Saints Galore! Monday, Feb 8 2010

I’d cover something in our Advocate today, if they had anything. The entire front page is given over to a photograph of a Saint doing something. The rest of the paper is Sainted, to say the least. OK, so the Saints win, I’m happy. I’m not a huge fan, I can go a week or more without football news, but it is nice to see the home town guys win. I went to the public bar to share the joy in Mushville. Still, one would think that the newspaper would confine sports to sports pages and get on with the business of protecting the Republic from government’s rapacious grasp.

No, the do not. Instead, on Saturday, so beset with all things Saints that needed to be covered, they hired an Associated Press writer to go on down to New Orleans and report on the mayor’s election. Too bad that our local paper had not the resources to drive down 80 miles to find out what might be happening in a city that is now smaller than our own. Perhaps that’s why. New Orleans, being a shadow of its former self no longer warrants a local reporter from the independent voice of the region to go take a peek, and work his inside sources that he might have cultivated over his career. No, not going to happen, so some national savant gets the big bucks to give us the story.

The story being that Saturday, Mitch Landrieu won the election, finally, to be mayor of New Orleans. So now we have a sister in the senate and the brother in city hall. They are two of the last Democrats around here. Do you think New Orleans will now get a whole lot better? Probably not. It will slog along as it always has. But still, now it means we have no lieutenant governor, which mean the Culture Recreation and Tourism department has no head. Which means, well, probably not much, since neither Mitch nor anyother Lieu-G did much in that job. And will Obama race down here to give his billions? No, he will not, but will do pretty much what George Bush did, which is rightfully keep the presidential paws off municipal government. But he will blame Bush for doing nothing while he himself does nothing, which is the main difference between Liberals and the Republicans. They both do nothing, but the Libs blame the Republicans for not doing nothing well enough. Odd folks, those Libs.

Also Sarah Palin did a speech to one of the many Tea Party groups – this one supposedly the poobahs of the movement. But in fact, as Ms. Palin correctly said, there are no poobahs for tea drinkers, there are only individuals who are trying to work out the problems of the country with one guiding light (two really,) the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. Documents I always like to refer to in political discussion. For it makes no difference what somebody wants to do politically – if it is against the spirit of the Declaration and contrary to the well laid out form of government in the Constitution then you shouldn’t be proposing it. The Tea Party grows leaps and bounds in almost direct opposite direction to the excoriation, dismissals, and contempt citatations that is heaped upon it by the Democratic Party, and to a lesser degree, by the Republican Establishment. It is pleasing to watch the country’s elites in a dither over the rumbunctious ramblins of We the People. Who knows where it will wind up?

Now, it turns out that Sarah did not use a teleprompter. (and why we keep capitalizing this word when it no longer is a trademarked product, and who cares if it is, but instead a common word, I don’t know,) nor did she seem to really be reading a speech. She surely had notes. She definitely it now turns out had a few things scribbled on her hand. Now it appears that the left blog nuts have jumped on this as a sign of some weakness, or a fault, or something bad somehow, though indefineable. Which is laughable, for it would seem to show a woman who is in command of her subject, of her talking points, and confident to make a 50 minute long speech without a crutch to lean on. All she needed was a few key words to jog her memory, and make sure she brought up all the things that she wanted to bring up. I’ve done it, and I’ve done a fair amount of public speaking. I never used a prepared written speech. Not my style. A person who knows the subject he or she is addressing shouldn’t need more than a few short word bursts to keep the program on the move. The jokes about the “Teleprompter in Chief” are now too many to count.

In fact, the entire Obama thing is turning into a joke. More and more people just giggle when he talks, or at least turn for the remote. Nearly every thing he says nowadays is quickly shredded as the mushburgers they are. For instance, he says that he’ll finally come and talk to the Republicans about health care in front of the cameras, C-Span and more. Peachy. And what is the topic to be? Or what are the starting points? One would think a blank slate since the president himself says that the Republicans never gave him his ideas (but he also says that many of the ideas not given are included in the plan he wants to discuss – which means he wants to say “yes” and “no” at the same time to the question “Are Republican ideas included in the plan, which is, of course, laughable,) But no, the president is inviting the Republicans to confab so that they might agree to and approve the very plan that they just worked so hard at making sure it didn’t get enacted, so that Obama can say he got his extraordinarily unpopular measure through the Congress controlled by his faltering party on a bi-partisan vote. The man is funny, the way he is so deluded.

In fact, the Republicans even wound up with another member of their group who was elected on the specific premise of no more of the president’s initiatives. But Obama, supreme being that he is, thinks that all such opposition to the plan is because we do not understand what is in it. In fact, the opposition grows more intense and larger based with every known provision and variation. So the president is living in some faded la-la land of his own mandate from heaven, as he maneuvers himself politically to become an irrelevant mandarin. Of the Chinese pointless royal or orange kind I cannot be sure. But still, the guy is trying, perhaps, to make himself so irrelevant so that he can go do what he thinks he was elected president to do: Play golf and basketball and blame George Bush for the problems of the nation, and America for the problems of the world.. Well he should go play ball, and stay out of politics for a while. We are tired of him. Greviously tired. Though his comments are lending themselves more and more towards Comedy Central I think the country can use a good laugh.

Now, the blogs of late are so chock full of the debunking of every presidential program, policy and political posture, and they are chock full of the debunking of global warming, the stimulus package and the EPA, that one can hardly keep up with it. I can only skim a few dozen of the ones I like. There’s so many to choose from. I’m sure there are a number of leftwing, socialist and pro-bama blogs, but if all they can do is have a kniption because the most popular politician in the country doesn’t use a teleprompter, and does use her own shorthand note system, goes to show the debths that they have sunk. Perhaps they are joining Representative Kennedy, drunken scion of that passel of rebrobates, in simply saying “it’s a joke,” and being correct, but not realizing that it is on them.

Well, it’s a mush day, so the post is mushy, and I’m sure there’ll be more tomorrow.

Leave a Response »

 

Clock and Dagger Sunday, Feb 7 2010

The Big Picture.

This in Italics is from the Washington Post >> In a statement, Orszag called Ryan “a smart and engaging leader. . . . I always enjoy debating and talking with him.” But the budget director expressed disagreement with Ryan’s legislation, which includes a provision that Democrats have long opposed, such as allowing people to invest money they would pay in payroll taxes for Social Security into personal accounts and keeping tax cuts in place for people who earn more than $250,000 a year.

Look at that, Mr. Orszag, the director of the budget of the United States, along with the rest of the Democrats, are clear that they are opposed to letting people keep their own money. Why would they be opposed to such a thing? Why do they think they can control other people’s money better, or one hopes at least as well, but certainly no worse, than the people whose money it is. And can they do better? No evidence to that effect, much against it. Do they keep it just as well? Then why bother? If all you can do is tread water why do you think you should be doing that? And do they do worse? Certainly, for there is no one in Washington or else where who is not aware the actuarial reality that the current Social Security system is unsustainable. Yet, Democrats are opposed to an obvious solution: let people keep their own money. Why, it’s positively revolutionary in the Change that could be effected by doing that.

“House Republicans are again trying to turn back the clock to the failed policies of President Bush,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz (D-Pa.) said the Republican plan would “end Medicare as we know it.”

Yes, well, are they still blaming George Bush? And are we still accusing people for turning back the clock? And is having 5 or 6 percent unemployment, a robust stock market, a robust job picture, good value for houses, a far lower public debt and deficit, and a host of other not so bad economic measurements really that terrible? Apparently moving the clock forward, to keep with the analogy, has not been all that successful.

But it is Schwartz who is the most amazing. He is of the party of Change, working for President Change himself, which they screamed from every corner of the nation. They are for Hope of a better world. But they would keep things exactly as they are. Such change in not “ending Medicare as we know it” is not to be snickered at, for nothing is so full of change as changing nothing. Indeed. Ahem.

The administration’s support for a fiscal commission to examine how to reduce the national debt as “not leadership,” but “punting.”

This Obama idea is laughable because we already have fiscal commissions – Congress and its Committee System, and the entire executive branch. If they admit that they cannot reduce the national debt then they should step aside, step down, abdicate, resign, and otherwise get out of the way. The very job of Congress & President is to decide the budget, the expenses, the taxes, and thus the debt and the deficit, and yet they want to slough off their duties to some other group of people of whom we have little or no knowledge. They admit their own incompetence, or cowardliness, and thus this is the best proof of Vote the Bums Outs.

Even Democrats have acknowledged that it is one of the few plans offered by a member of either party that would lower the long-term budget deficit.

And so the very thing that is the best idea they abandon, or refuse to consider, or dismiss, or whatever they want to call it – for what? For a far worse idea. These people admit their own incompetence, and yet they will come to us for power again. Vote them out. They are given a plan that is the best idea for a long time, which they admit it is, and then dismiss it out of hand. And the Democrats wonder why they are sinking in the polls.

I do not know this Ryan Plan. I briefly looked at the website for it. I will return and try to wrap my mind around it. It’s not really my job – that’s why I pay these other guys aka Congress and President. But still, if you admit something is the best in quite a while you should go with it. But no, Democrats, they of Hope and Change, will keep up with the nonsense they are doing. They are to be commended for their consistency, and then fired for their obstinence – and their danger to the public wealth.

But while Obama called Ryan a “pretty sincere guy” and a person willing to “study this stuff and take it pretty seriously,” the Wisconsin lawmaker’s bill illustrates the wide gulfs on ideology and policy that separate Democrats and Republicans,

Ideology? I could have sworn the president himself, just the other day, say that he was not an ideologue at all. He is perhaps as pure as the driven snow out his door today. Meanwhile, he also said there was too much campaigning and not enough governing. And what does he do this very day? He launches blistering campaign style attacks against Republicans and the very good plan he admits would help this nation – and instead he is going to push for his completely discredited health care reform. Bizarre, and pushy. Stupid, and dictatorially against the people. Is the man crazy? Sure. Sly politician perhaps, but totally confused about the nation’s anger with politics as usual.

Win the House and Senate? If the Democrats keep this up they are lucky they’ll have a seat left to sit in.

Leave a Response »

 

Gutless same-old Friday, Feb 5 2010

The president, just the other day, in his Q & A with both Republicans and Democrats, said something which I’ve thought about now these past few hours. More or less he said he’s going to be bold. And do something new and improved. “Just doing the same old thing is not going to work” – his salient point was that to do the same as we always did means that we’ll experience whatever horrors we had under George Bush, and he of course, unwittingly and unknowingly it seems, inherited. Well, then, yes, sir, that’s true. And what then did the president do? He simply did the same thing – only more of it – that Bush did. And, too, what Clinton, the other Bush, Reagan, Carter, and on back to McKinley, did. What was it that they did? They all increased the size of government, they all engaged in deficit spending. They all continued pretty much every single existing agency and at the least created one or two more. And if the way it was all organized was bad, as Obama implied. And the deficit spending was bad, as he stated. And irrational ways of conducting the public purse were pursued, as he did proclaim. Then, how is not changing any of it – except to increase the funding for all of it – possibly going to get us out of the mess that Obama so rightly says we are in?

If $500,000,000,000 in deficits were bad, OK, how is $1,500,000,000,000 good? He explaineth not, but leads us into temptation, so long as it is not in Vegas.

If the 20 to 26 major cabinet and presidential departments were not put together efficiently how then is merely giving them more money good? Worse, he’s giving them more authority. After all, everytime government gets more authority the people have less. That’s what the Tenth Amendment is about. Why not a simple number of cabinet posts? Well, it depends on how you count them, oddly enough, to get the list of majors, for some might quibble that some are minor, or not in the cabinet, like the CIA and the FBI, which sure play cabinet agencies on TV. Perhaps they even stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night and are now ready to face the world with their newly authorized powers and funds.

I recall that during the primaries, back when Obama was running, one of his henchmen came to my door. He wanted me to vote for hope and change. I asked him “Which one of the 26 federal level cabinet agencies will Obama be eliminating?”

He looked at me, in sort of stuttered shock, before answering, haltingly, “um, well, um, none of them.”

“Ah, yes, well then, he’s not for hope and change at all. He’s for more of the same. Good bye.”

And what do we see in the “new” budget. Not only more of the same, but a lot more of the same. But if the, say, Commerce Department was screwy before, merely giving it more money is not going to help it. If the Agriculture Department was ill-run, well, giving it, too, more money is not going to do anything, except, perhaps, no, but almost definitely, be more expensively ill-run. That is neither hope nor change. That is doing the same thing: screwing up.

Now, if Obama had come and spent his first year in office going line by line through the budget he might well have altered things. But he did not. He only tried to create new behemoth agencies, more taxes, more rules, more regulations. And if the problem is the number, reach and variety of such things we have right now, then keeping it all cannot be any better than what Bush did.

Obama went for the legacy program, and not for the management dissection and dismantling we need. Why? Simple enough, really – the man never managed anything in his life. He had no idea as to the details you have to examine for a wholesale reordering of the public weal. Instead he, as a community organizer, had a vision. He is the type who walks into a wrecked neighborhood and can already see the architect’s rendering of the happy new landscapes and refurbished buildings, and pretty ferns and flowers spread among the trees that don’t exist in reality. But he is clueless, as is clear now, to know how to buy the right number of bolts and screws, and the right size paving stones, and arranging the delivery of the million bricks, and ordering the right double sash windows from the various venders that purvey to the renovation trade. He had no idea that bulldozers, and sheetrock and the men to install it, and flooring and the guys to lay it, and so on, and on, and on, onward still, exhaustively on, must be marshalled and corralled and sent forth to do the details known as work, with materials supplied by still others who worked, and in a not always smoothly running way.

Dreamers are many, and they dream big here in America. Obama dreamed of a great legacy. He was already reading the history books about how he transformed America to his vision, for he envisioned even the books to be written of his greatness. Well, frankly sir, we don’t think your job is to have a vision of what our lives should be. And more and more are coming to the conclusion that the vision is none to good anyway. But still, you, Mr President, are a manager. But few presidents want to manage. Oddly, Reagan did. He got out pen and paper and tried to get rid of programs, tried to alter the way things were organized. He tried restructuring. Alas, his co-managers, they being Congress, and the cabinet secretaries themselves, were mostly dreamers. So Reagan did not do what he tried.

Indeed, it’s not just Obama, or Clinton, or Bush, either. Our public servants high and low have almost all become dreamers, with dreamy eyed plans to make the world perfect by spitting out words. But because they are almost all lawyers they don’t really know how to manage stuff. Words they are good at, of that there is no doubt, mostly. Though of late they are failing, for the words don’t match the reality. Like the faded lady in a decrepit house thinking she is still the finest in the land and at all the soirees she holds in the grandest mansion in the town, for she says so. These guys and gals of politics today are all sort of like Norma Desmond — “But I was a star.” Yes, yes, you were. WERE – but no more. Now you are to manage, for that is what is needed. But they know not how. They know words, and so speak. The president speaks of creating jobs unceasingly. He is to even interrupt the national swigging fest of Saintly victory this coming Sunday. Mixing politics with sports, to his detriment, with words, to a pretty, but fading too, wordsmith. But no one ever ate a word, nor lived in a phrase, nor walked over a river on a sentence. Nor did anyone ever build a paragraph that might produce something useful, or saleable. Not one article ever got us from here to there, and no gauzy policy paper ever made sure the heart and lungs were put back right after the surgery. Words dream, hand do. These people have no hands, no visible anyway, for they are deep in the pockets of those who do so that the wispy minded might dream.

So he fails. With words alone, unmatched by deeds, he fails. Too bad Mr. O, you could have been a contender. But fear not, you are in league with all the rest now on the public stage – word-spewers and dream weavers, and vision thatchers, doing nothing more than proclaiming their vision of America as if they had any clue as to how to make a widget or the factory that makes it, or the mining & preparing the raw materials that widget craves to become something useful, that then must be shipped and applied to some output in the real world. Instead they are dreamers who think they have the way, lighted by their brilliance.

In just the previous post I talked about Mary Landrieu’s words of defense for her dream, and her feistiness of words for her vision of what she’ll do for us, her people, so quaintly proclaimed. Today, this morning, most of what I quoted last night from the web is on the front page. But added too is the sentiment she makes that it “takes guts” to be a public servant. Well, I guess it does. I would imagine some fortitude is needed to endlessly make claim to other people’s money so that you might effect your vision, your charitable ideals, your weaved dreams of tender threads thatched into the weak basket you want us to put all our eggs in, and for you to carry.

I think guts is a good word for looking into the abyss of deficits and go boldly jumping over the Obamian Precipice without either water wings, parachute or submarine. There you go, Ms. Landrieu, into the wild blue yonder, and you have no plane, only the wings of Icarus and the hope that the sun is not too hot this day. There you are, gutful, as you scurry for favors from the guts of others, to help your people instead of just pushing for us to just keep our own darn money. That would mean we need neither your guts, vision or service, which perhaps is the dilemma. For you maybe feel unwanted.

It is guts, indeed, to say, in the face of near unanimous opposition, in one form or the other, for one reason or the other, from strange bedfellows left, right and middle, to the thousands of pages of unread and ever morphing health care pretend reform, that you want this for us – who want it not. What guts indeed. Well, let’s hope you have the guts to make it on your own. Earning and spending your own money. Fighting off the rapacious Mongol Khan like attacks on the private means, purse, wealth and piggy banks of little kids if you could get your hands on them. Let’s hope not any successor to your thirty years will be like you. Of keeping things muddling along exactly as they were, or steadily worse, as the day you entered office with your dreams coupled with a lack of ability, perhaps even a lack of desire, to actually effect the changes we need in this country, . Indeed, you cannot even accede to the idea that dismantling it is all that is left to do. Instead, you slither back to the pit of crookedness and try again with new words. Mush and piffle, ma’am, good luck, but really, you and the rest, you’ve all got to go dream somewhere else, that you do no harm.

Leave a Response »

 

30 Years? Friday, Feb 5 2010

I’d comment on the newspaper if it only wasn’t all Saints coverage. Though I did not hear that the NFL has gone after this profit making enterprise that is using Who Dat and the Fleur de Lys and the other trappings of the Saints to sell as much advertising and copies of the paper as possible. Nice to know that the vaunted press has the First Amendment on its side, — oh yeah, just like we do. Who Dat say don’t try it to the NFL? We Dem.

So I found this on the internet:

WASHINGTON (WAFB) – On Thursday Sen. Mary Landrieu defended her vote for the public health bill.

What? The world has shown that the vote is nuts. The numbers don’t add up. The control sought is anti-American. Still, I’m told she defends her vote for the further destruction of truth and the American way.

Back in November, Landrieu added an amendment to the bill which would have given $300 million to Louisiana to cover a Medicaid shortfall.

Why did she wait for such a time? Any of her staffers, persumably paid, by us no less, to look for all the things that could help or hinder our state. Instead she waited until the last minute.

Some said Landrieu only voted for the health bill because it included the money for her state. Thursday afternoon, she defended herself.

Oh yah, nice to know then that you are selling our into socialist servitude and financial ruin. Good to know that you are with, charitably, the enemy. Further, you lied, then, if you are defending your vote as not for the $300,000,000. You would have voted for it anyway? That’s the way the sentence reads, perhaps it’s different elsewhere.

“I’ve spent 30 years of my life trying to represent the people of my state and make them look good,” said Landrieu.

30 years is far too long Mary. Time to retire. And we don’t need you to look good. You did not help us look good, but only yourself to gain reelection.

“Even when they were wrong I’ve defended them and when they were right, I praised them. When I was wrong I apologized and when I was right, I was very proud of my work.”

If you are proud of this abomination called health care reform, aka, take over health care and tax everything else bill, which is your work, then you are as abominable as the bill itself. In your 30 years, Ma’am, Louisiana has stayed at the top of the worst lists, and the bottom of the best lists. Nothing changed, and this you recount as accomplishment? This is forward thinking? This is your work? Your life? No, this, ma’am, is mush.

Leave a Response »

 

Onward and upward Thursday, Feb 4 2010

Two articles and a conversation have me going tonight, at a rainy, chilly 11 PM. So late because events of the day interceded with my plans, and threw them asunder. That’s what life does. It takes the best laid plans of mice and men and shoots them out of the cannon of reality like buckshot at the approaching hordes.

Which hordes? Well, the NFL has backed off on Who Dat Nation, as is well pushed here. The Saints in the Superbowl are on the front page, and in the news, editorials, sports, business, people, faith, comics, opinions, letters to the editor, politics, and in every conversation and night time dream with a sense of hope unparalleled in my time in Louisiana. They are getting a parade no matter what. Right during Mardi Gras season. And no city does parades better or more efficiently than New Orleans. So Senator David Vitter gets a LaGuardia Award. That’s the Award that should be given out to anyone who stands up to those fatted hogs and self-righteous pugnacious folks who think they can live off the public, and demand more, and still yet ask for the power and privilege to stick it to the little guy for the last few bucks. Sort of like the Pelosi family. They of scotch filled flights between the provinces and their home in the Versailles of our times, aka Washington DC.

Then there is Mary Landrieu, who is still palling around with cretins who are seemingly intent on driving the country into bankruptcy. She is one of the last few statewide Democrats still standing. I did not hear her peep or chirp for the little guy trying to reap a little from his billion or so investment in our Saints. No, she seemed to be in some confab with the president. He who is intent on still trying to force his abominable plan for taxing everything that moves and doesn’t move, which he refers to as a “budget.” He says, as captain of the ship of state, forewarned about the iceberg, with the lookouts screaming, with the engineer pushing the engines to stop, and into reverse if he can, with the crew abandoning his leadership in droves, and his passengers in shock yelling “watch out!” he says: “Full Speed Ahead!”

He puts forth as rational policy his cap and trade, his cash for cronies, his ’stimuless,’ his tax the “rich,” his spend till there’s no more, his borrow until no one will lend, his refusal to reconcile with reality, and his pugnacious lies, prevarications, falsehoods, howlers, incorrects, mistakes, and wrong headed ideas and ideals, plans and proposals, all wrapped up in one big whiny “I” And there’s Mary, awaiting her orders on which was to position the deck chairs. Abandon ship, ma’am, and swim to the shores of right, reason and the American way.

Meanwhile, at our local legislive assembly our college leaders said it was “impractical to increase tuition enough to completely offset recent budget cuts.” Nice to know that in the face of demand, as they themselves claim, they refuse to consider the prospect of charging a price that will cover their costs and a bit extra for a rainy day, or even a bonus to one and all involved. I’ve said it before – if a professor costs $60,000 a year and it costs the university, say, $5,000 a year to keep him in a lighted, air conditioned room, then he and his leaders need to find out how many students are willing to pay some amount that equals or exceeds the $65,000 cost. Or pay him less, which is what the market will bear. If no one wants to pay a professor a $1000 for his services, but only $500, well, well, welcome to the free market world of supply, demand and value.

The System President, one John Lombardi, said “No one wants to imagine that any of this is fixable by some sleight of hand.” Well, sir, charging what the going professor rate is to people willing to pay the price is the least sleighted you could ever get. Why, it would be so open, so clear, so obvious, that the word “sleight” would never enter the conversation except, perhaps, to say, “ah, Professor Morgan is of a slight build.” Or some such nicety. But really, keeping it in legislative committee and in political lobbying is exactly the way to keep sleighting the slight professor and his slight students. And slighting is different, indeed, than sleighting. Pronounced the same, yet, oh, what a difference. To Slight – to knock down a castle, to wreck a tower, to fell a wall, to destroy a fortification, to impair the intergrity of the mortered stones of power and privilege. Mr. Lombardi, as the slighters of medieval times knew, as well as Mr. Lombardi of New Jersey knew, the best defense if a good offense. So get out there and charge a real fee for a real service. Once you have that number you might be able to find the gifts, stipends, financing, grants, scholarships, loans and whatever to help whichever student might be content in paying a real price, of say, $1,000 a semester to hear all about any professor’s exciting adventures.

Meanhwhile, the Obama crowd seems to be putting their feet, and their hammer, and perhaps even their scycle into their mouths. Duncan of Education said that New Orleans is better off after Katrina. Oh, not quite like that, but in our sound bite times, that’s the way it came off. Actually, he’s right. The hurricane did sweep away the dust and dwaddleof the system. If only the Administration would let the storm hitting the economy wipe out all the crud and creeps, instead of them trying to shore up the falling edifices of old business models and / or poor management and / or nefarious players. No, he’s off to the future with his “the past is too big to fail” mentality. Oh well, he’ll learn, even if he refuses to accept it.

And Top Lawyer Holden is now in deeper doo doo with each passing moment as the terrorist trial idea for NYC is shot out like buckshot. As goes the EPA’s rules for CO2, being loaded up and readied for the flame of reality on the breech of the cannon. Timmy Geithner is on a slow boil of emerging chicanery. Meanwhile, the Lead Man himself has angered his staunch but soon to be out of office senate leader, one Harry Reid, by, for the second time, comparing the economic engine of Reid’s fief as a den of wanton spending that all should avoid. Yes, well, but at least the people there have a credit card limit, Mr. President. For you it is the sky, regardless of the storm clouds a-building. Though of course, perhaps Obama didn’t realize that he also told the people of Nevada to keep on having their 13% unemployment rate and their falling house values and their increasing foreclosures because the lack of new business will well water that fertile field of doom strewn with the seeds of Tea Party fervor. Perhaps it’s the president’s green plan to get all those people to abandon the impobable city of Las Vegas. Nearly 1.5 million people without a drop of water nearby is not a good idea. Though neigther is telling them that they are seductresses of ill gotten gains and funny money.

Meanwhile, in a conversation I had with a young man of my acquaintance, who was very properly dressed in a suit and tie, though way over dressed for where he was, did sheepishly allow that he “sold out” to someone or another. “NO!,” I fairly shouted, “you are doing the right thing in getting responsibilities, getting a better job, in bettering your own condition.” He face looked like a cold wet hard slush ball just hit it. “What, you want to live in poverty as a waiter or something?”

He was obviously surprised to hear someone defend real jobs, suit and tie jobs. To him, it seemed to me, that there was something wrong with making more money. It was, if not evil, or even wrong, at least distasteful. Here’s a guy who works two jobs and goes to college, and he’s worried, or shameful of, or dischordant with, or afraid of, or something, of making more money and taking care of himself. He even joked about having the family take care of things. I was like “NO! You need to take care of your own self. You need to make all the money you can, and rise to where you can, and take the opportunities.”

He then seemed to realize the validty of the point, which he knows intuitively – or otherwise he would not be doing two jobs while in college too – even if he was clearly told, by none other than our First Lady — “get away from corporate life, go do social service.” That is, roughly — “don’t make things better, but help everyone suffer through the unchanging problems.”

I can see that perhaps more direction is needed for this youth of America today. He reads this blog, from time to time, so he’ll recognize himself, one imagines. But what a number our leaders are doing to our people. When college leaders try to hide the true costs, say they are even sort of irrelevant, and demonstrate that begging the legislative powers, for the money to pay the costs that are the same no matter who pays them, is the better course of action, well, then, there is much to do to make things right and save the country from the foolery.

Leave a Response »

 

Who Dat Petition Tuesday, Feb 2 2010

http://www.davidvitter.com/site/c.ktJUJ7MNIuE/b.5769125/k.342B/WHO_DAT_say_WE_CANT_SAY_WHO_DAT.htm?msource=google?gclid=clujyddx058cfrmxawodzh-eba

Here’s a link to Sen. David Vitter’s petition telling da NFL dat dose seats in da Superdome, and down dere in Miami is da people’s seats.

and dat’s all i got to say about dat.

(Notice there’s no Colts’ fracas eh? Could be because Saints are culture, and Colts are business.  Just a guess.)

Leave a Response »

 

Who dat paid for da Dome, NFL? Tuesday, Feb 2 2010

Who dat paid for the stadium, NFL?

Now, it seems dat in the last few days the NFL is in a snit because folks around here are so proud of deir long-losing team that they are trying in a bad economy to make a few bucks, and meet a very strong demand for Saints paraphernalia. Perhaps even a demand that is not being met. I am not going to buy any, but still, I do not begrudge any entrepreneurs here in Louisiana from making a buck.

Here’s why: We, Dem people, The Taxpayers of Louisiana, paid for da stadium in which dose Saints play. To dis one here’s knowledge, We De People, the citizens of Louisiana, own dat stadium, however dey legally define it. Whedder outright state ownership, or merely a quasi public entity known as da Louisiana Sports Authority, or da LA Superdome Poobahs – we own the sucker. And we made a mighty sweet deal with Tom Benson, owner of da Saints, to “rent” da place. Yeah, like he pays rent like we pay for apartments, only not quite. For he gets special deals one way or da other.

Furthermore, we is dem that gave Mr. Benson, just recently, and thus the NFL, $65,000,000 to make it even more palatable to da rich folks who require da luxury boxes we bought for dem.

Not only dat, we is dem who bought a new roof for da Dome when da old one was taken by da wind. Why, you could have called Katrina “Sherman” and it still would have made perfect sense. Only switch da fires of Atlanta for da floods of New Orleans, and you still get da utter destruction of a city.

We is Dem that made sure that da Saints would have a place to come home to to get us to this point. We is dem dat went without other stuff so dat da Saints could play here again. Why dere was water in da streets, and in da homes, and we was renovating da dickens out of dat stadium.

We paid who knows what to bribe Benson so dat he would not either settle in San Antonio, or move further west, like Horace Greely himself, to Los Angeles, or to wherever else Benson threatened or intimated he would if he did not get da appropriate sweetheart deal to make sure he came on home. I don’t know, and I don’t care, what da details are of dat deal, in which da NFL was certainly complicit. The fact of da matter is dat whatever money did go dis way or dat started out in da pockets of da very entrepreneurs who are trying, for da first time in deir lives, to sell Saints Superbowl Materials.

Now, I don’t know if da Saints players are actually domiciled in dis state. Nor do I know what income taxes dey might pay to Louisiana, but I have da sneaking suspicion dat we da people pay just a bit more proportionally of our earnings so dat da NFL can remain da pampered behemoth it is.

And da Fleur Da Lys is from da Louix of France, for whom one of dem our own Cathedral is named, and to whom many go for intercession so dat we might wind up in Miami so da NFL can charge da 2.4 Million per 30 seconds dey deem is respectable for an ad. And due to such intercession, da fact dat the losingest team in da league, bar none, is going to bring lots more interest to da game. Just to see da worst become da best. And our state flower, or state plant, or whatever is the Louisiana Iris, aka, da Fleur Da Lys. Dey want we should take dat down too?

As for claiming “Who Dat” itself, well, piffle, sirs, piffle. New Orleans’ very accent itself contains da flatened Th = D in ‘that” to Dat. Like in how’s ya’ momma and dem? We is dem. We is dat say mush. We are da people of Louisiana, however independently or corporately, privately or publicly constituted, who pay for a goodly portion of da Saints, and thus da NFL. We enable da profits. Plus, we are told it is for economic development. Imagine dat, den, when here we have a few folks economically developing on da investment dat dey made, and dose bums at NFL Scrooge Headquarters want to claim our very culture.

Is dere no end to da rapacious desires of a multi-billion dollar corporation, filled with grossly overpaid and mollycoddle “executives,” from water boy to quarterback, and possessing all manner of special favors from da Taxpayers, here and far?

I think back to another team from another city with a Th to D problem, that being New York, where Da Bums played, until dey moved to Los Angeles, where da whole point of da name “Dodgers” was changed to mean falling crap from earthquakes and landslide, instead of trolley cars. And da way da NFL demands new stadia by the billion-buck-load, and move teams here and dere to effect deir demands, well, den, time to get a new meaning of dodge going – dodge responsibility for deir own stadia, dodge da taxes others pay, dodge even deceny itself – for letting guys like Michael Vick ever play again, amongst others. Mush pushing of the finest sort.

And as David Vitter said, so aptly, in the spirit of Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York, who during Prohibition, imbibed liquor on the very steps of City Hall and said, with spark, spittle and spirit to da rapacious anti-booze revenuers of the times – So Sue Me!

Leave a Response »

 

Flying High Monday, Feb 1 2010

What a great Mardi Gras parade! Skewering politicians left and right, though just our favorite sons of Louisiana, with great sarcasm and ridicule, mostly the governor and the mayor, but others too. The festivities took but an hour or so to pass on by, tossing beads and trinkets like the drunken revelers they were. Then we went barhopping to help the economy.

The strangest thing was what was missing, and what was noticed by many of the people that I knew: The riff raff that used to skirt the crowds looking for victims to rob and roll. Now New Orleans is a Democratic city, and I’d guess that most of the people that I know think they are lefties and socialists even, but at least good hearted liberals to say the least. And what was their take on the missing riff raff? Well, quiet racial profiling I’d say. There was much hushed talk about the gentrification going on – though there isn’t a whole lot of renovation, or reconstruction, nor renewing. No, what is missing is the same thing that our Secretary of Education alluded to. I loosely quote the man, Arne Duncan: “Katrina blew apart the school system and now it is much better.” Yes, well, the riff raff is out. Now, when Mrs. George Bush, senior, pointed out that many of the poorest refugees from that city where better off out of it, the liberals and Democrats called her all manner of crude names, and a heartless hussy, ah, but when Duncan said it, it is wisdom of the ages.

Well, we’ve all known for a while that the racism and insensitivity charge is a one way street, and Democrats always gun the engines of the bulldozer of excoriation of the improperly sensitive by the carefully calibrated racial meter the Dems keep under lock and key until they need to excoriate. But the liberals in which I was midst were only understated in their happiness without the riff raff, who were the product, broken as it were, of the school system that Babs Bush and Mr. Duncan are right to point out was completely shot through with corruption, cronyism, sloth, and general incompetence and stupidity. None of the good people would say what was missing, specifically. Nor were they too harsh on the gentrified folks they pre-storm hated for upsetting the careful mix of races and socio-economic classes. Nice, of them, no? Sort of like the liberal mugged is the new conservative, the gentrified neighborhood is the new racial harmony level. They did squirm a bit when I said, “ah, all the young black roughians are gone from the streets.”

And so, given the deplorable state of state education across this land, and the multiple Katrinas that might be necessary, and which his own Secretary of Education said, one would think that Obama would be seeking out ways to so destroy our current system of education so that he would go down in history as the education president. But no, instead, buried in his 3.8 Trillion Buck Budget is simply billions more for more of the same. Reality and his own guy’s comments not withstanding, the president feels that pouring more money down the same rat hole will bring about a bed of roses. Such is hope and change.

And to call something a budget that shows you are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar you spend is rather odd. Surely it should be more like “Guys Gone Wild,” as more than a few folks down there on Bourbon Street were doing the same in their drunken orgy of excess. Budget? They don’t have no stinkin’ budget. They have plastic. They have ATMs, scattered like taxpayers, in every bar. Though there is big difference. The drunks will have to get parsimonious on other expenditures tomorrow, while the president and his Mardi Gras krewe up in Congress will continue to spend, according to the president himself, like a wild drunken fool until the hangover and the foreclosure come like Spring rains come to most of the world. That is, it is inevitable that the party must stop. Obama just hopes it doesn’t stop on his watch, just like in musical chairs you hope to be in front of one when the music stops. The current crop of plenararies of our nation are obviously, now, trying to make it out of office, and possibly off of the corporeal earth, long before the bills come due. Meanwhile, drunken orgiastic spending it shall be. Until daddy takes the T-Bills away, as the credit of the nation shifts to mush, from the rock it was.

And isn’t it fine that Nancy Pelosi is doing her part? Why, it turns out that she is burning through a million or two of tax dollars on Grandma’s Air Taxi Service for her family. What a gal! What family values indeed. Steal from the poor and give to the rich, connected and nepotistic hunkered down at grannies knee. Yes, thanks Nancy, for the forebearance and civil rectitude. Why, the booze bill alone is perhaps a $100,000, which is more than many a bar in the French Quarter makes a year in profit. Oh well. All the research is not done yet, there being apparently far, far more boxes of records to sift through than the dectectives on the case imagined. Such is profligate spending, it builds up, sort of like a federal budget, and then molds in the corner, sort of like an old sandwich at the Collier brother’s (don’t know them? Oh, great story, of rich wackos and a 20 room apartment filled to the rafters with stuff, and one dead brother rotting, before it was all found out.)

Meanwhile, an anti-capitalist as fervent as the socialist Pelosi, one Fat Mike Moore, got captitalist tax dollars to shoot his non-union, low wage, “I’m not sharing the profits,” anti-capitalist flick that bombed at the capitalist box office. No word yet if the good socialist will sue the movie going public for having unfairly singled out his flick as a piece of garbage, thereby not being sufficiently deferential to the brilliance of socialist film makers. Nor word if the tax bucks given to Big Fatty will be demanded back as wasteful spending of an economic development sort that did not produce the jobs it was said to produce.

Meanwhile, Obama, not any mere film maker, will not spend $100,000, or a $1,000,000, or even $100,000,000, like so many other failed economic development expenditures. No, in order to simply throw to the wind money that is best used by the people that actually earn it, he will perhaps announce another $100,000,000,000 in borrowed and taxed money to go his favorite people, or whomever can catch his ear. For some reason these good government economic development types think we all come out ahead if Johnny gives up his money to Steve, with a nice commission to Paul for the grants to be written and the compliance reports filed, and Jason’s percentage to run the tax system, and a small fee to Charley the lawyer and Jake the lobbyist. Let’s do some math. Let’s start with a measely $10,000,000. You can add as many or few zeros as you wish, for the proportions stay the same. Sure, for every deal the numbers may be slighty different, but it’s as they say “it’s the concept, people.”

Johnnies of the state pay in $10,000,000 in taxes – or spend $10,000,000 of their own money. That’s the choice. That’s the calculation’s start. Do we come out ahead in real wealth if the Johnnies of our nation keep their own money, or do we come out ahead if some bunch of guys in a city far away spend it for the Johnnies, you know, “more efficiently,” as perhaps the regular Johnny just doesn’t spend his own money well enough to help society. Such is the logic. But here, a comparison of sorts: Government v. private $

Department flunkies to identify good projects: $500,000 —

existing business: $0

Tax compliance — $500,000                                            no tax forms: $0

Grant submission and evaluation: $500,000        purchase agreement: $0

Lawyers & Lobbyists: $1,000,000                               nobody like this; $0

Fancy Dept.Building: $1,000,000                               existing building: $0

New Fancy Building: $2,000,000                                existing building: $0

EPA, OSHA & other bureaus: $1,000,000             staying put: $0

Money to new company: $5,000,000           money in sales: $10,000,000

graft & corruption, nepotism, loss, $500,000               customers $0

Net economic development: $5,000,000          net economic development $10,000,000

Salaries & benefits: $5,000,000                   Salaries & benefits: $5,000,000

Profit (loss): $5,000,000 & ($5,000,000)       Profit (loss): $15,000,000

Yes, give the money to government to hand out to favored friends, get a net loss.

Let people keep their own money, get a profit.

What does Obama do? $1,500,000,000,000 in deficit, means that much not kept in hands of those who earned it. So, that means about Two Trillion in lost Economic Output Every Year in order to help people with 1.5 Trillion. So, we lose, roughly, about $500,000,000,000 just to have the government help us. Why, those millions spent by Pelosi are just a shot of spit compared to the real money involved.

No wonder she thinks she can get away with it.

Will she be skewered, or He, the One, in a Mardi Gras parade? Doubtful. The left, liberal, Democratic Socialists of Louisiana could not bring themselves to do it. But, I’m sure, though I have no proof yet, that poor Sarah Palin will be skewered. For Socialists have no clue of money, but they know how to mock and wreck. Just ask Trotsky, as soon as he gets the pick ax out of his head.

Leave a Response »

 

Here and there Saturday, Jan 30 2010

OK, the senate approved 1.9 Trillion Bucks in new debt ceiling. Now, according to the AP, I don’t know which writer, it’s not mentioned, however, they say that our government has to borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Now, the vote to keep this up was 60 to 39 – -which means who was the 60^th vote? After all ex-senator Kirk of Massachusetts should no longer be voting. But still, he did. Swell guy, to keep on working after he’s off the job, right? Or is it just an unconstitutional thing to have people who no longer are in office legally to keep on voting as they desire. What a country – no, what a Congress! Meanwhile, the AP does sort of castigate the Republicans with this: “the measure passed … under ground rules insisted upon by Republicans that required 60 votes to pass it.” Aw, following the available rules. Does that so rile up AP? Apparently. Still, it is odd isn’t it that both sets of numbers are 60-40. 40 cents borrowed, and 40 (or 39, who was missing?) Republicans against it. 60 cents spent and 60 Democrats for more of the same tax and spend regime. And do these Democratic Senators understand that you cannot keep on spending a dollar for every 60 cents you get (not even earn, just take in taxes) and keep borrowing the rest without bankruptcy. Ah, but what do these people know of bankruptcy? They are spending other people’s money, while padding their own accounts, perhaps like Chris Dodd with a house in Ireland, and Charles Rangel with a house in the Domincan Republic, in some place unknown, with perhaps with foreign real estate awaiting their departure from the mess that they made. Thanks dudes!

I found this on the net: In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote repeatedly about the need to protect minority rights. In Federalist No. 10, he addressed complaints “that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

In Federalist No. 51, Madison wrote: “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”

So true Jimmy Madison, for the country is not about the majority making the rules, or the minority having to ask permission to do what they do – it is founded on the idea that because everyone is entitled to their own version of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, that the closer to the people the laws and taxes are, and the less of them, the better off everyone is. I really don’t give a hoot what Obama’s vision for America is, and does he even know what my vision is? How could he? Yet, by making every single thing a federal issue we are making sure that the “majority” will always run roughshod over the minority. We are building unhappiness into the symtem as fast as congress can vote for the blank pages it loves of late. That’s the problem with Federal Control of everything. If it was down to the states, or cities or counties, and thus in some states a majority might do one thing, but in just the state next door a state might decide to do something completely opposite. Why is this a problem? Why do we need a one size fits all program for every single thing? That’s the issue to wrap the mind around – a small group of people making decisions for everyone by pretending they have a majority of Americans on their side, when instead they have a small majority of the voters that might have come out in the last election.

Now, then I found this: “I don’t know how else to get this through. I think Rush Limbaugh must’ve said once we weren’t a democracy, because this claim vibrates like an article of faith out here on these absurd fringes.” I found it here www.specator.org, by a poster named “liberal reader.” A person so sure of himself that he hides behind a moniker, oh well, ’tis his right. But what liberal reader misses is that it is perfectly fine to have fringes in our society. That’s the point of it. But if you don’t allow fringes, then you are putting everyone into one thing for one purpose. Sort of on a Titanic, which sunk now didn’t it? Now, if there were 10 smaller ships, and one hit the iceberg, well, then, the nine would come to the rescue. Even the one out on the fringe. But, bigger is better, perhaps, to Lib Read, yet when the whole ediface collapses, what then, since we will all be in the same boat? Oh well, time will tell.

Meanwhile, over at www.jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com, just yesterday or the day before (I read so much, it’s hard to keep track) there was this which I agree with:

“This is just an example of what grinds my gears in regards to our journalists nowadays. While browsing the Newseum web site I saw three papers with the same picture on the front page.

The Marshfield News-Herald

Stevens Point Journal

Wausau Daily Herald

The Herald Times Reporter used a different picture but the same story.

What a coincidence. Well actually it isn’t.

What got me was the accompanying article was about the governor of Wisconsin who gave his State of the State speech, and here we have at least four separate newspapers in the state, who rather then devoting their own resources to providing coverage, they instead relied on an AP version of the story. A story that directly affects your state and in your back yard and yet you use an AP wire story.

How is that serving the people of the state? If all you are going to be is an echo chamber then you are not serving any purpose.”

Amazing, isn’t it, that I complain about my own Independent Voice of the Advocate, which it self proclaims, as it takes the same article as the very independent Marshfield News-Herald, wherever it might be. From marsh to mush, ah, now that I understand.

Meanhwile in Venezuela, all hell is breaking loose. Demonstrations are on the upswing, capital flows are accelerating out of the country, the leader is getting more prepressive. Exaclty as socialist calls for. Exactly how it winds up being no matter how much the new perps of the fiasco try to say “well, it wasn’t done right the last time.” No, well, it can’t be done right. For the theory is flawed. Still, Chavez is trying, as are our own Democrats here in the US. It won’t work here either.

Meanwhile, Jindal has a good idea, finally — let colleges charge tuition like it is really the price.

If a professor earns $60,000 a year, and has 30 students, the price for his service is $2000 a student.

That’s what it is. Make it so. State it clearly. Don’t hide and obfuscate behind a wall of numbers from a plethora of sources. If it costs $1000 a year to keep the classroom with lights and windows, than that’s the cost: $61,000 — then the student cost is 2010 or whatever. Make the numbers real. Sell the services, sell the learning, make your profit, and get out of the public tough to which you must go begging. Imagine if the university was independent, then it would not need to worry about the legislature or the governor cutting the funds, but would merely have worry about what should be their core mission: providing a useful education that people are willing to invest in today for a greater return tomorrow. Instead, LSU is a party school, and football is king, and the politicians are always in the hot seat for either funding the mess or defunding the brilliance. Well, let’s change that to defund the mess and fund the brilliant. Wow, what a concept.

Meanwhile, yet another blip, from: http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/

Christopher Warren published a book entitled Congress as Santa Claus in 1932. He put the following question to his readers:

“If a law to donate aid to any farmer or cattleman who has had poor crops or lost his cattle comes within the meaning of the phrase `to provide for the General Welfare of the United States,’ why should not similar gifts be made to grocers, shopkeepers, miners, and other businessmen who have made losses through financial depression, or to wage earners out of employment? Why is not their prosperity equally within the purview of the General Welfare?”

Since that time, the answer to that question by Republican and Democratic politicians has been “Why not?!” And the result has been a complete perversion of the Constitution and the meaning of the concept of the General Welfare.

Yep, and since that time the deficit and debt have increased like no thought ever is taken in the halls of government. Let’s say that back in McKinley’s day it was 1 cent of borrowing for every 99 cents collected in taxes – for the dollar spent. Then a few years later it was 2 and 98, then 4 and 96. A decade later it was 20-80. Now it rises to 25-75. At each step of the rise the problems become more intractable because of this very ration. So instead of moving it back down to 20-80, and then to 1-99, and then to Zero borrow, well, no, it went to 33-67, then 35-65, and now it is 40-60. Well, since, to borrow a phrase from our leader – 100 years of this – when will he overturn it? When will it stop? Next year it will be of course 41-59. Then soon enough 50-50. Then, since socialism knows no bounds, it will be 75-25. Until eventually, it will be 100 cents borrowed for 100 cents spent, and the taxes will still be so high as to be beyond comprehension. For even with a tax bite now approaching 45% of every working person’s income, in a myriad of ways, still government finds a need to spend 100 for every 60 cents it rakes in. And when it rakes in 75 percent of the income, and the borrowing is up to 75 cents for every dollar spent, you know what we’ll have? Oh, I’d say France about 1788. In the last throes of Marie A. and Louis enjoying their three palace compound outside of Paris. All before the deluge, as they call it there. Well, yes, let’s hope it doesn’t get ugly. But it needs must if the going rate for national disater is 75 cents borrowed for every dollar spent, while still managing to take 75% of the people’s income in taxes. And who will not suffer in all this? Why the very politicians who are convoluting the situation as rapidly as they can, because while they might be very good at getting elected, they are hopeless at running anything but a campaign and a smear job. Thanks ladies and gentlemen of Congress, you folks are doing a great job in destroying the nation, and that will be the wake up call, and thus you might be the hero yet.

Just like the young man who was arrested here in Baton Rouge for setting a slew of fires so that he might be the first to the rescue and be the hero. Alas, that is criminal. What congress does is not criminal yet, just braindead and immoral.

Off to New Orleans tomorrow for a Mardi Gras parade, I’ll enjoy it, you’ll imagine it, and await Sunday’s news.

One Response »

 

Say good night, Johnny Thursday, Jan 28 2010

A late night post not because I had to comment on the State of the Union talk by our president. No, I just had other things to do. As it seems that we all do.

Still I heard and saw bits and pieces. And read some of it online. Yet, the president it seems, and his allies, and all the socialists, Democrats, professors, media and community organizers, and far too many a Republican, wants me to be coddled by his good hands. He’s got a zillion things he and they are going to do to transform America. Well, yes, I suppose they do, since that’s what he tells us in a 70 minute speech of malaise. All that was missing was the sweater.

Amazingly, not only do they think they will be successful in the application of their theories against all known experience, reason, rational thought, and mathematics itself, but they think they will be successful in actually implementing their agenda against the will of the American people. Amazing, as I said. For it seems there is a great crescendo cry of NO! Rising over the land, battling its way into the halls of power. Oh, the doors of power are mighty today, just as they were when castles had moats. Still, castles are quaint relics of a bygone era. And so too, one day, shall be the entire New Deal to Square Deal to New Frontier to New or Improved or Stimulated or Fair Deal or whatever the dickens they are calling it this week, shall be as quaint as a castle, whose moat might now be wandered through so you can get a feel for the place.

Still, it seems, as I listened, and read a bit, not the entire thing – who on earth as 70 minutes to listen to a man’s problems? Even a psychiatrist only gives you fifty, maybe 60 if you are lucky. A doctor’s visit at a public mental health clinic might be but 15 minutes, or less. And a bartender will listen for about 20 before he says “Ok, then, you’ve had enough.” A confession is but 5 to 10, even Al Capone probably did it in about 7. A Catholic mass runs about 45 to 50 minutes. Most other religious services I ever went to run this amount. And they are speeches to give guidance to the flock indeed. A self selected flock, for all of these of course. While Obama is a self inflicting preacher to the masses. He will tell us what is to be done. Which masses he addresses I don’t know. There are so few poor left in this country that I wonder what he talks about sometimes, as he ignores completely the vast swath of angry people. There is all this talk about the end of the middle class, except he shall ride to the rescue. Well, yes, suppose there is, and so he will try. Where are they going, these middle class?

Why, they are sneaking themselves, nefariously, into the ranks of the rich, and now the president and his allies are going to put a stop to that! They are going to take from the 76% of the nation that is rich and give to the 24% who claim to be poor so that we all might be their definition of middle class fairness. Such they think.

I’m not so sure of the claim itself, for if 97% of all households have TVs, radios, cellphones, VCR, DVD, Wii, Xbox 360, computers, internet, cable, running water, air conditioning, heat, washing machines, driers, back yard patios, rugs, couches, chairs, CDs, books, electronic gizmos, clothes, shoes, jewelry, tapes, furniture, electricty, credit card debt, checking accounts, dishwashers, bathroom doodads, kitchen apparatus, bedroom goodies, and food beyond the wildest imagination of all mankind to the degree that we are, bar none, the most obese nation in the world, to the point of endless diet books that sell by the millions, and endless remedies for stuffing the face and home with the wealth we have that the same liberals that decry the poverty of our land are absolutely bereft of comfort at the materialism, rampant greed, money making, money changing and the crass pursuit of wealth to the point that we 6% of the world’s population consume 25% of the world’s resources, and still manage to borrow several trillions of dollars yearly without barely batting an eyelash as we built so many homes that they can be had for steep discounts as we drive around in the latest cars which cannot be bought without air conditioning and gadgets galore, including one of our many remotes, the one that opens the door to our storage units that so populate the land that there is some 70 square feet of personal storage space for every man woman and child in the country. Such is the conundrum of vast wealth and endless poverty. How is it so? How can so many darn lucky rather comfortably rich people be so poor?

They do not explain. They need not. For they will create poverty by taking from the rich, and they shall alleviate poverty by doling out a smidgen of what they take to those they deem worthy so as to keep the statistics so bad as to continue to justify their measures. It is, bar none, the great swindle in history. And now they are caught, the swine.

Well, then, what of this alleged poverty indeed? That must needs be rectified by the Democratic Party and this president who know exactly to which degree which job catergory shall have which people, to do which things, which benefit us all. And they know, too, indeed, exactly the mix of this and that, so that none go without while none go with two. And too they are sure that they can determine exactly what brilliant ideas lie in the minds of 300,000,000 Americans that these few hundred in Washington shall so decree that henceforth this or that shall be ordained to exist. They are positive that they will be able to apportion the airwaves and the bandwith for types of communications which they do not use, by their own admission, and they are clueless about what the power of them are. Sure are they that they know the perfect solution to every credit and debt situation under every contract in the land. Also, like savants in league as they ride into the valley of voters, is the idea that they know what the optimum, and the maximum, and the minimum that shall be spent on health care for all, and to what degree and under what microscope and in which office, and to answer to which bureaucrat to ensure the will of Congress and President assembled behind closed doors and obfuscated language is met as per section 1,423(b) 2.4(c) et sequitor, on page 1,523,563 of the federal code, and as amended under executive order. How bizarre to think health care can be found in a book. Still, that’s where they think they are putting it.

Likewise they are intent on fatiguing us into compliance with their measures. They seek to keep us from the public records by all means possible, and meet in odd places, at odd times of the day, so that we might not know what they are doing. They imperiously announce that no word of God or Law or Founding Document is more important than their own this day. And none is more important that the words they might utter tomorrow, even if in direct contravention of what they said yesterday. Like Byzantine emperors in a snit because his boat to his palace on the Dardenelles was late due to the rising tide of the sea, these people up there – the 1,000, or is it 10,000?, that horde which hides behind the Beltway of Washington as much as Medieval Popes hid behind the walls of Avignon, dares to tell us to sit down, shut up, hand over our money, do as they say, and when to do it, and whom to report to that it was done to their satisfaction. This in direct contravention of the purpose of the country.

And that’s what we are miffed at. What they do is contrary to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of every single American. These 10,000, or is it 100,000? Who knows? They hide in such secret corners, like cockroaches with unknown number, ready to scurry to grab a morsal, often called a federal grant, or perhaps a tax credit, or a contract, or a special favor, or even a federal building in their town with their name on it for the good of the people. This is what the Tea Party is about. We are pest control. This is why we don’t need a leader, for we are opposed to being led, and any of us can pick up a can of bug spray.

We expect nothing much more from a leader than to keep us safe from foreign enemies. Other than that sir, go sit in the corner and hust. We’ll call you when we need you. Though, of late, this Congress and this President have been deficient in such protection. With no rectification of their errors prosposed, and a denial of their mistakes presented, and an attack on those who would say this Royalist-Socialist Mush has no clothes.

Such is the mistake these people make as they ride into the valley of voters. Such is what needs cleansing. Mops? No, major fumigation, of the tenting kind. There is no way that any sitting representative or senator, save perhaps only Scott Brown who is too new to have been infected with Washingtonitis, can ever be trusted at all to solve any problem currently inflicted on us by them. They all must go. They created it. They were complicit, by commission or ommission. They are the cause of it all. They all must go.

As the Barons at Runnymede, in 1215 said to their imperial majesty, “say good night, Johnny,” and the king rode home to his castle and shut up and waited out his term and did no more.

One Response »