on there is a huge amount of saved up money and pent up demand. Consumers and businesses alike are just waiting for a reason, any good reason, to expand and grow and spend again.

Meanwhile the tone-deaf Obama administration has given absolutely no reason for anybody to risk their carefully guarded assets. The developing and impending tax and regulation overload has everyone scared to death and sitting on their wallets.

But the voters in November, if the elections turn out as predictions increasingly say they will, will give us all every reason to let loose and grow again.

In the long term, I'm dubious that Republicans will manage their resurrection well. The country club, trust fund "moderates" will drag us back into accommodation with impractical "progressive" ideology again in short order once they've exploited Tea Party passion into electoral victory. Government will continue to grow and weigh everybody down. In that respect Gold remains a good investment in the long term. But at least for a while, there will be a new lease on life economically after the November election.

I'm looking forward to an explosive first quarter in 2011!

Branch Obamians

2010-08-14T05:53:00.000-05:00

There's been such a constant barrage of unbelievable news day after day since President Barack Hussein Obama took office that I've hardly known where to comment. It's as if those flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz were unleashed upon the world, upsetting everything that makes sense.

But I was especially piqued this morning when I heard news reports of Obama's supporting the Ground Zero mosque at an Islamic dinner last night. His support for the mosque based on the constitutional right to freedom of religion makes sense on the surface. Like, if you don't think about it at all.

To the point: What about the Branch Davidians? What about Jonestown? What about the old Mormon practice of polygamy or the still extant Muslim practice of forced female circumcision? There is no question that any civilized free society, especially America, would see that inhumane abuses carried out under the guise of faith practices do not warrant protection as freedom of religion. And no religion practiced in the modern world comes close to Islam for advocating violence and intolerance or for abusing human rights. As many Islamists have proclaimed, 9/11 was its crowning achievement to date.

Obama is exploiting Americans' pride in the concept of freedom of religion as an excuse for allowing Islamists to flip off the American people at the very scene of the most egregious crime perpetrated on American soil. It is typical of his hypocrisy and yet another example of how antagonistic he is toward the ideals that made our country the greatest source of hope for enslaved and exploited people everywhere.

Public Enemy Number One

2010-07-04T07:22:00.000-05:00

My FedEx driver hit the nail on the head the other day: Anyone who still supports Obama at this point after seeing what he's done has to be a complete idiot.

Yet I recognize that there are intelligent, sincere, well-meaning folks out there who are still buying into Obama's game. Lots of them.

Of course, there are a lot fewer than there used to be. The polls show that on all sides. But only about 15% - the permanent underclass - should be supporting him at all. That's not a scientifically calculated number. That's just what I figure the percentage of genuinely stupid, dependent people is in any society at any point in history.

Those are the people who would be too dim to see that it's not what the government gives you that counts, but that what counts is opportunity. And Obama and his regime are killing opportunity for everyone from top to bottom, not just here in the U.S. but around the world.

Obama became President in troubled economic times and he has done every possible thing to make it worse. Those of us who own or work in small businesses see it most clearly, I think. In the year following his election, a third of our business just disappeared. The market was in shock. People stopped spending money not just on anything they didn't have to have, but on investment, and they haven't started back. Who can blame them? Obama presents them with nothing but hugely increased government spending, hugely increased taxes, and a cynical, negative view of everything that has made America the greatest, freeest, most prosperous country in the history of the world and a model for all others to emulate.

It seems to me that any President who does that is far more dangerous to the public welfare than John Dillinger ever could be.

So why are there so many Americans out there still supporting him? For the same reason battered women, otherwise attractive and independent, cling to their abusers. For the same reason the junkie, otherwise intelligent and capable, keeps going back to the needle. For the same reason the German people followed the fascists into the maelstrom.

They're idiots.

The Gathering Storm

2010-04-04T07:27:00.000-05:00

As President Obama struts about the country spiking the ball and doing his end zone dance in front of pockets of ignorant cheering micro-crowds, a storm is gathering around him.

It's not the militias or spitters or racists or "tea baggers" or whatever straw men he and his propaganda machine are setting out as a threat to America this week.

Rather, it's the great middle - especially the middle class. Many average hardworking Americans still don't have any idea how hard taxes and loss of freedom are going to hit them in the coming few years. But as polls increasingly indicate, more are waking up to it every day.

Those who have not yet faced the fact that Obama was indeed a Manchurian Candidate are in severe denial.

We small business types and any other thinking people already know it. But how much longer before the Baby Boomers who are living off their parents' hard earned money in the Green Hills and Belle Meades and Brentwoods of America realize that they will be the prime target? How much longer can the typical liberal American Jew rationalize Obama's hostility toward Jerusalem? How much longer before the typical black voter realizes that he's been cynically used by one of his own not to open opportunity for "his people" but simply to advance his personal ambitions? How much longer before all of America finally wakes up and says duh, yeah it's cool that we've come along so far that we can elect a minority president but when you guarantee outcome, you destroy opportunity?

I don't know. But I do know from how the health care legislation was passed that Obama and the other leftists who find themselves in power today have no intention of giving up that power.They have no more respect for the democratic republic laid out in the Constitution than does Cesar Chavez for that of Venezuela. Socialism cannot survive without fascism and monomaniacs like Obama and Chavez know that.

They will subvert the system in whatever way necessary to keep themselves in power. We will see it in November and see it again in 2012. We will lose even when we seem to win. And when the great middle of America finally all wakes up to that, it will get very ugly.

The good part is, good always triumphs over evil and freedom over slavery. It just takes a while and the winning is hard fought.

Fort Sumter, 2010

2010-03-21T05:51:00.001-05:00

President Obama wants to make war on the free world which he feels has mistreated him so badly in life. In the health care deform legislation which will presumably by hook and crook be on its way to becoming law through Congressional action today, he will ignite the bomb that commences the war he wants.

For although there are ever growing numbers of people in America who prefer to be taken care of rather than take care of themselves (and will be many more when Obama subsequently rams through immigration deform legislation), there is a core of us still here who will not accept this new American slavery. We were born to be free and we will not accept a government that takes that away from us. And we are not so dense that we cannot see that this vote today is not at all about helping the uninsured but instead is all about forcing the insured into government run health care.

If this legislation were passed by the will of the people through legitimate means in Congress, it would be another matter. But that is not the case. It is clear that Congress has been bullied, bought, and brazenly had its intended path and purpose as laid out in the Constitution perverted to achieve anti-democratic aims. We have seen this same methodology at work in Venezuela, in Russia, in Honduras, and in Nicaragua. Today those fascists and other leftists who will fundamentally change America are applying the strategy in the heart of the free world, hoping for a coup.

But they will not win that coup. The looters and moochers of the world are winning the day, but they will not win the war to come. The American spirit will not tolerate tyrrany.

Ya basta!

2010-03-15T05:21:00.001-05:00

Supposedly this week brings the final push to force the snake oil called health care overhaul or health insurance reform, or whatever is the euphemism du jour, down the throats of the American people.

Obama and his statist coterie are determined to foist this upon us. It seems unbelievable that the current legislation will somehow get passed through reconciliation or any other way, but now we've seen that the administration will stop at nothing to push its agenda through. So they will do whatever it takes, or whatever they can, to buy out Congress, even if their method is of highly dubious legal standing and their madness definitely corrupts the intention of the founding fathers.

So now the question will be, which road will we as a people take? Will we let the Obama types pervert our democratic institutions so thoroughly that we will end up a Venezuela? Or will we rise to the occasion as the Hondurans did and say "Ya basta!"?

Go get 'em, Toyota!

2010-02-22T06:16:00.000-06:00

It ain't gonna happen, but I wish the Toyota execs would go into these Congressional hearings on the offensive.

The hoopla over the mechanical problems with some Toyota vehicles is overblown and exploitative. It is a transparent attempt to divert public attention and anger away from the Obama administration's deep incompetence and conscious malpractice at governing what is supposed to be a country of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not to mention that it is an overt effort to help Government Motors at the expense of a Japanese name brand.

If I were running Toyota, I'd tell my execs not to lie down for the Congressional charlatans who will be questioning them with one purpose and only one purpose in mind: camera time.

As Toyota management I'd emphasize the hundreds of thousands of American jobs in manufacturing, distribution, and marketing that Toyota creates through its success in the market here and the incredible amounts of money it spends trying to satisfy government regulations, and trying to fight them off, making all vehicles on the market even more expensive and, no doubt, less safe. And I'd ask how many jobs the Obama administration is "saving or creating" by attacking Toyota. Every time they asked a question.

But they won't. The Obama administration has found the perfect demon to attack in Toyota. Toyota is Asian, so they are assuming that the uninformed public and their UAW supporters will find outlet for their frustrations on the Asian face of Toyota, frustrations which ought really to be focused on China and every administration since Clinton who have done their bidding for campaign contributions.

Toyota cannot stand up to these sick politicians. They are just people trying to run a company well and make a profit. The U.S. Government does not have to make a profit. Toyota cannot win in this game. Anything but lying down for them would be a kamikaze defense. It's a shame.

2010: A Space Odyssey

2010-02-08T05:40:00.000-06:00

Actually, the new Alice in Wonderland movie coming out from Tim Burton is the most appropriate analogy for this year. Through the looking glass, everything is backwards and upside down. And business is bad.

It's not jumping off a cliff bad - though it certainly seems liable to turn that way at any moment - but it is absolutely awful compared to two years ago and really no better than a year ago when the market - I'm talking about the whole market, not the stock market - came to a screeching halt.

And the one thing that I can see with absolute clarity from my little perspective trying to keep a business afloat in this mess is that the government is not your friend. Especially this government. The Obama administration is the most insincere, conniving, deceptive I can remember in my lifetime, Nixon's notwithstanding.

Don't believe a word that comes from President Obama's lips about most anything, but most especially when he's been talking lately about "helping" small business and blaming small business difficulties on lack of credit. It is not credit we need, but customers. The market is flat because businesses and consumers alike are scared of their own government as it engages in lunacy like continuing to push for ruinous health care legislation, like stubbornly clinging to the myth of global warming as justification for cap and trade revenue for its upcoming budget, and like engaging in anti-business crusades like the attacks on executive pay and the witch hunt against Toyota.

I cannot decide whether the collective leaders from the President down through his cabinet and agency heads are just collectively stupid or collectively reactionary, but they are most definitely collectively a millstone around the neck of this country.

Live Blogging the State of the Union

2010-01-27T20:21:00.000-06:00

Nevermind. Same old b.s.

That Evening Sun

2010-01-24T07:29:00.000-06:00

William Gay the writer is an inspiration. He was only discovered by the literary world and published relatively late in life, around age 50, and from an unlikely place, Hohenwald, Tennessee, and an unlikely occupation, handyman.

As a native Tennesseean I feel his writing hits home. I know his characters. I know the hills and woods and old clapboard houses in need of paint where his stories unfold. And Mr. Gay's rich vocabulary and colorful dialogue, the ironic humor and dangerous yet heroic stubborness of the folks whose lives he examines, flow off the page through my brain as natural as dew on the morning grass.

I met Mr. Gay several years ago at a book signing in Franklin. He was warm and encouraging, instantly likeable but I suspect sometimes difficult like someone right out of one of his books. So I have cheered his success as his subsequent novels have been published and now, as one of his stories has been made into a movie. I worried, however, that the movie would not capture the power of the story.

That story, "I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down", could have been written about my mother. It was the first piece by Gay that I ever read, and I did so when it first came home to us that living on her own was no longer a good option, an opinion she did not share. Acting on this realization was to prove neither a simple nor a smooth process. She has not gone mildly into that good night, strong willed and irrascible and independent-spirited Tennessean that she is. I know we have on balance done the right thing but I can't blame her for a bit of her resistance to it. I could not tell you more succinctly about it than Mr. Gay does in his story.

And I am happy to report that in the new movie "That Evening Sun" Hal Holbrook plays the headstrong iron-willed Meechum perfectly and the director sets just the right pace and setting. I hope it catches on. Mr. Gay's thoughtful painting of life's passions and passing deserve a wider audience.

Devil's Dream

2010-01-02T06:19:00.000-06:00

That I received this book for Christmas and I’m already writing a review of it tells you how compelling it is to read.

Like the author, I grew up in middle Tennessee. I’ve always heard Nathan Bedford Forrest’s name, seen it on street signs, and known vaguely that he was a Civil War hero and a figure of some disrepute for being involved with the Ku Klux Klan’s founding. But I’ve known little more than that. I think probably talk of him has been hushed even around here since the civil rights movement in the sixties. Perhaps that’s why the garish statue of him along I-65 was put up. Lest he be forgotten in the haze of political correctness.

And he shouldn’t be forgotten. Like the statue, he was larger than life in his time, a man of many contradictions from a distance but a fascinating and in many ways admirable human being up close—as Madison Bell ably explores in this novel.

I’ve read many of Madison’s other novels as well, especially the Haiti series. They are all worth reading. This one is not only closer to home, but compelling as well. I can’t help liking it best of all. It left me wishing it didn’t end and wishing that I could have known Forrest in his time.

The Streaker Strikes Stupid Statism

2009-12-28T05:44:00.000-06:00

A must-see video from one of my all time favorite Music City artistes:

Udn Udn.

NPR

2009-12-20T07:18:00.000-06:00

I listen to NPR fairly often. I used to tell myself that I did it for balance, but now it's more like a bad habit I can't shake.

Before Obama, the network seemed intent on being truly impartial, spending substantial time covering both sides of every issue, and it was simply irritating that NPR missed no chance to mock George Bush and apologize for the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Jimmy Carter.

But nowadays Daniel Shorr and Juan Williams seem right wing when heard on NPR. The network is full of males who sound as if they've never had the notion to consort with a female. There's not a chance missed to blame natural phenomena on the global warming hoax. Republicans are portrayed consistently as party poopers in Obama's grand reign. And you'd think from the network's constant pushing of the Democrats' health care "reform" that virtually nobody in America has insurance and those who do, hate it.

Now when I listen to NPR I get the feeling that I am peering into the heart of darkness, that NPR is laying out for me the fractured logic that makes left wingers push programs like cap and trade and the public option and abortion rights and such and somehow believe not only that those things are morally right, but even that they will be the exceptions where the government actually does anything better than the private sector. From listening to NPR, you'd think that turning over control of our health and treasure to the Feds is a desirable thing.

I'm pretty pessimistic about the direction of our country these days and NPR doesn't make me feel any better about it. But even as bleak as these days seem, with all the recovery-killing legislation lurking in Congress and being on the verge of passing ruinous health care reform, I think the lefties have vastly miscalculated the heart and soul of America. They have swept into power on the deceptive "hope and change" ticket, yet Americans at all walks of life, even those who pay no taxes and suck up benefits from those of us who do, will ultimately reject the nanny state, Chicken Little approach to government and the tyrants who exploit it.

The Feds have been trying to get me to stop smoking for a long time. They haven't succeeded. I will smoke to spite the bastards for telling me how to live my life if for no other reason. But maybe when the tide turns against the current regime it will finally be recognized that balanced news and cultural programming are antithetical to government funding and the plug will finally be pulled on NPR. That's one bad habit I'd love to have the Feds help me break.

Go Joe Go

2009-12-15T05:23:00.001-06:00

If there's anybody who can make the health care fiasco into lemonade for himself, it's Joe Lieberman. Although I disagree with him on nearly every aspect of his social views, he has shined as a voice of reason in foreign policy and now in the health care reform debate.

If Joe Lieberman will continue to hold the line against the public option and the cost, I believe we will be looking at the man who achieves something far more significant than being elected America's first black president - its first Jewish president.

Yawn.

2009-12-02T05:51:00.000-06:00

All that buildup, all the weeks and months of "deliberation", and Barack Obama delivers a plan for Afghanistan that he could and should have had in place months ago if he had any leadership ability.

The words that still come to my mind about him after ten months in office are "incompetent boob". He's the new MBA who's never had a job in his life hired because of connections to run a company division. He's the rich kid with no direction of his own who suddenly shows up at his father's company with a desk and a title. He is the affirmative action hire. He's the legacy fraternity brother. He's the guy who won't retire. He's the guy who gets your parking space. He's the empty suit. And he's our President.

God help those serving in our military under the current Commander in Chief and the mealy-mouthed, girly-man Secretary Gates. That one-two punch is setting us up for disaster.

Hope & Change for Q1 2010

2009-11-18T05:40:00.001-06:00

The word today is that cap and trade legislation is dead this term. That means Congress won't pass into law before the new year a huge tax on businesses and individuals presumably designed to fight global warming.

Supposedly card check legislation is dead, too. That means that for this year at least, businesses are not staring down the barrel of forced unionization.

These two failures of the Democrats to ram socialist programs down our collective throats could hardly be better news for the economy.

The only thing better that could happen now is if the Pelosi health care legislation dies in the Senate, too. That would make a trifecta.

My business volume is down about 35% from last year. I am operating with two part-time employees where I used to have three full-time employees. Everyone I talk to, customers and vendors alike, holds little hope for improvement next year.

But I am getting more and more optimistic about the first quarter. If there are no more bailouts and none of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi legislation passes between now and then, free enterprise might actually have a chance to start creating jobs next quarter.

Lincoln's Rolling His Eyes

2009-11-12T06:19:00.000-06:00

Barack Obama's inability to take action one way or the other regarding Afghanistan reminds me of Abraham Lincoln's inability to find a general who would stop with the getting ready already and actually prosecute the war against the South.

Except it's not the generals who are the problem in this case, but the commander-in-chief.

Obama's problem isn't finding a U.S. Grant, but being one.

Health Care Shmealth Care

2009-11-09T04:44:00.000-06:00

I don't think most Americans realize how dramatically their individual freedom will be impinged by the health care bill passed by the House this weekend. The government's take-over of the health care industry will allow it to dictate virtually everything about our lives. But that fact is lost because the debate is too big and the details too confusing for most of us with busy lives.

On the other hand what everyone should easily understand is that this bill takes ten years worth of taxes to fund only six years of program. The taxes start next year but the program doesn't go into place until 2013.

That fact alone should make every taxpayer in the country sick over this.

Obamanomics

2009-10-29T12:50:00.000-05:00

Our FedEx Ground package volume chart says it all.

Executive Pay Cuts

2009-10-25T08:38:00.000-05:00

In terms of free market economics, of course, the Feds have no business setting executive pay in private businesses regardless of their involvement otherwise. It is bad precedent, policy, and politics.

On the other hand, the executives who have stayed around at banks and other institutions that the Feds have coopted deserve what they're getting. If they are so smart and capable, they would have jumped ship as soon as they knew the Feds were getting their claws into the business, or at the very least as soon as they saw what happened to the AIG execs.

Perhaps they felt they were doing their patriotic duty. But now that they've seen that the Feds will welsh on their compensation agreements, I think that all the executives at those companies should walk out, a la the producers strike in Atlas Shrugged. Otherwise, they're just... government workers.

Columbus Day, Observed

2009-10-12T04:49:00.000-05:00

So I was reading an article last night about how schools across America now show the "dark side" of Christopher Columbus. From the awful opinion of him held by today's half-wit history - excuse me, social studies - teachers, we'll soon be calling him Colon like the Latinos.

I suppose it was mighty short-sighted of him to come over here and infect all the natives with dread diseases. He should have had the decency to wait until H1N1 innoculations were available or at least until Amoxycillin was invented.

And those Indians whom he didn't kill with syphillus- how he treated them! Awful! You'd think he would have recognized the advantages of having no wheel or sailboats and worshiping idols. Where was his cultural sensitivity? Why, he was the first ugly American!

I saw another criticism of him for landing in Cuba or wherever and not knowing where he was. What an idiot for not buying a GPS system at Radio Shack before he left Europe.

Me, I still think Columbus was quite brave. I admire individuals who risk it all for something better, for something new, to be the first, to go the farthest. I know they're still human beings and have flaws and that to get where they're going, they're probably going to step on some toes along the way. But to me, those like Columbus who move us forward are the heroes of humanity, not the villains.

But what do I know. I'm just a flat earther.

The Fools Gold Medal

2009-10-09T08:12:00.000-05:00

It says everything about our times that the International Olympic Committee has more integrity than the Swedish Nobel Committee.

The Big Question

2009-10-03T08:09:00.000-05:00

The stock market has stalled (meaning I won my bet that it wouldn’t hit 10k by September 30...mmm mmm mmm, I'm going to enjoy that lunch), unemployment continues to climb, consumer confidence is going nowhere, and from what I've heard from my vendors who also serve retail, no one has much hope that Christmas sales will be any good.

Not to mention that we have a leaderless military, an ineffectual state department that can't get up from down right re Israel and Iran or anything else, and a president who has just committed a huge p.r. blunder for both himself and the country in Copenhagen.

Slipping dramatically in the polls, pushing a completely unpopular health care agenda, the Obama administration is on the ropes.

Yet President Obama continues to do things that denigrate and, in effect, undo the very country he leads, undermining the free market, a strong dollar, and military integrity.

So the big question now is, how much damage will he do before he is neutralized by the Congressional elections in 2010 and replaced by a new president in 2012?

Jobs

2009-09-27T06:49:00.001-05:00

The news this weekend is that seven people are looking for every job that's available now, a record. Those who were laid off and have found a job in this environment can thank God and their own persistence that they've found one. Other than some part-time temporary seasonal work, there's not going to be any job creation for the rest of this year, but there will be more layoffs.

The one bona fide economist I know is brilliant, like many of the best are. But that's mostly in retrospect; none of them are fortune tellers. One thing they all agree on and appropriately point out to us flat-earthers who do well to manage a household budget is that economics is not a zero-sum game. In other words, wealth can be created, not just shifted around. There's a lot of psychology involved in that concept. While everyone believes in a limitless economy, wealth grows. When people stop believing in it, it shrinks.

Thanks to threats by big government advocates (led of course by President Obama) pushing repressive taxes and oppressive regulations on business, no one in business believes in it right now. I am going to win a bet with my buddy Dave this week that the stock market would not reach 10000 by September 30. It almost did, but it was rising on artificial and unsustainable "stimulus" activity and has finally stalled on that. Unless and until small businesses start hiring more workers, there will be no recovery.

You'd think a brainiac like Barack Obama would have figured that out. But even if he has, the unions and lefties have him so hogtied that he can't truly do anything about it.

It's a shame, because there are millions of jobs out there waiting to be created in the private sector by companies who have become lean, mean, and focused and just need a free and optimistic market to operate in.

Silenced.

2009-09-19T10:13:00.001-05:00

My "resist sOcialism" yard sign was finally stolen last night. I didn't think it would last this long at all, as lefties are known for respecting neither free speech nor private property rights. It was kicked down once a couple of weeks ago, but this morning it's just gone gone.

That's all right. I was getting kind of tired of that one. Besides, I'll make more.

You lie!

2009-09-10T06:37:00.000-05:00

Congressman Joe Wilson couldn't have picked a better time or way to offer the Republican response to the President Obama's speech last night. Too bad he felt the need to apologize, but it doesn't matter. He got the essential point across by speaking, as they say, truth to power.

John Arra Family Portrait

2009-09-07T21:40:00.000-05:00

Not Obamacare, not Kennedycare, but Kopechnecare.

2009-08-30T05:43:00.000-05:00

Because if it passes, we're all sunk.

Is the Juice next?

2009-08-28T18:27:00.000-05:00

They say celebrity deaths come in threes, so I figure O.J. Simpson is the only other figure as sleazy, guilty, and walking free as Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy were. Syllogistically speaking, he'd have to be next.

I wonder if his death will also stimulate a huge crowd of perverse fanatics to come out of the closet for mourning?

Watch Out

2009-08-19T05:36:00.000-05:00

The folks on the far left are a bitter, backbiting, sour bunch of egocentric malcontents as it is, but now that they've had six months of total control and have found out that no one really likes them and they're ideas don't work when put into practice, they will redouble their efforts to impose their will on an unwilling universe.

Somebody predicted a few months back that the health care debate would be Obama's Waterloo. I don't think it will be that easy. Despite the obvious turn of the electorate against them, he and Reid and Pelosi and Frank and the other harpies for Marxism are not about to give up power easily.

The Tea Partiers and Town Hall Hollerers have served as Paul Reveres to wake up the slumbering "silent majority", but it's still the left that has all the political guns now: the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. They can go nuclear whenever they want, obliterating individual liberty and killing off the free enterprise system altogether by ramming their legislative agenda through with virtually no bipartisan support. The question is whether they will ultimately have the nerve to do so in the face of utter disgust from the American people at the specter of a stalled economy, higher taxes, regressive energy policy based on the absolute folly of Al Gore's fantasies, and rank corruption.

It's been nice to see the cracks appear in Obama's near mystic hold on the American psyche. But if his destruction is to be stopped, the real battle has not yet been joined.

Report this.

2009-08-16T06:20:00.000-05:00

Photography by Mary Catherine Arra.
Hair by Fantastic Sam.
Styling by Accident.

Acting Stupidly

2009-07-25T06:02:00.000-05:00

The question I've been asking for months - when are Americans going to wake up to what kind of President they've actually elected? - is being answered now.

Nothing has revealed how incompetent President Obama is to lead the country as his ham-handed condemnation of the Cambridge police this week without caring to know the facts of what actually happened. It was a stunt worthy of a campaign but not of an effective government.

Even blacks, who without dispute have been at the bad end of police work historically, recognize that the Harvard professor is just a jerk and a blowhard. Most would probably arrest him just to shut him up, too, given the chance. He's the kind of guy who gives not just blacks, but Harvard, and professors, and senior citizens all a bad name. And now, it's becoming clear to everyone that Barack Obama is cut from the same cloth.

This follows on the heels of so many other Obama failings - cabinet appointees who don't pay taxes, "bailouts" full of pork, a false hurry to push through expensive legislation that does not work as advertised, blaming Bush for the deficit while tripling it with new spending, taking over mismanaged private industry only to manage it worse, funding financial institutions with tax dollars to spend the money no better than they did with legitimate investment, and putting forth a Supreme Court nominee who makes Harriet Myers look like a luminary. Not to mention a half million more jobs lost this month.

So, now, with delusions of his grandeur evaporating, maybe a majority of Americans and hopefully their representatives in Congress can get to work on counteracting the damage Obama is inflicting on America.

Has anyone else noticed how with each stall of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid legislative agenda, the stock market rises? The fact that cap and trade and government health care and card check haven't sailed right on through Congress has been the best news for the free market so far this year.

Perhaps what we're seeing is that Americans can be fooled by the audacity of hope, but no matter how bold he is, we'll all eventually see through the pretense of one who acts stupidly enough for long enough.

Fraud or Self-Delusion?

2009-07-11T05:52:00.000-05:00

Today I awoke to an excerpt of President Obama's Saturday morning radio address. His message was that the stimulus has brought the economy back from the brink of disaster and saved millions of jobs.

It is slightly encouraging that polls are showing independent voters peeling off from supporting Obama. But it is still amazing to me that so many responsible, working Americans have sat by while he rushes to disassemble two hundred years of building the world's most effective free enterprise system.

The President is either shameless or willfully ignorant. I tend to think the former but it could actually be the latter. He may be so vested in the bitter counterculturalism of the sixties that he cannot see things as they really are. Either way, at the worst he reveals deceit and at the best incompetence by making such statements in direct contradiction to the truth.

Why has he not lost all support already?

Again I come back to the idea that it is simply human nature to resist admitting a mistake. Voting Obama in with Pelosi and Reid riding shotgun was such a colossal mistake that it will take longer than normal for most people to own up to it.

Meanwhile, those of us who've managed to stay in business hang on by our fingernails. We are indeed living on the brink and our persistence is the only thing that has saved millions of jobs in the face of Obama's onslaught which has stunned the marketplace.

It is insulting that he takes credit for the opposite of what he is doing while we, and the millions of newly unemployed, pay the price for it.

So what? Who cares?

2009-07-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

Today North Korea fired four more missiles of some description, apparently harmless, no doubt significant only in their number, symbolic of America's Fourth of July. Though the missiles had no physical target, it was obvious they were North Korea's way of flipping a bird at the U.S. But so what? Who cares? Nobody is going to do anything about about it, especially Barack Obama and certainly not the U.N., whose sanctions the deployment actually violates. Perhaps some day North Korea will actually do something worth responding to, like hitting Hawaii with a nuclear tipped missile. We can take care of them then. In the meantime we are busy enough cheering on the ayatollahs and Chavezes of the world.

There is other news of more import. Sarah Palin has announced that not only will she step down as governor of Alaska but will not serve out her current term, turning the reins of power over to the Lt. Governor at the end of this month. Of course she's sent the politicos into a tizzy. I heard one of her Democrat opponents in Alaska call the move "un-Alaskan" on NPR this morning. Others are characterizing the move as a sign of her capriciousness.

I don't know whether Sarah Palin will use the freedom from governing to work on a 2012 presidential campaign or even if she would make a good president. But I like her style and I take her at her word on this, that she does not want to be a lame duck governor. The last two lame duck years of George W. Bush's term, except for the surge, were a complete disaster, dominated by a leftist Congress. The Democrats are throwing everything they can at Sarah Palin in Alaska. Nothing's sticking, but all the muckraking is a huge and expensive distraction. She knows that if she stays in office, it only invites more of the same.

In Atlas Shrugged there is a scene in which John Galt, the great icon of individual and economic freedom, is held at gunpoint to be a spokesman on television for the corrupt socialist government that is destroying the world through its incompetence. At the last moment when it comes his time to speak he twists his body to show the world that he is at gunpoint then proclaims "Just get the hell out of our way!" That is his message for the government.

That too is Sarah Palin's, I think. Like John Galt, when working from within will not succeed, she is willing to work from without. Besides being beautiful, and speaking truth to power as they like to say, she is also effective. That scares the poop out of the left.

The left may get away with saying so what, who cares to North Korea's missiles, but they won't get away with that approach to Sarah Palin. She is a clear and present danger to their Marxist ideology and their hold on power.

Tegucigalpa

2009-06-30T05:55:00.000-05:00

I name this post Tegucigalpa only because I like the name so much. I traveled to that city in Honduras on business once years ago. It was full of factories and an enjoyable place. But what is happening now regarding Honduras is not so good.

Its president has been run out of the country. He wanted to have a referendum regarding his desire to run for an unconstitutional extra term. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. When he threatened to defy the Supreme Court ruling, the military stepped in to stop him.

That's all fairly irrelevant to the United States except that this deposed president is a Central American ruler along the lines of Cesar Chavez, another populist rabble rouser who has Mussolini type aspirations and a Marxist ideology.

What should scare the wits out of any freedom-loving person is that Obama has come out on the side of the deposed president. That's in addition to Obama's leaving the democracy demostrators in Iran spinning in the wind while the mullahs started breaking heads to suppress the mobs rising up against them. And that's on top of Castro's and Chavez' both lavishing praise on Obama as if a soul mate.

There will come a day when we look back and admit that the signs were there indicating that Obama was a budding tyrant and we ignored them. We'll have to admit that quietly. By then he will have completely usurped the Constitution here and we will doubt him out loud only at the risk of having our own heads bashed.

The Peculiar Institution, 2009

2009-06-28T06:40:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking of a guy who got a business going many years ago, built it through hard work with the dauntless optimism of youth, and has made a bunch of money from it over the years.

All for other people. Seems he had married the wrong woman about the time the business started. While he was strong in business he was weak in marriage. Early on as soon as things were looking good for the business she successfully pressured him to buy a house that was too expensive too fast. Then when it really looked as if the business was taking off, she sued for divorce and guaranteed herself an income for about the next ten years.

The result: debt. Lots of it, relatively speaking. This poor schlub is now a slave to his business and the financial institutions that have greased the wheels along the way. Nearly every extra dollar he makes goes to principal and interest repayments. Not that it's the financial institutions' fault. But they were there when he thought he needed them and now he's living with the consequences. Maybe it's not actually slavery but more like indentured servitude, as he will have the loans all paid off within the next ten years and will finally be free again. If he lives that long. If the economy doesn't get so bad that he can't keep the doors of his business open.

That latter consideration is a big IF in Obama's new world order. And this guy is just one of millions of private business owners now who find that the economy has them by the cojones. They are slaves to their debt, their overhead, their receivables, their houses, their spouses, and their kids' education. And the way things are shaping up, they are slaves to the federal government and the decisions it makes re taxes, regulation, and resources. Thanks to the badness of the economy, compounded by Obama's and Congress's incompetence and their outright reckless destruction of the free enterprise system, there's no end in sight to it.

The defeat of bona fide black slavery in the United States is one of the greatest stories of world history. It is ironic that a man with black blood should preside over the new enslavement of the American people to failure in the form of leftist, anticapitalist, overwhelming government.

Hope for Change

2009-06-24T05:51:00.000-05:00

I talked to one of my main vendors yesterday, asked him how he was doing. He said he was just sitting there trying to maintain a positive attitude. I asked him on what basis was he trying to do that. He said, “I drink a lot.” He went on to say that this recession had snapped a 59 year run of increasing sales for his business and they were down 40% in the first quarter. No kidding.

On the bright side, I swear I'm running across more and more Dagney Taggarts lately. These are young women who have a dream and make it happen by starting a small fashion business, producing their creations out of their home and selling them on the internet or in local boutiques or through Tupperware-style parties. I know of one such brave soul who has even opened a bricks and morter retail store in 12 South lately. I can think of nearly a dozen of these young entrepreneurs I've talked to in just the past week or so. Whether it's because nine-to-five jobs are so hard to come by or because these young women just have the spark of individuality in them, I don't know, but it's a good sign that the flame of free enterprise burns on in young hearts despite the ever-increasing obstacles.

The right to own personal property is the key to the life, liberty, and happiness equation. What these young ladies have figured out is that you can't own a job but you can own a business.

Third Quarter

2009-06-21T06:50:00.000-05:00

I'm posting this now so that it will be a bona fide prediction, and in hopes that I'm dead wrong.

The upcoming third quarter is going to make the first six months of this year look like the land of milk and honey. Working strictly from the gut instincts built from twentyfive years in the nuts and bolts of small business, I feel a lack of vigor in the marketplace like I've never seen before.

I can find no deus ex machina which will bring it up. Certainly not the stimulus spending, ephemeral as it is, misplaced and irrational. The auto industry with government intrusion and housing industry with climbing interest rates offer no hope. And in the service sector, Twitter is supposed to be this year's Google story?

With unemployment over 10% in the U.S., an increasingly unstable political situation throughout the world with a nuclear tint to everything that happens, the specter of vastly increased federal taxation and regulation of everything and everybody, and an incompetent poser as President whose grip on the nation's psyche is finally slipping (which will lead to more desperate measures to control the electorate), we're... basically... screwed.

It's gonna get worser before it gets better, folks. You best be hunkered down and prepared for it. And I have no clue when it might get better. Perhaps the first best hope is in about a year and a half if the market senses that the bastards are about to be thrown out of Congress. But not before.

I hope I'm wrong.

David Letterman

2009-06-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

Johnny Carson retired in style. Though it's been said he suffered from depression, no one would ever have known it from watching the Tonight Show. He remained the funny, likable guy from the midwest from the beginning of his career to the end. When it was time to go, he simply went. His legacy will remain intact.

David Letterman came on to the national scene thirty years ago as a protege of Johnny Carson. He rose through the ranks deservedly on the strength of similar qualities - midwestern values mixed with self-effacing style and sharp wit. Unfortunately, and maybe it is because he lost the Tonight Show gig to Jay Leno after Carson, he has turned bitter in recent years. It has affected his judgment.

Otherwise he would never have cracked a joke like the one about Sarah Palin's daughter(s) the other night, nor used the word "slutty" to describe any individual short of say, Madonna. It's not just the bitter old man coming out in David Letterman, however, it is also a reflection of the rude, crude attack culture which has become characteristic of the left in recent years.

I have a friend who is way, way left, whom I encouraged to start a blog several years ago. She did, and she's very good at it. I have participated in it posting comments, especially when it was just getting started, but each time I do, I come away disgusted. The language is filthy. The comments are personal attacks rather than debates. And even the blog author's posts are filled with s-word and f-word references, usually referring to people like George Bush or Dick Cheney.

I am glad that Sarah Palin has called David Letterman out on this. From his lame explanation a night or two later, one can see what a coward he is. Perhaps some of the similarly bitter bloggers and provocateurs will examine their words before they dispense them so freely. And maybe, just maybe, the dial will finally be turned back a bit on the extremes of the national discussion.

Looters, Moochers, and the Meek

2009-06-03T07:09:00.000-05:00

I mentioned to a friend this weekend that I thought it was harder to raise a child successfully for millionaires than for us normal folk. When I see the kids who are given Beemers as teenagers and trips to Europe just for getting through the diploma mill, I see accidents waiting to happen. I know first-hand of a girl who battled cocaine addiction while attending an exclusive prep school. She wasn't turning tricks for the stuff, just paying for it out of her allowance.

There's actually a lot of that hedonism going around, and it's not confined to the millionaire class. It's a Baby Boomer phenomenon and we've passed it on to our kids in great measure. I've mentioned before that the biggest mistake of the Greatest Generation is that they spoiled their kids rotten. Those kids are now the ones running the show in Washington, intoxicated with their new-found power and turning the free enterprise system upside down.

In effect, the looters and moochers are ascendant. For those not familiar with Ayn Rand's work, the looters are those who will not earn what they get but will steal it instead and the moochers are those who want it given to them. Just for quick examples, the government and union vultures carving up General Motors and destroying private car dealerships would be easily classified as looters. Moochers would be, for a quick example, the fifty per cent of Americans who don't pay any income tax whatsoever. The looters use the moochers for political power, as a source of votes. A quick example of this is the illegal alien amnesty push. Those millions of votes will ensure further power for the left wing and further descent into Marxism and thus economic chaos, rendering yet more otherwise productive citizens into looters or moochers for survival. It's a vicious cycle.

That's where the meek come in. Or at least, that's where they need to come in. I believe that part of the problem in the country today is a grave misapplication of WWJD, a total bastardization of scripture to neutralize the great middle who are productive citizens by making them feel guilty about it.

The problem starts with misunderstanding the verse "The meek shall inherit the earth." This verse does not mean meek toward people, but meek before God. Yet it is the basis of the so-called Social Justice movement and millions of Catholics (I know first-hand) and I presume other American Christians are being force-fed this pap through their churches.

I paid close attention to reportage of President Obama's visit to Notre Dame. I wondered how in the world a Catholic university, considering the church's strong position for life, could possibly endorse an abortion proponent like Obama. And I finally found the answer in my weekly Catholic newspaper: it said he shares so many of the church's other goals regarding social justice that we just have to agree to disagree on abortion. My, how the Church has lost its way since the passing of John Paul II. He knew communism. He new fascism. He knew totalitarianism. And he knew that God starts and ends with life. He never would have stood for this kind of nonsense.

It's time for the meek before God to stop being meek before politicians. We need to wake up and re-take the earth from the looters and moochers. We should not sit here silently watching rights of speech, property, and self-defense rendered extinct.

Meanderings

2009-05-16T09:51:00.000-05:00

I predicted way back when that President Obama's supporters would ultimately regret backing him because he would quickly reveal himself as a weak sister. With his wafflings on Guantanamo and the "torture" photos and so on, he is catching a lot flack even from the left all the sudden. He is obviously someone who does not really know himself. He talks a good game but his convictions are no deeper than mine were at age 19, and in many cases are identical to them! Even the most devout Obama supporters have to be scratching their heads over Obama's comments that we can’t afford the interest cost of our debt--even while he’s in the process of tripling it. It is a very scary, sickening time for us conservatives, but each week President Obama reveals more clearly that he is going to fail. The question is whether the Constitution will survive the flames of his going down.
I am a graduate of Brown University, class of ’80. You wouldn’t peg me as an Ivy Leaguer from my outward appearance—buzz cut, slovenly attire, junk heap car—nor from my politics, which I make evident here. I can be as arrogant as anybody but I don’t care for social trappings. I had a great experience at Brown because I loved being around so many challenging, self-motivated, sharp people. I figured I got in because of affirmative action—they wanted kids from the South to balance out the New York Jews. That worked out pretty well, actually, as I’m still buds with various friends from Lawn-Gisland and thereabouts. I loved Providence for its quirky nature and though I knew I didn’t want to live anywhere up East as it was just too crowded for my taste, I have always been glad I went to Brown.

Not so much now. I’ve always tolerated Brown’s liberal excesses pretty well, and it has a long tradition of them. But I have reached the end of my rope. They almost lost me a year or two ago when I heard about the homo-sex orgy they allowed to take place in one of the school’s oldest and most beautiful lecture halls, where I took my freshman survey course in classics under the venerable Prof. Workman. I held on then anyway and through other self-flagellations over Brown's founder's involvement in the slave trade and the global warming hysteria and so forth. But no more. Not after the Columbus Day fiasco earlier this year.

The faculty voted to do away with Columbus Day because they’ve judged Columbus to be a bad guy, but they didn’t want to lose the day off so they renamed it Fall Day or some such rot. What a bunch of idiots! I can put up with the excesses of students, but if the administration at Brown can’t do a better job of hiring faculty with some common sense—not mention historical perspective—then, I’m done with the school. Where do I turn in my blazer and badge?
My lady friend (previously referred to as Chicadera) dumped me recently. Not the first time this has happened in the decade-long, on and off relationship. But this will be the last time if I have any sense. She has a tendency to return to safe harbor after her periodic romantic venturings go haywire. I don’t mind being the safe harbor but I’m tired of launching ships!

Anyway, such a pass always puts me in a reflective mood. Sometimes I am frustrated at my failures at romance, but then again to have a relationship fail you first have to have had some success at it. And that I succeed at all at it is amazing to me. Though I am not without my entertainment value, I am an intense and challenging personality close-up. Not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’m always surprised when someone takes interest. But at least from my occasional successes I know I’m somewhat tolerable. Or maybe I’m just proving the adage that even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. The silver lining to this point is that life is full of surprises. So I am looking forward to the next one.

The Indigo President

2009-05-11T04:37:00.000-05:00

One of the nuttiest of all New Age concepts floating around is that of Indigo Children. There is a scary bunch of otherwise seemingly well educated and responsible people who buy into this tripe. Basically the idea is that children born since about the eighties are somehow different from those in all generations before them--smarter, more intuitive, more talented, gifted, etc.

Some go so far as to say that some sort of genetic switch has been flipped that activates special characteristics planted by aliens in the human race thousands of years ago, resulting in Indigos. Apparently the timing has something to do with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012.

I don't know all the details. I started into a book about it once, thinking Indigo was just another category like "Boomer" and "Gen-X" but gave up on it quickly. I realized it's actually one more way for incompetent parents to blame their children's bad behavior on something other than their own lack of discipline and guidance. Some of these nutcases go so far as to blame the Columbine tragedy on Indigos simply because we don't understand them and thus haven't taught them properly.

But it's not just bad behavior that's made the Indigo concept catch on. It's also the natural tendency of every mama crow to think her baby's the blackest. New parents are universally prone to think that their children are exceptional. They are amazed how fast their kids learn and understand and smitten with the beauty and complexity of children. I know. I was, too!

But you don't have to read a New Age book to find out that this is how it is and always has been with kids. Just read the Bible. It is full of stories of precocious children, the greatest of all of course being Jesus, who remembered as an adult to remind us that children are in the state closest to God. In a way, the further into adulthood we get, the dumber we get. It's called not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Barack Obama, I contend, is the natural result of the Indigo Children phenomenon. He's no Indigo, not just because he was born a bit early for it, but because there simply is no such thing. But he's the Indigo idea that so many people want to believe in so badly, if only because it seems so much easier than living according to the Good Word.

Son Sasquatch was home from college for a few days last week before heading south to sell books, so daughter Peanut and a couple of their friends were over to dinner Friday night with nearly ninety Granny and Yours Truly. It was an excellent evening for dinner and chatter on the back porch. Visitor Peter told of a brother in the Navy who handles missiles, ready to put "warheads to foreheads." Granny brought a good laugh with her "whatever blows your skirt" turn of phrase. Talk turned to politics as we sipped some excellent Trader Joe's coffee courtesy of Peanut after plowing through the Bojangles twenty piece tailgate special.

Yours Truly posited that we're all in for it, that the free enterprise system is under attack and our rights are being whittled down to nothing, and we better be ready to defend them, etc. etc., my usual warnings to anyone who will listen.

Sasquatch had an interesting point from a perspective I had not previously considered: that his generation would not stand for it; at least the thinking ones wouldn't. He pointed out that those who are liberal and supporters of Barack Obama do so only because they're not really paying attention. They do it because it's the cool thing to do. The ones who are really thinking have a strong libertarian bent, accounting for the intense though not deep enough support of Ron Paul last year. Then we got into an argument about whether Ron Paul could ever be a successful candidate for President. But that's beside the point.

Sasquatch is right: the libertarian streak in the college generation is the hope for America. And it's not something implanted by aliens. The upcoming generation's greatness will be defined not by an Indigo President but by its defense of individualism against an onslaught of totalitarianism.

If the Republican party is smart, it will turn its back on the Lamar Alexanders and Lindsey Grahams at its top and dial in to what enthused the younger generation about Ron Paul and yet makes the older generation long for Ronald Reagan.

Republican or not, that is where conservatism is going. The question remaining is, who can lead it? Who will motivate the natural conservative nature of the American people enough to overcome the pop culture support for this Indigo President? Who has both the charisma and the values to do it?

We couldn't solve that at the dinner table, but we did eat some good chicken.

Atlas Shrugged

2009-05-03T05:48:00.000-05:00

Ten or twelve years ago I had a long layover in Dallas one time on my way to Mexico. I had set up a subsidiary office for my distribution company in Mexico City and I spent about ten days a month there. We figured we would capitalize on the booming manufacturing in Mexico that had resulted from NAFTA. Usually I traveled on Continental through Houston but this time for some reason I was on American, thus Dallas.

Meanwhile my company was growing in Nashville, too. Between the two places we had twelve employees. I was married with two kids. It was a hectic life, but I loved it. I was at the top of my game. I could go eighteen hours a day without missing a beat, moving easily from one thing to the next or doing several at once as required. It was nothing to get to work by 6am, come home for dinner at 6pm, read the children to sleep by 8pm, and go back to work until midnight. Happily!

This happy picture was not without problems, however. I was pulled in many directions. I was supporting a family, employing a diverse group of people, and responsible for bringing a return to shareholders and bankers. This took a lot of doing. And everyone's a critic. But the single hardest thing to handle was from the home front. I was constantly accused of being a workaholic. I was heartless. I was selfish. I was controlling. But I had to bring home the bacon.

So I was stuck in Dallas for a while and slipped into a little bookstore off the concourse. It was hardly bigger than a walk-in closet and it was crammed full with racks hanging from every conceivable surface so there were layers of offerings everywhere you looked. There, among the usual topical novels, was Atlas Shrugged. I don't know why I picked it up. I knew very little about it. I remembered an over-intelligent kid talking about Ayn Rand one time on the intramural soccer field in high school. That had stuck with me over the years for some reason, but I knew nothing else about her or the novel. However, once I saw it, I knew I'd found what I wanted.

The clerk was an older woman, no doubt quite a looker in her younger years, with a very attractive British accent. When she handed me my change, she watched as a I carefully faced the bills and put them in order by denomination in my wallet. I can't stand to have my money out of order.

"Oh," she said, "a perfectionist."

"What?" I said.

"You're going to like the book, dear."

Boy, did I! I could hardly put it down. What I found in that book was common ground. I found characters who achieved success by focus and relentless activity despite the tirekickers, naysayers and leeches who surrounded them. Back then, I was amazed by the book's beautiful tribute to the capacity for accomplishment in the individual human being. And in a compelling story with rich, intimate characters.

Now I am reading Atlas Shrugged again. As are hundreds of thousands of others, either for the first time or as a repeat like me. It's no secret why. The advent of the Obama administration is the full realization of everything that Ayn Rand opposed, the group-think and stultification and outright tyranny that she had escaped as a teenager in the Soviet Union. Atlas Shrugged provides clarity and insight at a time when so many of us cannot believe what is happening to our country.

But I'm afraid it might be serving a purpose for the dark side as well.

As I read through it this time--I am in the exhilirating part where Dagny Taggart's new railroad and Hank Rearden's new steel are put to the test, only on about page 250--it is not the magnificence of the do-ers that engages me so much as the venality of the undo-ers. Because I see it everywhere around me now. Before, the portion of society that drags it down was just an inconvenient obstacle; now it is in power. And you might easily think that the heinous characters like Orren Boyle and James Taggart and Wesley Mouch served as models for the Barney Franks and George Soros of today's world.

I can't detail it all here now--I might later. But as example, just the other night I came across an astounding parallel between the fiction of Atlas Shrugged and the very reality of the Obama administration. Perhaps this week you heard President Obama and others in his administration justify their refusal to control the border with Mexico by using the aphorisms that it would be like locking the door after the burglar was inside or closing the gate after the horse had escaped the barn. Those are clever comebacks unless one thinks them through, as with the obvious point that there is more than one burglar coming or horse still in the barn.

Today's news bears that out. The first pig infected with the virus has been found in Canada, reportedly infected because of migrant laborers from Mexico working on the farm. This government will close a whole school down for two weeks because one kid gets sick, but they won't stop the flow of illegals, no telling how many of whom are bringing the virus across the border on a daily basis. Indeed, the first child to die from the virus in the U.S. was a Mexican kid in Houston.

In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden invents a new steel which promises to revolutionize and revitalize industry in a lagging American economy. But the status quo opposes it. Indirectly. In the passive aggressive style that President Obama uses so well. Rather than fight it with facts--they can't anyway--they start a smear campaign to undermine confidence in the untested steel.

Here is what another venal character in the book, a despicable "journalist" named Bertram Scudder, an approximate equivalent to Keith Olbermann, writes about a railroad bridge made of the new steel leading up to its first run:

"I don't claim that the Rearden-Taggart contraption will collapse... Maybe it will and maybe it won't. That's not the important issue. The important issue is what protection does society have against the arrogance, selfishness and greed of two unbridled individualists, whose records are conspicuously devoid of any public-spirited actions? These two, apparently, are willing to stake the lives of their fellow men on their own conceited notions about the powers of their judgment, against the overwhelming majority opinion of recognized experts. Should society permit it? If that thing does collapse, won't it be too late to take precautionary measures? Won't it be like locking the barn after the horse has escaped?"

Amazing. In this one example we see the fear-mongering in which Al Gore engages including his "the debate is over" argument as well as the attacks of the Obama administration on, for example, the "hold-out" investors in Chrysler whom they are stiffing now to take the company over for the union, the government, and for goodness sake, Fiat???

Anyway, you get the point.

If you have never read Atlas Shrugged, I encourage you to do so. Unless you're a committed leftist. In that case you would no doubt learn the wrong things from this brilliant book.

Question of the Day

2009-05-01T06:29:00.000-05:00

If Joseph Biden were captured by Somali pirates, would Barack Obama authorize use of lethal force?

To kill the pirates, I mean.

And would torture be ok if used on Joseph Biden to keep him from talking?

100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

2009-04-29T06:20:00.000-05:00

President Barack Obama capped off the 99th of 100 days in office yesterday by celebrating the Senate's confirmation of his nominee for health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius.

With the swine flu panic at fever pitch in the media, Obama reveled in the irony of appointing Sebelius, who is supported by and supportive of the abortion industry which snuffs the life out of some one million babies annually just in this country. She is now the person responsible for setting health policy for 300 million Americans who are allowed the privilege of life.

Enough said.

Progressive Liberalism

2009-04-26T06:07:00.001-05:00

The word "progressive" sounds so much better than "liberal" unless you put them in context. Progressive parenting and a liberal helping of sweet potato pie have a positive ring, but progressive disease and liberal bias do not. So they're pretty much interchangeable, really. But "liberal" has gotten such a bad reputation ever since the debacle known as the Jimmy Carter presidency that "progressive" is now the label du jour for leftists.

But how do you know who is really a liberal, or progressive?

This is a big topic, one too big to cover in full this Sunday morning. But one of the first signs is this: Progressives can't call something what it is. They have to call it something that seems to sound better until they ruin the new word, too, then they move on to another one. "Liberal" will never be something any sane person will want to call themselves again and eventually "progressive" will be the same.

Karl Dean, current mayor of Nashville, proudly called himself a progressive when he won the primary last year. The next time around, I doubt he'll do that. Progressive policies will have bombed so badly on the national level that he'll move on to the next iteration. Perhaps by then they'll be calling themselves recidivists. That would be fun.

So "liberal" becomes "progressive", "homosexual" becomes "gay", "waste" becomes "stimulus", "abortion" becomes "choice", "takeover" becomes "bailout", "forced unionization" becomes "freedom of choice", "disagreement" becomes "hate speech", etc. You get the picture. And oh, anything at all that actually promotes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happinesse becomes "racism".

You can spot one of the progressive prevarications by the hesitation just before they come to the critical word in a sentence, often accompanied by the word "uh", and then followed by the word "extraordinary" and then the euphemism for what they're really saying, e.g., "This legislation will create ten million... uh... extraordinary... green jobs to carry America into the 21st century." Any time you hear that uh, watch for the coverup word. It will not be what it seems. Read that last phrase after "uh" as "stinking government jobs" if you want to know how it started out in the apprentice propagandist's (read: speechwriter's) draft.

Next up, another sign of the archetypical progressive: Not being able to believe that two intelligent people can look a the same set of facts and come up with different conclusions.

Called that one right.

2009-04-19T21:31:00.000-05:00

My last Sunday's posts were on target in speculating that the Obama administration delayed the pirate rescue by mandating overly restrictive rules of engagement until they were embarassed into authorizing force. Granted, so far I just see this news only on World Net Daily, but watch for it to be confirmed elsewhere. The military is not only very dutiful at snappily saluting as necessary whoever has the rank, but alos at getting the real story out through back channels when the truth needs outing.

Cool

2009-04-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

More than once I've puzzled over the support for Barack Obama.

There is absolutely nothing in his policy positions that makes a shred of sense. His leftist, reactionary approach to America, business, and social concerns have all the sophistication of teenage rebellion.

He accomplished virtually nothing in his legislative career. His "absent" votes were a scandal. He won his senate seat by the sheer luck of having his strong Republican opponent disgraced over a personal issue that was supposed to have remained private in sealed court documents. And he had barely found the Senate bathroom before he started running for President.

John McCain's heroic bio accentuated Obama's lack of service to his country. Sarah Palin's real world small business and administrative experience made Obama's community organizer work look appropriately empty in comparison.

His speeches, supposedly oratorical wonders, have left me cold. I come away from them feeling that I've heard nothing. He seems infatuated with turns of phrase which are not even particularly clever. He overuses certain words and phrases like "extraordinary" and "let me be clear" to the extent that one quickly learns to expect the ordinary and obfuscation when they come up. His reliance on the teleprompter is infamous.

In the looks department he's certainly no Mitt Romney. In personality he seems not to know himself. He wants to be 24's President Palmer one moment, Jimmie J.J. Walker from Good Times the next. At least George Bush was a consistent Texas redneck.

I have by nature always disdained the popular. Often to my own detriment. Staying with the television theme, back when I'd watch TV, if a show became a craze I'd be sure not to watch it. Case in point: WKRP. It became a hit because the pop culture went gaga over Loni Anderson. You couldn't catch me watching that show. But eventually that died down and I caught the show once or twice and realized how well written and acted it was. Then I couldn't get enough of the reruns.

So I do know that just because something is cool or popular, that does not make it bad. But I also know that Barack Obama is bad--maybe not bad at heart, but bad for America, a weak leader, not the smart guy he has seemed to be in the popular conscience compared to George W. Bush. And so it troubles me to no end that he has such popular support which, though waining, is still broad and long.

What I also know is that fame is fleeting, beauty only skin deep, and human nature fickle. There will come a point when everything that seemed cool about Obama to the popular zeitgeist will suddenly appear ridiculous.

There's a great scene in the movie Grease which epitomizes this, when John Travolta sees Olivia Newton-John for the first time since summer break. Although they had been summer sweethearts and Travolta had revealed himself to be sensitive and caring, in front of his school friends now he cannot drop the cool persona and instead he comes off as anything but. He reveals himself as a fraud. What formerly seemed cool now seems foolish.

I know that's what's coming. Just how much longer will it take and how much damage will be done?

Tea Parties

2009-04-16T05:32:00.000-05:00

I sure wish I could have attended a tea party yesterday. But I couldn't. I absolutely had to work.

And that's what makes yesterday's tea parties so amazing. It's tough to assemble a conservative demonstration on a weekday. Like me, conservatives, by and large, are working people. They're not living off an inheritance, or a spouse, or an insurance settlement, or government handouts. The fact that so many attended, and there were so many parties all across the country, is phenomenal.

The Obama administration has largely ignored it publicly, but you know they're squirming privately. The tea parties were a concrete demonstration that they do not have the universal approval that "polls" suggest and that they try to convey. It has to rattle them just as Al Gore is rattled by the crumbling "consensus" on manmade global warming and the increasing scientific evidence to the contrary.

However, the administration's conscience, the liberal television commentators and bloggers, have betrayed the administration's worries by belittling and attacking the tea party phenomenon, relying on the worn out arguments that this was not a grass roots movement but was organized and sponsored by big business interests and the people who demonstrated were unwitting dupes for big evil corporations.

I almost agree with lefties' attitude toward big corporations. I sometimes disdain and sometimes pity people who work for them, though not as much as I do government workers. But even as bad as big business can be, at least it makes things, grows things, provides services, and creates upwardly mobile job opportunities, all the while providing profit distributions to investors large and small. Increasingly government's role is simply to confiscate money from taxpayers, line the pockets of politicians with a good portion of it, and then redistribute what's left to the non-productive.

If the choice is truly between the "big business interests" of the right and the big government of the left, it's a no brainer. So even then the tea parties would be a very good thing. But of course it's not that simple.

All those people did not come out for the Republican party, for big business, or even against President Obama: They came out for better, smaller government.

I wish I could have been there.

Where Credit's Due

2009-04-12T21:25:00.000-05:00

There are few details available about the pirate shooting as Easter comes to a close, but all day I've been suspicious that this great rescue had more to do with heroic and possibly insubordinate actions by soldiers than any direction from the top.

Official word has been that a Navy commander made a split second decision that the captain's life was in imminent danger, so acting with executive authority for use of deadly force only if the captain's life was indeed in imminent danger (granted just in the past couple of days, apparently after the captain had already tried to escape on his own by jumping into the water), the commander ordered the pirates on the boat shot.

Now ABC says George Stephanopolous has heard from an unnamed source--no doubt in the White House--that while one pirate was on the Navy ship negotiating, the captain was observed going to the side of the boat to "relieve himself". So having clear shots at the other pirates, three sharpshooters fired simultaneously, taking them out on the spot.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I had an AK-47 pointed at me in a threatening manner, I'd relieve myself all right, but I don't think I'd take the time to walk over to the side of the boat. Nor do I think if I were a pirate intent on killing my captive would I separate myself from him, especially with a Navy ship within shooting range. I think the pirates thought they were close to a deal. They weren't waving guns around much at all by this time.

So with these details, in GS's rush to seem as if he had a scoop, and in the White House's rush to bask in the glow of what wasn't their light, I believe they inadvertently shot themselves in the foot.

I believe what really happened is that the administration passed down rules of engagement allowing force only after they were humiliated by the captain's bold action. The Seals had had enough of that baloney. They could have settled the whole thing on day one. After four days of namby pamby from above, and finally with tacit permission to shoot to kill, they saw an easy chance to send the pirates to Allah and did it. They knew it would get cheers, and they knew full well that the Obama administration would immediately take the credit for it. Thus they wouldn't get in trouble for what they would have done on day one if the administration hadn't tied their hands.

I can't prove it, but with the goons we now have running this show, you know I'm right, or close to it.

And as I said before, hoo-ray for the Navy!

Hoo-ray for the Navy!

2009-04-12T12:31:00.001-05:00

I am anxious to hear all the details, but the news that the captain of the Maersk Alabama is free and most of the pirates who captured him dead, is a fabulous Easter surprise. I can't fault President Obama for holding us back on this one, though of course I stand by the gist of my earlier post today. Perhaps the success of this action will lead to better things in other arenas. Let's hope so!

Captains Courageous and...

2009-04-12T08:03:00.000-05:00

...cowardly commanders-in-chief. If the Somalian pirate debacle doesn't remind you of the Iranian hostage crisis and Jimmy Carter's hand-wringing impotence in the face of hard choices, you are in extreme denial.

The pathos of the captain's brave action in jumping overboard from the pirate craft, expecting no doubt that surely his country would have everything in place to rescue him, brings into sharp relief just how incompetent the Obama administration is.

With that in mind, it is no surprise that violence is picking up in Iraq again. The soldiers that die now from roadside bombs are more Barack Obama's fault than the 4,000 that went before were George Bush's. Remember that phrase W so famously botched?

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Well, we were fooled once into complacency when we assumed Iraq would move easily, peacefully into democracy. It cost us 4,000 American souls, the surge, and Republican control of Congress and the Presidency to defeat Al Qaeda's chaos in Iraq.

Now with a weak president, the chaos is coming back. But Barack Obama has already bought us a one-way ticket out of Iraq with a date sure. Rather than leaving a strong Iraq at that time, I have a bad feeling we won't even make it that long. We'll retreat with our tail between our legs in the face of the heart of darkness we've allowed to return.

Then consider President Obama's total failure so far to engage NATO in the (useless) surge in Afghanistan, to stop Iran's nuclear development, and to do anything about North Korea's missile deployment. It is clear that Barack Obama is turning out to be exactly the weak sister I figured he'd be.

When I was just out of college, Ronald Reagan was president. I was quite liberal politically at the time, not having lived much of life and pumped full of the sixties b.s. of my older siblings' generation. I remember thinking that President Reagan's invasion of Grenada was ridiculous. I thought his withdrawal of the Marines from Lebanon was a sign of weakness. I thought he was a fool in general.

I was the fool, of course. He signaled to the world, through relatively small acts like those in Grenada and Libya, that we were not to be messed with, no doubt sparing larger confrontations in Europe or Asia. And he signalled in Lebanon that we would not be drawn into intractable, unwinnable regional conflicts as if policeman walking into a domestic dispute. History tells us where Reagan's leadership took us: he was instrumental in freeing millions of Europeans from the totalitarianism of the Soviets.

I hope some good resolution is reached for the courageous captain of the merchant ship. I hope that there's not a repeat of the disastrously botched commando raid the Carter administration launched late in the game to free the hostages. I hope and pray the captain lives.

But for America, we've already walked the plank. Barack Obama has shown the world that under his leadership we have no spine. Dick Cheney may have spoken prematurely when he said the Obama administration was making us less safe. But in the Obama administration's handling of this piracy incident, we know at least that Dick Cheney was right.

Turning Point

2009-04-05T07:27:00.000-05:00

President Barack Obama was right last week at the G-20 when he said we've reached the turning point. In any normal cycle, this would be the point at which the economy turns. Sales have declined to a miserable level and are more or less holding steady. The stock market has declined to a miserable point and is more or less holding steady. Taxpayer morale has declined to a miserable point and is more or less holding steady. Other than the random mass shooting here and there, of course.

Now is the time that, having cut staff and all other expenses as much as humanly possible while still staying in business, companies are finding their new breakeven point and doing what's necessary to meet or with any luck exceed it.

I know this is the case in my business. And I'm pretty sure it's the case everywhere. Surprisingly we haven't got that many bankruptcy notices. People are hanging on for dear life. If they don't stay in business they've got nowhere else to turn. Used to be they could always go into real estate if all else failed.

And every day I get orders from companies who haven't ordered since sometime late last summer or early fall, before the election. They've hunkered down, gotten by on what they had on hand, and now one by one they call us to reorder when they absolutely have to. The orders are smaller than normal and they want 'em fast! Talk about just in time inventory. We're all practicing that method now.

The problem is, it looks like Obama is going to watch the turning point float by just like so much scum on the surface of the river. He could still seize it. Unfortunately he's still too busy blaming his predecessors for this economy as if they had it perfectly poised to fail as soon as he was elected. But the lefties should not kid themselves: it is the Obama economy. It was in trouble before, starting with the Democrat takeover of Congress, but it tanked big time as soon as he was elected.

If Obama wants the economy actually to turn now, not just lay flat or flounder further, he needs do only a few key things to make it happen.

First and foremost Obama needs to take on Congress and give them instructions to undo all the pork they've just done. He could pull this off while he still has the political capital and he would find support from quarters who bitterly oppose him now. The deficit spending they've legislated on top of what was already happening is a source of ridicule and the inflation it will cause is a noose around the neck of the country.

Second, Obama needs to get out of business' face. I'm no fan of big business myself and can warm any day to cutting monopolies down to size and prosecuting illegal practices, but the idea of setting pay, hiring and firing management, dictating product mix, forcing private companies to take government money and to give government ownership, and usurping shareholders' rights, are all anathema to the basis of capitalism. If he wants to pretend not to be a socialist, this would be a step in the right direction.

Third he needs to cut the crap about green jobs and health care reform having anything to do with fixing the economy. They are luxuries to be promoted in fat times, not lean. Ditto Cap and trade and card check. They need to be tossed aside. The Bush tax cuts need to stay in place and Obama needs to stick to his promise at least not to raise taxes on anyone making under $250k, not sneak a tobacco tax in here or a user fee in there.

Business needs to be left free to do what business does best: make a profit. All good things will flow from that. More tax revenue. More jobs. A better financial situation for everyone from top to bottom.

Better enforcement of existing tax laws? Who can argue with that? Other than cabinet appointees. But I digress. Simplifying and then strictly enforcing the tax code would be a huge boon to the economy.

Obama has the opportunity now to seize the natural turning of the economy as companies have downsized and are lean, mean, and poised to take off again. But he has to get real. He has to set aside his pipe dreams about workers' utopias and universal health care and soaking the "rich". He has, in effect, to become pro-business.

Will he do it? I think the odds are better of my winning the lottery, and I have never bought a ticket in my life. That's why, indeed, this is the Obama Economy.

just say nO

2009-03-29T06:19:00.000-05:00

I was too busy watching an old Clint Eastwood flick last night to check out my neighbors and see who all chose to live in the heart of darkness with Al Gore, but I for one had every light blaring that could be seen from the street. That was not easy for me. I am by nature a very frugal person and cannot stand for lights to be left on needlessly. So I when I forgot about the lights-out deal and took a break in the movie to walk through the house, I nearly turned every one of them off.

I like the lights out deal. It is a great way to separate the darkness from the light, just like in Genesis.

A few weeks ago the Obama administration, in one of their brilliantly adolescent P.R. moves, was criticizing the Republicans of just being the party of NO. The Republican Party, typified by Lamar Alexander, pretty much has NO good sense, so in that respect I will agree with the Obamites. But they were just using the Republicans as symbols of the opposition, which in fact includes a huge number of independents like moi who find themselves voting Republican most of the time simply because so many Democrats are so God-awful repulsive, along the lines of Kennedy, Reid, and Pelosi.

If the Republican Party had any sense, instead of denying it every time the cock crowed, they would have embraced the NO label. They would have respelled it "nO". They would have hammered the point home in every exposure to the press that saying nO was far better than the irresponsible actions that the Obama administration is pushing through. Truly saying nO would clearly distinguish them from the idiots who are taking a wrecking ball to this country's teetering economy, cultural traditions, and national sovereignty.

So nO, I did not participate in the lights out hour last night. I'm a member of the real OppOsitiOn. I don't buy into the global warming scat any more than I do into Obama.

Presidential Follies

2009-03-22T09:31:00.000-05:00

How ironic that President Obama committed the gaffe on the Tonight Show of comparing his bowling skills to the Special Olympics right after I changed my appraisal of his term so far from "incompetent" to "retarded". While his poor judgment in joking tells us how ill suited he is for the presidency in terms of demeanor, the comparison he made, while meant to be self-effacing, in fact reveals his biggest problem: he's a poser. He's not up to the job and he's trying to overcome that by pretending that he is.

In addition to the Special Olympics remark, mostly overlooked are the jokes about flying in Air Force One and wearing the Presidential Seal. This is not the first time his fascination with the symbols of the office has been made apparent. Think back to last summer when his campaign made up its own quasi-presidential seal and to the elaborate staging of the (very disappointing rhetorically) speech in Denver. Obama is all about style and little about substance. It matters now that he actually has the office. A real operator like Putin will make mincemeat out of him if it ever comes to blows. And it will.
The AIG mess continues to spiral out of control. I don't think the Obama administration meant for it to be more than a quick detour to distract from other problems, but now they've got a mob mentality going.

We don't know a thing about these AIG executives except that they got bonuses to which they were contractually entitled. In any group of people there are those deserving of their success and those who are not. So I'm sure there are some sleazeballs among these people. But no doubt there are some who have, through hard work, determination, risk, and making their own luck, made it to the big leagues of finance work and earned every penny of the bonuses through work that saved assets, saved jobs, and protected their company and the economy at large from further damage than was already happening.

The Obama administration and their hangers-on have demonized these people as if they are stealing money from the taxpayers because the government is involved in their business. By this logic we should also go after the baseball players who get huge salaries in a sports organization to which the government has given a monopoly. Certainly a huge portion of Oprah's exorbitant income and assets should come back to the people because her medium is subsidized by government regulation. And Ted Turner? Why should he own so much land, having made his fortune off access to the government via CNN? And how about all these state lottery winners? Why should they make off like thieves with taxpayer money? The payoff should be smaller and more of the money kept for education or roads or whatever. Certainly the lottery executives shouldn't be making more than, say, $250k per year.

The fact is, whether it's poor kids from Puerto Rico who make it big on the diamond, a black nobody like Oprah Winfrey whose father was a barber in Nashville, or a Ted Turner whose father committed suicide, they all present stories of immense, and I think most people would say deserved, success through the free market system. And all of their success is secured by what? CONTRACTS. Contracts are the basis for all business, all economic activity, in the free world. If you don't honor your contracts, you are soon history.

Sometimes it hurts like hell to honor a contract. Business turns sour after you make a deal, or you find out you didn't make the deal you thought you were making. This is where due diligence comes in. Caveat emptor. Congress, with President Obama's blessing and guidance, made really bad deals on the various bailouts, stimulus bills, and other recent legislation. But it's the deals they've made. It is incredible hypocrisy to try to welsh on the deals now by attacking the businesses and individuals to whom they have forked over piles of cash. It is not those entities' fault that they assume their contracts are valid. It is the administration's fault for neither reading the bills they shepherded through Congress with such haste nor allowing public review of them.
There is an incredible churning of stomachs going on right now among those thinking people who supported Obama for president. While those of us on the conservative side feel an awful despair or impotence in the face of one lunatic act of legislation after another, some of which are even aided by supposed conservatives like Lamar Alexander, what we don't realize is that there is a very huge pool of influential people who may still support Obama on the surface, but only to save face or stall for time to find another option. They are eaten up with remorse and shame for their support of this bumbling, destructive man.
It is not a fun time to be in business whether as worker or owner. But it is an amazing time for history. Not for all that hogwash about the first black's being elected. That's only impressive to bigots, which I believe the vast majority of Americans are not anymore. What's so interesting is how the American system is going to react to this fly in the ointment. I really don't know. And I don't think anyone else does either.

Cuomobama II

2009-03-18T05:24:00.000-05:00

As it became clear to me after my yesterday post, the AIG bonuses were of a bit different nature than I had thought, though their very existence is thanks to the same principle that was my main point: money makes the insurance world go round. And of course, if the politicos wanted the contract voided that provided the bonuses, they should have just let AIG go belly up. But AIG is too big to fail, i.e., too good a source of political contributions just like Fannie and Freddie.

And the theatrical aspect of it all by hypocrites Dodd and Frank and hypocrite-in-chief Obama just reached a higher plain yesterday, all of whom were involved in the mess long before they decided to make a show of railing against it when in fact they were at the root of it. I love Michelle Malkin's suggestion that they should all be forced to give back the contributions that AIG made to their campaigns.

I've got to wonder if Andrew Cuomo was really helping their cause by forcing the bonus details out into the open. I believe this is a story they wanted to surface and disappear quickly, a way to score some populist points quickly and move on. But the more that's found out, the worse they look. Maybe Mr. Cuomo has his own agenda. You can bet it has nothing to do with justice for the people, but there may be some political power justice involved.

We're now about two months into the Obama administration. My assessment at the one month mark was "incompetence". This month I might further refine that to "retardation". They're making W look like a genius.

Cuomobama

2009-03-17T05:40:00.000-05:00

Am I the only one who finds President Obama's supposed anger over the AIG bonuses as ridiculous as Barney trying to get his bullet out of his belt and into his gun?

And since when is it legitimate for the state to target businessmen for getting paid???

It seems to me that if the government didn't want insurance executives taking bonuses they shouldn't have invested in the insurance business. They should have just let it go bust. Because bonuses are as fundamental to insurance marketing as overtime pay is for blue collar work after forty hours. That goes along with free trips to fun places like Las Vegas. Selling insurance is the hardest of work and it demands dramatic rewards to motivate employees. This holds true from top to bottom. Even the lowest adjusters have a relatively low salary but get big bonuses and nifty trips in return for outstanding performance on settlements, etc. Were AIG having a good year, no doubt the bonuses handed out would be many times what they are this year. They're trying to keep their best people.

If AIG is already failing, you can do nothing more to hasten its ultimate failure than to drive away its most highly productive employees by demonizing them and taking away their incentives. Personally I would have jumped ship as soon as the government appointed its CEO. Those who are left in a few months will be only those who can't find work elsewhere and those who've gotten on lately through political connections.

Shame on the Republicans in Congress who have joined the chorus in this lynch mob. Obama and Cuomo are exploiting the situation for political grandstanding. But what else is new...

Doctor Zhivago

2009-03-15T05:59:00.001-05:00

I found a VHS copy of Doctor Zhivago at McKay's yesterday at a reasonable price and brought it home to watch for the umpteenth time. It is a fabulously rich and textured movie to have been made over forty years ago. There is no more beautiful actress in any movie than Julie Christie is in that movie. And no better indictment of the threat collectivism to the individual.

It is Lara and Yuri, of course, at the center of things, but as hateful as he is in certain aspects, you've got to love Komorovsky. His truth is brutal but revealing. He brings them back to earth when the star-crossed lovers risk becoming complete ninnies. And he saves them from early death. Where Zhivago may be the poet of Russia, Komorovsky is closer to its soul, the violent, passionate, often drunken maelstrom that inspired Dostoyevski to powerful novels like The Brothers Karamazov.

The great and painful romantic story is set against the backdrop of the Russian revolution. Class envy was at the root of that disaster just as it is being exploited today in America, with everything from performance bonuses to private jets to trips to Vegas being attacked by the have-nots and do-nots and the President himself to push their political agenda and, in cases such as Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangel, and Barney Frank for easy examples, their personal gain.

The book Doctor Zhivago, by the way, is no less powerful than the movie. Get hold of either one the next time you're looking for something of timeless import and quality to read or watch.

Red Herrings

2009-03-14T07:39:00.000-05:00

It's nice that the market showed some signs of life this week. About ten more weeks of similar gain and we might be talking recovery.

But it isn't going to happen. Tucked in the portfolio under Obama's left arm is a stack of to-do notes that includes union card check legislation, nationalized health care, cap and trade taxes, undoing the Bush tax cuts, and a cornucopia of "green" malarkey. Each will be rolled out one after the other in time to snuff out any real hope for resurgence in the markets.

The effect of the unbelievable number of jobs lost since the election has yet to be factored in with the economic numbers we're seeing lately. Those folks have some credit card availability and maybe some savings to live off for a while, but that and unemployment payments will wear out soon enough. And no amount of ditch-digging, bridge-building, and paper-shuffling jobs the government can come up with will make up for it. Unchecked, the unemployment disaster is going to further dampen retail sales and lead to repos and foreclosures like this country has never seen. Yet Obama does nothing to stop it by reassuring the investing community that he will not tax them to death, and everything to accelerate it by waving the socialist flag even as he denies it.

The fact is, despite President Obama's sudden sunny outlook (things are never as good or bad as they seem???), knowing just how toxic his attitude is toward free markets and people who have what it takes to succeed in them, he was right from the first with his dour assessment of the economy.

It might make for a lumpy mattress, but as Obama helpfully suggested last weekend, I'd keep my money there if I had any. In gold or silver coin. With a gun under the pillow to protect it.

Tick tock tick tock...

2009-03-09T21:49:00.000-05:00

Hoooo-kay. Down about another hundred today and President Obama's barely had a thing to say about the economy in days, since he compared it to a daily tracking poll. He's been too busy telling the world the Taliban is kicking our cans and revving up the market for unborn fetus cells.

Prior to his election, I predicted Obama would be another Jimmy Carter. Turns out I was being unfair to President Carter. I picked the wrong peanut guy. I should have said Obama would be like the head of that peanut company that's spreading salmonella or plague or whatever all over. But that hadn't happened yet either, so that would have taken a double prophecy. I'm not that good. In fact I'm not good at all but anybody with eyes to see could spot him as a quack if they'd only look.

The Obama apologists, when they're not bashing Rush Limbaugh or belittling those who dare call socialism socialism, like to invoke the excuse that Obama inherited this mess. Obama himself likes to invoke that excuse quite often. But he voted for TARP, and I seem to remember that he was brought in with McCain by President Bush to discuss it all real time before it even went down. That would have been an excellent opportunity for either candidate to stand up and say "No Way", but neither did. So one's not worse or better than the other. But we certainly got one that real time today does not understand at all that it's the economy, stupid.

I hear a clock ticking. It's getting louder and louder. There's only so long before even Democrats realize they've got a real dunderhead in the White House. The people who have loved him so well are going to turn on this President, and turn hard. There's only so much incompetence that even American Idol watchers and Democrats can put up with before it's no longer amusing.

Are you better off than in October?

2009-03-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

How many trillions of dollars of value has the stock market lost since Barack Obama was elected? I don't even want to look it up. It's too disturbing. It's bad enough to look at my own retirement account.

I know the dyed in the wool, conscienceless, true left-wing liberals out there who supported Barack Obama will never wake up. They seem all to carry some childhood trauma that they've never gotten over, and don't want to, that leaves them permanently jaundiced by an anti-everything attitude except for what is grotesque and perverted. They're the ones who could not see Bush the man and could only see Bush the Hitler. They're the ones who feel that killing fetuses is a perfectly acceptable form of contraception. They're the ones who blindly buy Al Gore's claptrap. They're the Code Pinks and John Murthas and all those who can conveniently put out of mind the young woman scratching and clawing and gasping for air submerged in Teddy Kennedy's car underwater while he stumbled off not even concerned enough to call for help, much less try to save her himself. They revere him as the Lion of the Senate.

That crowd is hopeless. I'm not talking about them.

But there's a crowd somewhere between that bunch and the KKK types who are average, reasonably well-adjusted Americans, and among them was a large enough portion to swing the vote to the Democrats in 2008. Watching the Sunday shows this morning there was enough anti-Rush Limbaugh chatter to distract from the real problems, but as time goes on, more and more of those in the middle are not going to have to wait four years to ask the question, "Am I better off than I was in 2008?" They're already worse off, much worse off, just weeks into Obama's term.

They're mostly too proud to come out already with their buyer's remorse, though some are. "What the hell was I thinking?" is going through a lot of middle of the road Obama voters minds right now. They chose style over substance. "Is Obama really this dense?" is another common thought. And they thought George Bush was stupid! "Where am I going to put what money I've got left?" is another. Those gold coin ads are sounding better and better.

Obama didn't plea with people not to put their money under their mattresses yesterday for nothing. But I'll bet more than a few people are taking the hint: if he asks us not to do it, it's probably the right move.

Resist sOcialism.

2009-03-07T17:51:00.000-06:00

That's what the sign I'm going to hand paint and put in my yard is going to say as soon as I get the time to do it. Feel free to steal the idea and beat me to the punch. Apparently the era of private property rights is past anyway.

I have no time now. For the past six weeks I've done practically nothing but work. My small industrial distribution business, which for several years had consistently been profitable though not lucrative, took a nosedive in November and has never recovered. Curiously, our sales are about 40% below where they should be. That 40% figure is consistent with a 40% dive in the stock market and the 40% drop I keep hearing for retail sales. Where did all those 40%s go? Poof. They're just gone.

And in my case, with our 40% went three of my staff, all of them long termers, including one who had been with us since day one. I blubbered through the layoff meeting like a schoolgirl.

I never thought I'd see such a mess in my lifetime. Granted, part of the responsibility lies with the Bush administration. But the Democrat majority that won Congress in 2006 is clearly the culprit. Up until that time, it's easy to see now, we were enjoying the halcyon days of business. It's hell from here on out, I'm afraid, until something gives.

And apparently it's not going to be our brilliant but headstrong and inexperienced President. Since it can't be his intellect that's in the way, it is absolutely confounding to me that he is either too drunk with his new power or genuinely determined to destroy our free market system.

His comments this week that the stock market is like a tracking poll strike me as adolescent. He is denying the obvious. The policy choices that he has made coupled with the reckless legislation pushed through by Reid and Pelosi are having dramatic, negative consequences for millions of Americans, and his tenure is barely out of the gate. Yet, in some sort of intentional or hapless denial, Barack Obama refuses to read the handwriting on the wall. He has scared the investor, productive class stiff. They will not risk their money any longer on American business not knowing what kind of tax and regulatory mayhem is coming its way.

So I and millions of others in small business are hunkered down. I'm not sure we're even praying or hoping for an improvement. It seems pointless. All we can try to do is survive.

It is a feeling of desparation. Some kind of hope this is. Some kind of change.

Incompetence

2009-02-21T09:59:00.001-06:00

One word summary of the first month of the Obama presidency.

From the Front Lines of the Unstimulus

2009-02-10T04:45:00.001-06:00

Business sucks. Those are the exact words I've gotten from several vendors and customers, and I've sure thought it many, many times lately. Like hapless Captain Ahabs, we're trying to sail (or sell!) in the Doldrums.

There are exceptions. I've talked to a couple of people for whom business is good. I'm glad of it. Somebody needs to be making some money. But they are truly the exception these days, and much as I hate to say it, the inertia is going to catch up with them eventually because this is not going away anytime soon.

Was I the only one who felt President Obama was way out of his league last night? That the guy doesn't have a clue? He reminded me of Jim Belushi trying to rally his frat brothers. Nothing he is saying or doing with the Democrat Congress gives us entrepreneurial types any hope, despite his campaign theme. It might have helped if he had at one time in his life had some involvement in the private sector other than as a beneficiary of its riches.

The question is, two years from now, is the American spirit going to be so weakened, and the system so corrupted by the tax cheats and sixties dopeheads who are in charge of the arms of government now, that we will not be able to rise up against them at the polls? I suspect they're counting on a Yes to that question.

Catholicism vs. the Catholic Church

2009-01-29T06:50:00.000-06:00

It's difficult not to write about the so-called Stimulus Bill that's passing like a quick kidney stone through Congress right now, but if collectivism is going to rule the day I guess it's not surprising that people are losing their collective minds and buying this tripe. I'll spin my wheels in another intractable direction instead.

I am a cradle Catholic. Not a very good one, either, but I know I'm not in the minority on that. I would venture to guess that a majority, if not a vast majority, of U.S. Catholics have ignored one teaching of the Church or another over the years, especially its strictures against birth control.

I am twice divorced. That pretty much makes me a two time loser with doctrine right there. If it's any redemption I have at least recognized that they were the two greatest failings of my life. I wish I had followed the Church's teachings in both cases.

I've got nothing in particular against any other Christian denominations. I've sat around a little in different churches' pews over the years. Some put on quite a good service and are obviously full of very good people doing good work. But anything other than the Catholic Mass is Diet Coke to me. Nothing replaces the Real Thing.

The word catholic means universal. That's what I especially love about Catholicism. It's world-wide. It stretches over the centuries. It has many languages and cultures and eras under its roof. And it is generally speaking a voice and force of light and goodness. I love the Mass, I love my local church, and I love the people in my little parish. That makes for a very comfortable cushion when I sit in the pew.

But... Churches are run by people, not by God. Catholicism is of God; the Catholic Church is of man. So by human nature, the Church is bound to get it wrong sometimes. That was clearest during the time of the Inquisition. The cracks in its human foundation have become quite obvious again in recent years through the ongoing scandal of predatory homosexual priests.

But there's another scandal of human folly brewing within the Church today. I believe it will be far more damaging on the human scale. Although quite different in nature, I think it's not unrelated to the sex abuse scandal.

It all boils down to this: There is a strong movement within the U.S. Catholic Church for "social justice". The social justice movement, like the Obama campaign, purports to act in the name of eliminating violence, poverty and racism. Many Catholics have bought into this, for who can be against such good ideals? There are whole programs such as "Just Faith" moving strongly through the ranks which push these notions and are being widely accepted.

The fact is that the social justice movement within the Catholic Church is nothing short of a political action movement for socialism. Nashville Bishop David Choby's recent involvement in the Progressives' anti-English campaign brought this into the spotlight locally. It is curious how liberals rail against church involvement in politics when it's a matter of the Moral Majority's supporting pro-life Republicans, citing the mythical concept of separation of church and state, but they have no problem rounding up left-wing (or naive) clerics to support their causes when useful.

I am ashamed of Bishop Choby for allowing himself to be used like this. He is, I think, a good man, but like many Catholics, he has confused politics with God's work. If he does not trust his parishioners to take his teaching from the pulpit about Christ's love and translate it into their civic life appropriately, he nevertheless does not have the commission to sell himself to a political campaign. Christ was very clear about keeping religious and civic duties separate. Bishop Choby's job is to tend the Catholic flock, not Caesar's.

Frankly I believe this taking a presumedly "moral" stance on political issues like illegal immigration or racial relations in general is a roundabout way of atoning in the public eye for the sins of the American priesthood.

That kind of thinking is how an abortion pusher like Barack Obama gets elected President with a large portion of the Catholic vote. That is how the Ted Kennedys, John Kerrys, and Nancy Pelosis of the world can go to office and vote for policies that directly contradict the basic tenets of their faith. They seem to find less a faith partner in the Catholic Church than a political ally. And Machiavelli, by the way, was not a pope. Just because he was Italian does not make him a good role model for Catholics.

Most of us Catholics sit by and let this happen. I think we should not. Or we stand to lose our church just as the Episcopalians have.