Dear Representatives, You Failed Us

Dear Senator Dan Coats, Senator Joe Donnelly, and Congressman Luke Messer:

As the three members of the Indiana delegation, by all appearances you have failed me and the rest of the Indiana citizens who voted to send each of you to Washington, DC as our representatives.

I remember your campaigns.  You promised to be fiscally responsible, to fend off "Special Interests" in favor of American interests, and to always vote in the interests of the Hoosiers you represent.

Two of the three of you promised to do everything in your power to roll back the horrific law everyone now calls "Obamacare".  The third, Donnelly, promised to be a "common sense" representative of Hoosiers who would break with the Democratic Party when their initiatives run afoul of the best interests of Indiana citizens.

Gentlemen, the evidence I've seen to date strongly suggests you didn't mean a word you said on the campaign trail.  You seem to have been enticed into the Washington club, where the vices of elitism and special treatment trap so many well-meaning legislators from around the country.  You become creatures of Washington who have all but forgotten the struggling folks back home you were sent to represent.

Senator Coats, if you really oppose the Affordable Care Act, why did you join with Democratic senators to roundly condemn your colleague Ted Cruz when he tried to mount a campaign to encourage grass roots Americans to join together to force either repeal or substantial rethinking of the most destructive law ever passed by congress, which negatively affects the health care of every American?

Senator Donnelly, send me one example of when you voted against your party because their position would have been harmful to average Hoosiers.  If you have an example it must be pretty obscure, because you have voted exactly as Harry Reid has ordered on every issue that's come before the Senate since you managed to grab the seat by dishonestly exploiting a verbal gaffe by an admittedly weak Republican candidate.

Why have none of you come home to enlist the help of your constituents in finding the truth behind a multitude of Executive branch scandals?  Where were you when Fast & Furious came to light?  When our ambassador and 3 others were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi and the State Department colluded with the White House to make up a false cover story?  When the White House shut down oil production in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster had been addressed?  As the White House still blocks construction of the pipeline that will help facilitate the movement of oil from Canada to our refineries in the United States, offering no reasonable explanation?

Where is your outrage that the Federal Reserve buys 85 billion dollars in United States government debt every single month, watering down the value of every dollar we citizens have scraped together in hope of a decent retirement?  Do you not care that the Executive Branch has now been proven to be using the IRS to suppress and harrass all groups that support their political opposition, and even after those practices were brought to light seem to be continuing those practices?

Are First Amendment violations none of your concern?  When the Executive Branch openly discriminates against people who hold Christian values?  When the military is forced to change their regulations regarding homosexual behavior and record incidents are occurring of unwanted sexual advances?  As the Executive Branch also pushes for expedited promotion of homosexual officers, do you not care that some of those officers use their new positions of authority to mistreat Christian soldiers?

What about 17 Trillion dollars in national Debt?  At least all three of you promised to do something about that, but where's the evidence?  When have any of you proposed the reduction in spending of a single dollar from the federal budget?

The purpose of this letter is to remind you why you are serving in the national legislature.  You are not there to join the wealthy elite, to wine and dine with dignitaries and celebrities and take exotic junkets.  You are there as a representative of average Hoosiers, to at least try your best to reduce the impact of big government on our families and farms and small businesses.  To preserve our liberty and allow us to pursue our dreams.

Please try to remember.

Ever Notice Something about Online Comments?

Have you ever read an online article, then scanned through the comments posted by random persons in response?

Unfortunately, civility is not in play in the cyber world.  I would imagine that many of the comment posters would never dare say the horrible things to the writer in person, but there seems to be safety in anonymity.

I happened to read this post from Michelle today.  The article was basically her celebration of the misbehavior of Americans throughout the country who are moving the barricades (aka "Barrycades") aside and taking in the national parks and monuments in spite of all the park rangers who have been deployed by the White House to stop them.

Sure I think it's pretty cool that Americans are defying the President to send a message that he won't be allowed to suppress Americans from seeing their own parks.  So a decent story that helps people like me feel a little better about the current state of our out-of-control government.  Otherwise, I would say I'm generally neither a rabid Malkin fan nor a Malkin hater.  My hat's off to her for turning her blog into such a huge success.  That's all fine with me.

But check out the trolls who posted their hateful comments.

Did they try to deny any of the information in the story?  Nope.

Did they make an argument in favor of barricading all of our national parks during the shutdown so people can feel the pain and demand their congress cave into Obama and give him everything he demands so his budget is fully funded?  Not a word.

I'll characterize the Leftist commenters by cleaning up their language a bit.  Let's see, the points being made are pretty much:

Michelle's Ugly and Stupid.  We can't believe anyone with half a brain even reads her stuff.

I've heard it said that you know when you've won an argument when the other side starts making snarky personal attacks.  This time they skipped the argument entirely and went straight to the snarky personal attacks.

Yep, that's the state of reasoned debate in our country these days.  Somebody writes an article from a right-of-center perspective, and rather than take on the writer of the article on its merits, the Left decides to dredge up the good old standby attacks.  You're fat, you're stupid, you're ugly, you're a right-wing extremist, you're a member of the flat-earth society, you're a racist, you hate women, you and your friends want to starve children and take healthcare away from Grandma.

It's really getting old, liberals.  Can you at least come up with some new accusations to change things up a bit?

We Live on Different Planets

A long time ago I did a post where I put forward the theory that Conservatives live on Earth, while Liberals live on some other planet, say Venus.  A little play on the popular book from a couple decades ago, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus".

Proof can be found in just a look at the headlines in www.realclearpolitics.com Here's a sampling:

The War on Obamacare is Far from Over
House GOP's Terrible, Tragic Game
Obama's Reckless Default Fear-Mongering
Manning the Barrycades of Punitive Liberalism
The Rise of the New Confederacy
An Entitlement-Driven Disaster Looms for America
The Benefits of Intransigence
Obama Plays Politics with Veterans
Next for Wendy Davis: Winning over Texas
California's New Feudalism
Staring Down the Irrational Wing of the GOP
The House is Doing its Job
The President Shouldn't Encourage Panic
Unreasonable Tea Party Drags Nation into Turmoil
Pent-Up Demand for Health Insurance
Ben Carson's IRS Audit Can't Possibly Be Coincidence

I'll bet you can tell whether each of the above articles came from the Right and which from the Left without reading them.  Some aren't obvious, but most are.  The only hopeful sign I take from the list is that conservative points of view seem to be outnumbering liberal ones about two-to-one.

We can only hope that reflects a shift in thinking by Americans.  The country's only hope is that a large segment of the population suddenly begins to realize they've been supporting the insane Venutians and begin to at least listen to what the Earthings have to say.

Observations

Recently I was working on a data conversion, porting dependents and beneficiaries from an outside source into a Benefits system.  About a decade ago I think I was working on a similar conversion for a different company, and seem to recall I posted back then about my observations on how that conversion awakened me to the surprising degree to which the nuclear family has been destroyed.

Things have changed in a decade.  Not that the nuclear family has returned, if anything there are even fewer intact families than even back then.

What's changed is that the family itself, whether nuclear or mixed, is fading away.  This conversion shows fewer children than I've ever seen.  And fewer married adults than ever before.

Families with 2 or more children are extremely rare.  When there are children, they're more likely to belong to a single parent, who is overwhelmingly the mother.  Young adult employees simply aren't getting married in the first place.

All these trends are demoralizing, because without the nuclear family society falls apart.  Come to think of it, isn't that exactly what's happening right now? 

Perhaps we need to stop railing against dysfunction in Washington and start paying more attention to the dysfunction in our own families.  Unfortunately, I fear it's already too late.

Update:
Working on an entirely different conversion for a different company from California, I have more observations.  It seems that California is the modern version of an American state of immigrants.  Just scanning surnames, I found none that were European until I got to the Professional and Management positions.

It makes me wonder, where has California's working class gone?  They all seem to have been replaced with immigrants.  Obviously I can't detect whether these are first, second, or third generation immigrants who mostly came from Mexico and Asia, but why is it that there are virtually zero European names among the front-line workers roster? 

Did they move out of California?  Are they living on unemployment going into their fifth year?  Are they on welfare?  Do they just prefer to work elsewhere?  The pay rates on the front line aren't terrific, but they're not terrible either. 

I'm seeing it outside of California, but never to this extent.

Baby Obama

It sounds like we've had a fresh example proving that it's a baby in the White House rather than an adult man.  The stories were about the DC Parks Service trying to barricade access to the WWII Memorial yesterday, but someone with the group of veterans simply moved the barricades aside so the vets could visit the memorial.

Further stories confirmed that the barricades were ordered by the White House.  Another report said the Parks Service was further ordered today to haul in concrete barricades and again close off the memorial.  It's like a spoiled child who didn't get his way, so he threw a tantrum.

I saw something just a few minutes ago that reported that the Parks Service has given up, and is now allowing people access to the memorial.

Did Americans really elect this infantile President twice?

A Little Fun

As the government is shut down and the Obamacare website doesn't work, I think today's an appropriate day to have a little fun.

Here's my fun topic for today.  I wonder whether I'm a good judge of character.  To test that, I'm thinking that what if I took a look at celebrities and tried to figure out which ones are truly good people.  Which celebrities would I like to meet and hang out with for a day, to test my theory about whether my impression about them as people was correct?

It isn't an easy task, because I tend to believe that most celebrities are insufferable narcissists.  But let's give it a shot.

Actors/Actresses
Gary Sinise - strikes me as a truly genuine, great guy
Tom Selleck - I always believed I would like the guy
John Wayne - I know, easiest pick.  Too bad there's no chance I could ever meet the Duke.
Bruce Willis - I'll bet Mr. Die Hard is pretty likeable.
Denzel Washington - Seems like a genuine guy.
Mel Gibson - as long as he's not drunk
Kevin Kline - reminds me a lot of a talented college classmate
Actresses are a lot tougher for me, as even though many are very attractive, most strike me as not very good people.  Let's give it a try anyway:
Sandra Bullock - I don't know, she just seems to be a likeable lady.
Elizabeth Banks - I sense a likeable person behind her on-screen characters
Jennifer Garner - Seems genuine
Angie Harmon - The tall Texan gives off a down-to-earth vibe
Kate Jackson - Was the only member of Charlie's Angels that seemed real to me.
Mary-Louise Parker - Loved her in Red
Janine Turner - She became a pro-life activist, which I like
Jennifer Lawrence - She seems almost like a real person

Singers
Carrie Underwood - A country singer I'd like to meet without all the makeup
Reba McEntire - I've heard from people I know who've met her that she's very friendly
Harry Connick Jr - Always exudes an approachability
Donnie Osmond - Actually met him once, seemed like a good guy
Olivia Newton-John - Always liked her, even if she's so crazy about animals she created a game preserve in her backyard
Karen Carpenter - Would have liked to have met her before she died
Shania Twain - She's pretty much out of the spotlight now, but a talented singer. Reading that she and her former husband swapped partners with another couple really turns me off, though.

Others
Jay Leno - Who doesn't like Jay?
Larry Bird - Always wanted to meet Larry Legend.
Peyton Manning - No explanation necessary
Benjamin Netanyahu - Seems like a fascinating person to meet
Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toewes of the Chicago Blackhawks.  I'm just a fan.
Bob Knight
Ted Cruz
Megyn Kelly
Lee Child

I'm sure there are plenty of other famous people that would be delightful to meet.  But these are the ones I could come up with just by sitting down and thinking about it for a few minutes.  I wonder if you agree, or what names would you add or subtract from my list?

What Liberals Can't Understand about Conservatives

Liberals believe in government.  Most of all, they believe in government run by - you guessed it - Liberals.  Because they're the smart ones, don't you see?  They're the ones who know what's best for everyone.

That's why Michele Obama can't grasp why schools across the nation are throwing her new school lunch menus in the trash along with tons of uneaten green vegetables the kids simply left on their plates. 

Michelle apparently believes that if all you give kids to eat at lunch is green vegetables and fresh fruits, they will eat them.  Sorry Michelle, but millions of us out in the hinterlands know that if you serve something to kids they don't like, they simply won't eat it.  They'll go hungry before they eat that broccoli, which is exactly what millions of kids did with Michelle's new school lunch menus.

If Michelle ever deigned to be involved in raising her own children, she might have learned that basic fact.  Even if the elitist Michelle talked with her nanny (or maybe it's "au pair" now), the lesson might have been learned second hand.  But I can practically guarantee that the girls dig in their heels if presented with the demand to "eat your vegetables".  We already know that a hen-pecked Barack likes to sneak out for a cheeseburger whenever Michelle's not around to stop him.

But Barack suffers from the same delusions.  All those mandates in the Affordable Care Act?  Barack calls them "The Right Thing to Do".  So what if they trample on the rights of American adults to make their own choices about their healthcare?  So what if they violate the rights of concience for individuals, executives, and even Doctors and Nurses to be allowed the flexibility to refuse to perform procedures or provide drugs with which they have a serious moral objection.

For Barack and Michelle, the only morality that matters is their own.  And we've discovered that the Obama's aren't Muslim, because they certainly don't promote Muslim values.  They aren't Christian either, because Christian values aren't just ignored, but ridiculed and called insensitive by the Obamas.

In the current healthcare funding debate, Democrats are saying, "People need healthcare.  The Affordable Care Act gives it to them.  That's what we need!".  Meanwhile, the law spends the country into bankruptcy and places all of the power into the hands of the federal government, which to the Democrats means a perpetual liberal bureaucracy.  They don't have a problem with that, because they're the smart people who need to be given paternalistic powers to take care of the people as they see fit.

If only those silly conservatives would get out of the way, Democrats really seem to believe they will bring a perfect society that is peaceful and fair.

I prefer freedom.

The Compromise for ObamaCare

There is a simple solution that would allow each side to proclaim victory and end the impasse.

Republicans want Obamacare repealed, for very good reasons.
Democrats stand on the walls with weapons drawn and shout, "Never!"

What if they agreed to this compromise?

Eliminate all the mandates, especially those aimed at both Employers and Individuals.  Remove the fine for folks who choose not to buy insurance in the exchanges.  Set tax law back to what it was before and let Employers self-insure or negotiate with insurance providers as they always have.

Keep the exchanges in place, where everybody can buy the health plan of their choice.  Pre-Existing conditions or not.  Subsidize those who can't afford their premiums if you must.  But let every qualified insurance company offer their products in the exchanges.  Make it a national exchange only.  But allow states to set up their own if they choose.

Cancel the IPAB and the Medical Devices tax.

Let the next election decide what changes will be made to the law after that.

Everybody wins.  Democrats will take credit for cutting out the most unpopular elements of the law, and Republicans can take credit for heading off a disaster.

If only.

Name-Calling

Let's see if I have this right.  Ted Cruz and his colleagues have been subject to an amazing array of derogatory attacks.  It's not all that surprising that most of them came from Democrats, but what  surprises me is how many of them came from fellow Republicans.  Let's see if I can remember most of them.

Wacko Birds
Hobbits
Terrorists
Hostage Takers
Anarchists
Grandstanders
Lemmings
Anti-Government
Extremists
Heartless
Anti-Women
Racist
Greedy
Elitist Snobs

Who want to

Starve Grandma
Starve Children
Take food off the table of the needy
Deny Healthcare to millions
Destroy the Planet
Enrich Oil Barons
Entangle us in Endless Foreign Wars


I'm sure I missed some.  I only wonder, if they're going to call you nasty names anyway, why not just stick up for your principles and let all this roll off your back?

Golly, Why Didn't You Tell Me This Before?

Today President Obama gave a speech which has been played incessantly over the radio all day.  He doesn't understand all the opposition to his healthcare law.  He tells us that beginning this week, we can all sign up for a great health plan that costs less than my monthly cellphone bill.  What's not to like?

Gee, is that all there is to Obamacare, really?  Gee, why have I been wasting so much time opposing the law?  Maybe I should have been supporting it all along.

Unbelievable.

Demographics

I recently noticed that polls are pretty consistently showing a 5 point lead for Terry McCauliffe over Ken Cuccinelli (pardon my spelling) for the Virginia governor's race.  I wondered, how is it that McCauliffe, the Clintonista well known for his dishonesty and corruption, could possibly be polling even close in a state like Virginia?

Then I saw an analysis someplace, I think maybe on CNBC.  The commentator said that while the Republican candidate is doing well among conservatives in general, he's losing big in the female vote.  Apparently, McCauliffe's campaign has been running highly effective ads suggesting his opponent is destined to implement Texas-style restrictions on abortion as soon as he's elected.  So all those millenial single women who work in and around the Federal government in DC but live in Virginia are planning to vote to keep their access to the final birth control solution intact.

I don't know what Ken Cuccinelli has planned in terms of abortion policy.  Naturally I wouldn't lose any sleep if all the Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in Virginia closed tomorrow.  But the worst, most corrupt, most untrustworthy Democrat seems to have a chance to win nearly any political office if only he or she paints their Republican opponent as "anti-women".

Can it be that millenial women are really that promiscuous?  It seems to me if they're eschewing casual sex in anticipation of finding their future husbands, perhaps abortion wouldn't be such a huge single-issue priority for them.  Could it be true that young women in DC are easy?

Anyway, the stark division between conservative and liberal has a bold line.  It's now very easy to identify who belongs to each ideology.

Democrats own:
Young, single women
Welfare recipients to the working poor
Blacks
Lawyers
Celebrities
Homosexuals
City Dwellers
The Press/Media
Government workers of all kinds - teachers, professors, bureaucrats, etc

Republicans own:
Rural folk
Christians
Small Businesspeople
Working White Men from Middle Class to Upper-Middle Class
The Military

The Democrat constituency is outstripping the Republican constituency.  The next two election cycles are going to either cement the Democrats hold on power or break up the Obama regime and begin to roll back the clock on the extreme leftward shift pushed through over the last 5 years.

I'm not very hopeful.  Ted Cruz gave a courageous and cogent argument in his 21-hour speech on the Senate floor, but was dismissed by a group of collaborating Republicans, Democrats, the White House, and the news media.  None of whom chose to engage Cruz on the subject matter itself, but resorted to impugning Cruz' motives and denying any possibility that he may have approached his presentation out of principle.

When the Republican leadership collaborates with Democrats, all is lost for America.

September 11, 2021

The 20th anniversary of 9/11 arrived on a Saturday. 

At 8AM Eastern Time in the United States, a mushroom cloud blossomed over Tel Aviv.  A video of the explosion was played on all television networks and viewed by the majority of people across the planet.

The Alliance of Islamic States, led by Iran and including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and Pakistan, demanded the immediate surrender of Israel within an hour of the attack.  The Iranian President announced that in return for peaceful surrender, all Jews that survived the attack will be given safe passage to the Western European country of their choice or America.

The AIS also reportedly sent a letter to Saudi Arabia demanding that the House of Saud leave the country in exile or they can expect the same fate.  Egypt was reportedly invited to join the AIS.

In the United States, President Hillary Clinton expressed "grave concern" over the unprovoked attack on Israel, and announced that she was dispatching her Secretary of State, Diane Feinstein and the UN Ambassador, Susan Rice to meet with the United Nations Security Council to discuss serious sanctions to be placed on the AIS in retaliation for the attack.  Russia and China immediately announced that they would support no sanctions on their allies in the AIS.

Less than a week later, Hillary Clinton addressed the country on television.  She announced that China has graciously agreed to assist the United States government in restoring order.  Chinese troops would partner with Federal militias to quell a growing right-wing rebellion.  No, not a rebellion in the middle east, but in the United States.  Clinton accused a coalition of Tea Party groups, Christians, and the NRA of mounting a rebellion aimed at overthrowing the United States Government.  Evidence was presented on CNN and MSNBC of people rioting in some cities, but several voices claimed that those were a combination of stock footage from old riots dating back the 1960's and some newer films produced by leftists out of Hollywood.  Clinton promised that these measures would be only temporary, and designed to proactively head off expected violence from this right-wing army of rebels.

Clinton stated that while she shared the outrage of many Americans over the unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel by the Alliance of Islamic States, that was no reason for anyone to react with violence against their government.  Most citizens have not observed any acts of right-wing violence against the government, although growing crowds were gathering across the country to loudly protest the failure of the Administration to protect America's friend, Israel, from nuclear annihilation.

On Sunday, September 12th, a Chinese company of soldiers, accompanied by dozens of federal militia members who were armed but not members of the United States Military, descended on thousands of churches across America during Sunday morning services.  Many churchgoers were wounded or killed, and an estimated 90 percent of priests, pastors, and ministers were executed.  Thousands of Christians that survived the raids were transported to internment camps that had been secretly been built over the past 12 months, apparently for this purpose.

The Chinese troops first invaded all of the National Guard armories across the nation and were given total control of permanent US military bases.  Outraged United States soldiers, sailors and airmen begain organizing themselves to repel the Chinese invaders.  Unfortunately, they were too late to protect the hundreds of thousands of Christians executed and imprisoned by the suprise Chinese Sunday raids.

Please, God, do not allow this vision of the future to come true.

When the Dust Settles

It is hard to predict where things will stand with the Affordable Care Act, or that terribly ironically named disaster we've come to call Obamacare.

There's no longer any argument that Obama was ignorant, wildly exaggerating, or outright lying for those years leading up to now.  No, if you like your insurance, you may not keep it.  No, if you like your doctor, you might have to find another one.  No, the ACA will not drive your insurance cost down by $2,500 per year; instead it will grow dramatically.

Even though the financial outcomes were predictable from day one and are no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain, those were never the source of my major objections.

The ACA puts all medical decision-making into the hands of Kathleen Sebelius and a newly formed Independent Payment Advisory Board.  Democrats screamed bloody murder when Sarah Palin called that a "Death Panel".  But now we know that this board will make decisions on what procedures and treatments will be allowed by the Federal Government, which I think strongly suggests that the outcome of this unaccountable board of Obama cronies actually may soon prove to be indeed a Death Panel.

You see, that and so many other power-grabbing mandates in the act are what earned my strong objection to the ACA.  In effect, the government has stepped in between every physician and patient, making itself the final arbiter of our care.  Along the way, they will violate the privacy of every citizen by collecting deeply personal data about our habits, preferences, and vices.  Which seems to indicate that they are prepared to make value judgements regarding that information.  If that's the case, then who's to say they won't begin to say things like,

"Well, you smoked tobacco for 20 years, therefore you may not undergo that life-saving cardiac bypass."

"I see here that you're 60 pounds overweight.  Your overeating and unsufficient exercise have led to a stroke, therefore we will not authorize treatment."

Or what if it comes to this?

"We see here that you're an activist member of the Tea Party.  Since you're chosen to align yourself with this anti-government terrorist group, we will not support any medical attention now or in the future."

Think it won't come to that?  Given the IRS revelations of the last several months, I wouldn't put it past them.  I'll bet there are thousands of Lois Lerners in the HHS bureaucracy even now.

Worst of all is the anti-Christian mandate.  The government has essentially gone to Catholics throughout the country, whether they are health providers, college administrators, managers of charitable organizations, or even private business owners, and said, "You must provide free birth control drugs to all of your employees".

These are people who regard most artificial contraceptives as harmful.  Especially the abortifacient drugs, which will actually kill the fetus before it can plant itself in the uterus.  Despite Sebelius' claims to the contrary, that is a drug that kills a fetus, which by definition is an abortifacient.

So the Obama government has passed a law that effectively requires every citizen that owns or operates a business or charity in America to actively participate in bringing about the death of children while risking the health of women.  A positive link has already been proven between contraceptive drugs and breast cancer in women, so the government is also forcing Americans to give women who work for them drugs that significantly increase the probability they will contract breast cancer.

This is a fascist law from a fascist government.  America must not comply like sheep to this horrific tyranny.  Senators who won't support the House's efforts to overturn this horrible law are complicit in the destruction of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

There remains only a small glimmer of hope that the cadre of principled senators, led by Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, can overcome the fascist collaborators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and free us all from this tyranny.

Honesty About Social Security

If I were talking about this in a speech as a candidate for office, I suppose it would help guarantee my loss.  Because apparently in modern America, telling the truth about Social Security just isn't done.  Remember when George W Bush first took office and proposed a modest change that would allow folks to elect to control the investment of their own Social Security contributions?  Democrats screamed bloody murder, and the proposal faded away.

Let's start with what Social Security actually is, and always has been.  A welfare program for seniors.  It was sold in an outrageously fraudulent way.  My own parents and grandparents believed the lie, and any attempt to inform them that they're not receiving their own money back in retirement that they paid in during their working lives, but simply getting the money our generation is paying in taxes.

For the most part, my parents and grandparents were proud people.  If they actually understood that their monthly Social Security checks were in truth a simple welfare scheme, I believe some of them might have sent their checks back.

Just think about it for a minute (please!).  Look at your lifetime earnings, and calculate what you've paid into Social Security over the course of your working life.  Compound that over 35 to 40 years at a modest annual percentage rate of return at 5 percent, and find out how much money you would have had at retirement if only the government wasn't squandering it.

Most of us who work for a living will have plenty of money for a comfortable retirement after we turn 65, and would never need anything from the government.  Those folks who didn't work for a living won't have anything to use in retirement.  But seriously, isn't that a different problem?

Let's consider Democrat arguments against privatizing retirement accounts.

Greedy bankers will take advantage of Americans to make obscene profits on our retirement accounts.  Well, no doubt some will try.  But if their fees get too high, won't they be guilty of fraud?  Aren't there already protections for consumers against predatory banking practices?

Too many irresponsible people will choose bad investments or blow all their retirement money in their first year.  So?  Once again, if a retiree becomes destitute due to their own bad decisions, isn't that a different problem?  I struggle to understand why that justifies the government confiscation and waste of 15 percent of the earnings of every single citizen.

What about additional benefits like Disability and Minor Dependents benefits received upon the death of the family's wage earner?  Indeed.  Don't you think bankers and insurance agents will design products for people's retirement investment money that could provide exactly those protections?

I do wish I'd saved 15 percent of my earnings every year since 1980.  My retirement accounts would be much healthier today had I done so.  In fact, I probably would have enough in those accounts that I could realistically retire early.  Unfortunately the government confiscated and wasted all that money and there's nothing to show for any of it today.

Privatization will never happen, not because it's a great idea.  But because Democrats will successfully instill so much fear in most Americans that they will oppose it without really understanding what they're opposing.

Who's Ruining Their Party?

Kirsten Powers is well known by anybody who watches Fox News, as she's often invited in to represent the Liberal perspective when they're discussing issues.  I don't know if anyone has noticed, but that sort of thing happens on MSNBC somewhere between rarely and never.  When it does happen on the radical left-wing channel, the brave conservative who shows up is chopped up and incinerated.

Kirsten wrote an article yesterday titled "The GOP is Threatening Murder-Suicide with New Shutdown Warnings".

Her article represents the elitist attitude that Republicans never approach an issue from a point of principle.  Republicans are merely political animals whose mission is to obstruct Democratic objectives at every turn.  Kristen notes that Obamacare is the president's capstone achievement, so that must be the reason Republicans want to destroy it. 

Not that it's disastrously expensive, patently unfair, laden with unnecessary and silly regulations, is already responsible for smothering economic recovery, and most of all fails to deliver on nearly all of it's trumpeted objectives.

In Kirsten's world, those crazy right-wing Christians, especially Catholics, object to contraceptive mandates because they're stuck in the 1500's.  Who could possibly object to helping women prevent pregnancy?  I suppose Kristen's perspective about children is that they're a disease that must be prevented rather than a blessing representing a bright future for America.

She would lecture us that we have to stop these negative attitudes and this unfounded mistrust of the Federal government.  Her Democrat friends in DC are the smartest people she knows, and they know what's best for all of us ordinary people who live out there in flyover country.  We should therefore acquiesce to the enlightened guidance of Kirsten and all of her liberal friends, who went to universities like Harvard and Yale and therefore know a lot more about what it means to be a citizen of the world.

Kirsten has no concerns about government mandates.  Kathleen Sebelius should have the power to design the health insurance plans for the insurers and dicate to evey one of them what should and should not be covered, how the premiums are to be priced, and how much the Doctors and other providers will be allowed in compensation.  The IPAB isn't a Death Panel, because it's probably going to be made up of caring liberals who think just like Kirsten; they're smart people who will make the wisest decisions possible about our care.  It's perfectly OK that Sebelius chooses which insurance companies will be permitted to participate in the Exchanges, because if she wasn't vetting them some evil profit-driven companies might slip through.

Kirsten happily overlooks the fact that hundreds of Obama cronies, both business and union entities, have been granted waivers from having to implement the conditions of Obamacare.  Even Congress has been given special dispensation from King Barack.

So Kirsten believes that Obamacare is a free-market solution to healthcare that is more "fair".  I struggle to understand how a small hand-picked cadre of companies providing insurance products designed and priced by the government is a free-market solution.  And over my lifetime I have learned that the definition of "fair" depends on the individual - if it benefits me, then it's "fair";  if it benefits someone else at my expense, it's not "fair".  Guess what, Kirsten:  Obamacare is NOT fair.

Will this initiative be suicide for the GOP?  We'll see, but probably not.  But if a government shutdown ensues, which party will be the one committing suicide?  Why wouldn't it be the Democrats, who rather than allowing a temporary delay to allow the Obamacare exchanges to be fully developed and the multitude of kinks in the system ironed out, insisted on implementing it in full force because it wasn't ready for primetime?

The media is determined to hammer the message home to all Americans that the GOP caused a government shutdown over some petty political desire to stop a signature Obama program.  All the while, those who know the truth know that Obamacare is the most unwieldy, costly, corrupt, and disastrous law to be passed in generations.  It deserves to be delayed at a minimum, or better yet repealed.

Kirsten has illustrated our modern problem for us.  She will never understand the mind of a conservative.  I know she just wants us to all go away so her party can have their way forever.  Sorry Kirsten, we're not ready to surrender just yet.

Cowards in Washington

Republicans have the people behind them.

Yet they tremble in fear and refuse to support initiatives with their somewhat bolder colleagues to defund that monstrosity called "ObamaCare".  The unconstitutional law should have been repealed by the Supreme Court, but a cowardly John Roberts kept it alive by simultaneously declaring it unconstitutional and rewriting it in a way he could declare it constitutional.  I wonder if there is any precedent of the court rewriting a law in order to repair its unconstitutional provisions - I always thought the process was to declare it unconstitutional and send it back to congress to try again.  Unfortunately, Roberts felt huge pressure from the Democrats and the White House to roll over on the case.

So the polling is clear, and has been clear for some time.  American's don't like the idea of the Federal Government telling them what insurance to buy, charge us more for it, then dictate what's covered and not covered.  It sounds tyrannical.  Sarah Palin was vilified for introducing the term "death panels" to describe the national healthcare council, but has been proven right.  Whether the council turns into an egregious "death panel" for millions of Americans under ObamaCare remains to be seen, but they certainly have been granted that power.

Liberals like provisions that do away with insurance practices that deny insurance to those with pre-existing conditions.  They supposedly like the provision that lets parents keep their children on their plan until age 26, although that seems to me more of an indictment of the Obama Economy than a positive outcome.

So most states had the pre-existing problem solved by offering various high-risk pools that their citizens could join.  Seniors are already covered under Medicare.  The poor are already covered by Medicaid.  So it seems that the biggest problem has been that middle-income folks who work for companies that don't offer benefits or are self-employed were not buying private insurance because they viewed the policies as family budget-busters.

So now the Federal Government steps in and destroys all of the state high-risk pools with a one-size-fits-all plan.  One that forces those people who had previously chosen to remain uninsured to buy insurance at rates from 25 to 100 percent higher than what they would have paid if they'd bought private insurance previously.

People are also now being forced to buy insurance that is mandated to cover contraception at 100 percent.  Even if they're committed Catholics who believe contraception is immoral, their premiums will certainly be used to pay for other young women's contraceptives.  Businesses are being forced to also provide health insurance plans to their employees that cover contraception at 100 percent.  They're in court still, trying to overturn that particular mandate.

Perhaps the best proof the law is bad and needs to be repealed is the fact that Congress has successfully exempted themselves.  The ruling class has decided that the laws they pass only apply to their subjects, yet they deserve special treatment.

All I ask of congress is that they grow a pair.  You can't win the battle if you don't show up on the field.  If you fight hard and still lose, at least you gave it your all.  Your irrational fear of the media twisting your motives into a desire to "shut down government" is no excuse.  They'll do what they do.  Even John Roberts pulled that one on Fox News Sunday this weekend, so even the so-called conservative cable news channel proved to be toeing the liberal line on the GOP initiatives to stop Obamacare from being fully implemented.

So talk directly to your constituents and act according to your principles.  If you lose your seat next year, so be it.  But if your constituents come to understand the principle involved, they won't send you home.  If you chicken out from this fight, they might choose someone else next year.

Trying to Understand

As a conservative in both personal and political philosophy, I have always sought to understand the liberal mind.  Whenever there's an issue that pits the conservative point of view against the liberal point of view, I admit that I struggle to understand how anybody could take the left side of the argument.

Since I finally signed up on facebook this year, I've started to notice trends in the postings of liberal facebook "friends".  Their posts are remarkably different from those of my conservative or undertermined "friends".

Scrolling through facebook, I've noticed the liberal postings stick out like a sore thumb.  They're not overtly political, at least most of the time.  But they do reflect a completely different worldview, at least from mine.  They're terribly trite and naive.  Cute animal pictures and YouTube videos.  Posters with trite messages about loving everyone and getting along and dedicating ourselves to saving the planet.

It may not be the same as if I could do an in-depth study, but it does sort of lead me to a few generalized conclusions.

The average liberal is an idealistic thinker, who believes everyone should just try to understand each other and respect our differences.

The ordinary liberal is either an atheist or is not associated with a Christian tradition.  They seem to fall somewhere between suspicious and hostile in their attitudes toward Christianity and Christians, which for me calls into question whether they might be a little hypocritical in their formost stated philosophy.  Perhaps we can amend that idea that we should respect each other's differences to add the exception when those differences involve Christians.

The liberal holds firmly onto a belief that everyone has a "right" to quality healthcare.  They don't mind at all if that means that everyone else has to pay double for theirs.  I suspect if a liberal's health insurance bill doubles in January, they'll blame it on everything else (mainly the greedy insurance companies) before even considering the true cause.

I'm also noticing that the average liberal gets riled if the subject is raised about the waste and fraud epidemic in federal assistance programs, especially Food Stamps and Disability.  In their minds, it might be unfortunate that people might be fraudulently accessing those benefits, but it can never reach a level to justify reform.  They get highly fearful that any reform by the evil Republicans would result in the truly needy losing their benefits, therefore no changes to the programs are ever justified.

It seems that a great analogy is to a family budget.  Let's say the husband works hard to create and maintain a family budget, but his wife can't help herself and busts the budget with her overspending month after month. (Don't call me sexist, please - consider the roles reversed between husband and wife if you prefer)

So the couple has a conversation after a particulary egregious month of overspending.

"You overspent the budget by $1,000 this month", says the husband.  "We can't go on this way, because all it does is rack up debt and make it harder for us to provide the things our family needs!"

"I promise you, every penny was spent on things we needed", says the wife.

It fits perfectly with how Democrat governance differs from Conservative governance.  Notice that I used the word "Conservative" rather than "Republican", because we've learned that the two are not the same.  Most conservatives are republicans, but most republicans are not conservative.

At least Democrats have no such divisions.  In the Democratic Party, anyone who opposes Obamacare, tax and minimum wage increases, Gay Marriage, Abortion, and out-of-control deficit spending is not welcome.

Voter Suppression?

Since Colorado recalled two State Senators earlier this week, there has been lots of noise from the Left charging "voter suppression".  That made me curious, so I did a bit of web surfing to find related stories.

The only reasonable explanation I could find was an article written by someone on the Left who tried to accuse the Colorado Secretary of State of attempting to block registered voters from casting their vote in the recall election.  That led me to read about the challenge brought by Democrats, when I discovered that the argument was about whether or not each county should send ballots to registered voters who didn't show up for last year's election.  Colorado calls them "inactive voters", therefore they strip them from the mailing list.

This is what constitutes voter suppression to the radical Left?  Suppose I add another twist to the story and reveal that they got a judge to tell Colorado they should go ahead and allow the ballots to be mailed to those voters.  The story I read said that's exactly what happened, as several counties went ahead and sent them out. 

So where's the suppression exactly?  Did anybody tell a single eligible voter that they won't be allowed to vote?  No.  Is Angela Giron a sore loser, or does she have proof that her supporters were not allowed to cast their ballots?  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the pathological flamethrowing liar from the Democratic party, says voters were denied their rights in Colorado, and we should believe her precisely because ...?

Google returns a bunch of stories on the subject that suggest the Democrats tried to bus in a large number of out-of-state folks to cast ballots for their recalled senators but were rebuffed.  If the anger being expressed is over illegal voters being suppressed, unless we belong to the end-justifies-the-means wing of the Democratic party, exactly why would we have a problem with the law being enforced?

I recall the days when Indiana's Voter ID law was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was upheld, by the way.  The Democratic Party trotted out a woman who claimed it was too much of a burden for her to get a photo ID, therefore she felt her right to vote was being suppressed.  Some intrepid reporter checked on who the woman was, and it turned out she was ineligible to vote in Indiana anyway.

Who but the most corrupt or naive American believes this overwrought drivel about Republicans conspiring to keep Democrats from voting?  I have yet to see a single story of actual voter suppression (of a Democratic voter).  Of course, there are lots of stories out there about attempted suppression of Republican voters?  Does anyone really believe that there's not a single Republican within the city limits of Cleveland and Philadelphia? 

Government of, by, and for the ignorant and stupid, I suppose.

When Results Don't Match Rhetoric

This might be the most fascinating result of nearly 6 years of a liberal government.  Their promises to make the distribution of wealth "fair" are proving to have been empty.  There's an interesting article today that suggests the mythical 1 percenters have done better under Obama than since the 1020's.

Don't just let the headline influence your opinions on the subject - there's a lot to be found in the details that might wreck anyone's predetermined liberal or conservative philosophies. 

Obama's policies have absolutely tossed a soaking-wet blanket over the economy.  Massive new regulations have stifled business growth and investment.  Obamacare has practically destroyed the economy, adding massive new bureaucracies and their related costs to an already overburdened healthcare system.  Record numbers of Americans are receiving food stamps, disability, and other welfare benefits from the government.  The baby boom generation is retiring, and bankrupting a Medicare and Social Security system that never considered the massive numbers of citizens who would rely on them someday.

If Obama had done nothing, some think the economy would have rebounded naturally.  That's a hard thing to prove.  I think Obama's trillion-dollar "Stimulus" bill probably did more damage to recovery than the very marginal benefit it provided, which was nearly all funneled to Obama's cronies.

We see Barack and Michelle living like King and Queen, spending lavishly on command performances at the White House and hundred-million-dollar vacation trips.  The exude an attitude that some how it's their turn to enjoy the lifestyle of the rich and famous.  I pick up on a sort of imperious arrogance from the Obamas which belies their "of the people" political message.

Contrary to Obama's rhetoric, restrictive rules telling average folks what cars they can drive, what medical procedures and prescriptions they are permitted, and even what their kids are allowed to eat in their school lunches hardly help them prosper.  Good jobs are what help people prosper.

Obama's definition of a good job is a government job.  A union member working for the government earns the president's generosity, while the average Joe working for a small business out in flyover country doesn't deserve a thought.  That average Joe is probably clinging to his bible and his gun, as Obama himself famously proclaimed.  Joe somehow deserves to pay double to heat his home and must be forced out of his family minivan and onto some new government-sponsored train system.  Joe will be forced to stop eating at McDonald's and be directed to have kale and arugula for lunch, under Michelle's enforced menu.

The horrible president Obama has surpassed for inept governance, Jimmy Carter, was fortunately turned out of office after a single term.  In about two years, Ronald Reagan turned the dying Carter economy into a boom never seen before by simply rolling back unnecessary regulations and freeing business to invest and innovate.  All the while Democrats dripped a venomous charge calling Reagan's economic program "Trickle-Down Economics".

There are many folks who lived through the same times, but we seem to be evenly split on the lessons we learned (or didn't learn) from the Carter years and repeated in the Obama years.  I guess my contemporaries on the left side of the political spectrum simply chose to wear a blindfold to support their Messianic president.

Evaluating Talk Radio

I drive a lot.  Lately I've hardly ever been on an airplane, but it's nothing for me to log 500 to 1,000 highway miles in a week.  So I need to listen to something that is interesting enough to keep me awake.  Most music radio stations don't meet that requirement, although it's pretty common for me to play country music during a trip.

Mostly I listen to talk radio.  I've heard most of the best-known talkers, so I thought I'd do a bit of an evaluation of the medium.

Local radio talkers include Greg Garrison, Larry Downes, Dana Loesch, the Chicks on the Right, to name a few.  Garrison is probably my favorite among the local talent.  He has gotten himself in trouble in the past with some hot rhetoric, but generally seems like a pretty decent guy.  He's an Indianapolis lawyer whose claim to fame was earned when he served as the prosecuting attorney in the Mike Tyson rape trial.

Garrison is still practicing law, and he seems to take a lot of vacation time.  So when I tune into his weekday morning show it seems there's a pretty good chance there's somebody filling in for him.  Some of his fill-in hosts are less than compelling, to be charitable.

Larry Downes and the Chicks are brand new.  Larry seems like a nice guy, but my initial take on him is that he's probably about center-right on the spectrum.  I think Larry's maybe economically conservative, but socially may lean more to the liberal side.  That may not be correct, because I haven't heard nearly enough of him to pin him down for certain.

The Chicks are kind of a fun alternative that are new to the medium.  They apparently are just a couple of relatively young women who happen to lean conservative and started a blog together a couple of years ago.  They got their first radio show on the weekends in Indy, and just last week signed on for a daily show.  They like to talk a lot about cultural stories, and come across sort of like a couple of Valley Girls who happen to also be intelligent.

Dana Loesch is a highly attractive pundit who used to represent a conservative viewpoint on CNN.  She seems to have disappeared from CNN and I've now seen her pop up a couple of times on Fox News.  She has a daily show out of her hometown of St. Louis, and WIBC in Indy picks up an hour of that show.  She's certainly passionate, and sometimes funny.

Among the national group of talkers, Rush Limbaugh is king.  My late liberal father even admitted to enjoying Rush, even though he liked to claim that most of Rush's points were bunk.  On the occasions where I talked about political issues with my Dad, he often tried to shut down my points by accusing me of getting them from Rush.  Most of the time that wasn't true.

Rush is able to reach such a huge audience because he's bombastic but entertaining.  He is indeed mostly fun to listen to, which seems to explain his broad audience of plenty of conservatives and liberals.  Most of those libs who attack Rush as racist and extreme cite internet myths that anyone who has listened to Rush more than a few times know are far from true.

Although I think I'd like Hannity personally, I am not his biggest fan on the radio.  He is extremely repetitive, making the same points over and over and over ....  On the other hand, I've seen some excellent episodes of his Fox News show, especially those in which he talks to folks gathering in the studio.  His lead-in with the country song about "We'll put a boot in your a$$" has really gotten old.

Michael Savage is sort of a strange dude from San Francisco.  My impression of Savage is that he's a very lonely man who loves his dog and fancies himself a gourmand.  He spends a lot of time trashing his fellow conservative talkers, which is something that puzzles me.  I can't tell if it is out of jealousy or he thinks it's a legitimate strategy for stealing listeners or if it's some other thing.  I can't say I'm a fan.

Laura Ingraham is one I actually like very much.  She's smart, witty, and funny.  Her foes like to promote the message that she's a world-class b!%@&.  I can't say if she is or not in private, but I do wonder why she never married.

Glenn Beck is very entertaining as well, and he seems to be building his own empire on the internet and alternative media.  He has a tendency to take a story that has a basis in fact, then spin his interpretation of the story to paint a dire warning.  Sometimes he legitimately scares me.  Other times I just toss him off as taking it way too far.  Recently he was building up some story about terrorist support for the Tsarnaev brothers in the Boston bombing.  He promised his story would blow the lid off the government cover-up he was sure was happening to hide their direct relationship with a terrorist group.  But somehow the story quietly faded and never blew the cover off anything.  On the other hand, he can be credited with exposing avowed communists in the Obama administration, which made him one of the most hated conservative talkers.

Mark Levin is also a very intelligent talker.  He yells a lot.  But his focus on the Constitution is valuable, and his insights on constitutional law make me wonder if he wouldn't be a great Supreme Court justice.  Then again, I'm not sure he could restrain himself enough to maintain the decorum of that place.  I'd be afraid he might punch out Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Elena Kagan.

There are lots of other talkers out there in radio land, but the rest of them I have listened to very little.  Certainly Rush is king, and is absolutely the pioneer of the medium.  Thinking about it a certain way, I find it fascinating that I'd probably rather hang out with Hannity, but prefer to listen to Rush's show.  I'd certainly love to meet every one of them.

I Don't Get It

Honestly, I've been trying to understand.  But this one is simply beyond me.

Barack Obama campaigned for President as the Anti-Bush.  He guaranteed that had he been in congress during the Iraq war authorization, he would have voted against it.  He campaigned as the "smart" one who could solve international conflict through the simple force of his personality.  He promised to "talk" to our enemies, as if somehow that would make them love us.

Now he has mounted a new campaign.  Not to win an election, but to win American support for tossing a few missiles into Syria to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons in that country's civil war.  He and John Kerry and the staffers he's sent out to spread the word emphasize that the attack will be extremely limited, of short duration, and is not aimed at removing Assad.

The only part I understand is that Obama set the "red line" a year ago, promising action if Assad used chemical weapons.  Assad promptly did so, almost as if he was flipping off Obama more than deploying the weapons to put down the rebellion. 

OK, so Obama wants to toss a few missiles into Syria so he can say he did something.

But as far as I can tell, his attack will serve no real purpose beyond proving that Obama meant what he said.

What is the bigger objective?  It certainly won't make any impact on turning the tables on Assad in the civil war.  Even if it modestly shifts the momentum, it appears that he'll be helping Islamic Terrorists in the opposition to Assad, which doesn't sound like a desirable outcome.  So what is Obama trying to accomplish?

There are several theories being floated:

It's about warning Iran and proving to the Mullahs there that they should fear the United States.  No, I don't think that's it - I think this whole exercise is doing more to encourage the Iranians to press forward with their nuclear program.

He is privately supporting the Muslim Terrorists in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Quaeda, and many other splinter groups.  Certainly he has been unwilling to carry forward Bush's war on terrorism, and he even banned the phrase (War on Terror).  But is he really so anti-American that he supports the Islamic Jihad against America and Israel?  Maybe, but I certainly hope not.

It is a deliberate attempt to distract the country from all his scandals and the failing implementation of Obamacare.  That one makes sense, but it seems like a pretty extreme way to change the subject.

There's a rumor that the Saudi's have offered to fund the whole thing, essentially hiring Obama to deploy American forces on their behalf as soldiers of fortune.  Only rather than the soldiers getting the fortune, it would be Obama getting paid.  It sounds outrageous, but these days almost anything could be true.

This is the Liberal approach to waging war.  That's hard for me to swallow, as I lived through Viet Nam and the Iraq war, which were opposed by liberals without compromise.  Liberals were fond of saying that war is "never justified".  So why are they suddenly backing this one?

Finally, there's the theory that Obama wants to escalate war in the Middle East, perhaps even to the point of WWIII.  That he subscribes to the Islamic prophecies of bringing the Caliphate into power so they rule the world.  I am afraid to even consider that this theory might be true.

Maybe there's a liberal out there who is reading this that can explain it to me.  Because I'm still lost for a reasonable explanation.

The Football Post

My annual football post is becoming a bit of a tradition for this blog.  As a new season launches, it must be time to post my observations and predictions.

The high school teams, Columbus North and East, are already 3 games into their season.  East is undefeated and ranked #1 again.  They truly do seem almost unbeatable, but that was the case in the last 2 years, when they ran up against powerhouse mega-schools from the Indianapolis area that easily tossed them aside.

Columbus North has slid precipitously backwards over the last couple of years.  This year to date they find themselves without a victory, and given their robust schedule it seems unlikely for them to get more than 1 or 2 wins in the entire season.  Somehow the balance of power has shifted decidedly to Columbus East, which seems to be attracting the best athletes in the city.  I don't have an explanation, but suspect that if I were to ask the players privately, they'll probably tell me.

Columbus East has a big positive this year that improves their chances of breaking through to the state championship this Thanksgiving.  The IHSAA has created a brand new class for football, 6A.  The Indy mega-schools were moved into the new class, which seems to open a terrific opportunity for them.

At the college level, Notre Dame is slipping, with a degraded defense and Tommy Rees back at quarterback.  I like Tommy, and he's a decent quarterback.  But he lacks the mobility and creativity and intangible ability to find a way to win when the game's on the line that Everett Gholson had last year.  Did the graduation of Manti Teo degrade the defense that much?  Michigan was clearly the better team this weekend.

Ball State is looking terrific so far.  I think they'll be a bowl team, and look like they just might be serious contenders for the MAC championship.

Indiana is better.  They aren't competitive for the Big Ten title by any means, but they've improved over the last two years.  Unfortunately, I still don't think they're a bowl team.  But this team just might have a chance to win the oaken bucket game.

The Colts are still a bit of a mystery.  Even after this weekend's win over Oakland, I'm not able to make any predictions.  Reggie Wayne is still terrific and Andrew Luck is solid.  But the offensive line still seems like a liability.  And I can't tell whether Terrell Pryor is an exceptional scrambler, and deserved to be the number 1 rusher in the NFL this weekend, or if the hapless Colts defense still can't catch anybody with the ball and a modicum of quickness.

The Colts were fortunate to pull out their victory against Oakland.  It remains to be seen whether Oakland is going to prove themselves better than advertised or the Colts are destined to perform poorly this year.

How We Know We Have a Rogue Government

When your government begins to govern against the will of its people, we can reasonably conclude that they have destroyed the representative republic established by our country's founders.

There's plenty of evidence to support the assertion that our government has gone rogue and is now a tyrannical elite governing for their own benefit to the detriment of the citizens who mistakenly believes they sent them to represent them.

Just look at all the laws and regulations that were forced through against the will of the people.

Obamacare is exhibit A.  There has never been even as much as an even split between citizens for and against that horrible law.  Yet it is becoming the law of the land, and all of us will be trapped in its clutches by January.  A small movement of lawmakers are trying to kill the law by defunding it, but the elites make fun of them.  One particular elite calls those congressmen "gooney birds".

The Keystone Pipeline is supported by a huge majority of Americans.  Yet the president uses all the power he has, plus some he doesn't have, to block the project.

Fast and Furious isn't a law, but it was a program created from pure political motivation.  Eric Holder created the program to funnel assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels, knowing they would be used for criminal activity.  The twisted theory was that all those Mexican gangsters would be killing everybody with those American assault weapons and give momentum to their desire to pass new laws outlawing such weapons.  Problem was, their illicit plan was exposed, and so far their attempts to outlaw firearms in America have failed.  Holder should be in jail, but instead he still is a vocal advocate for disarming the citizenry.

We can only thank God for the silver lining, which is all the laws these elites have been trying to push through against the will of the people that have failed up to this point.  Starting with gun bans, they extend to many other issues.

Amnesty for illegal aliens.  I choose to use the honest language rather than the silly disguised language the elites use to try to convince us those millions of illegal US residents are just honest, hardworking people who somehow find themselves being persecuted by racists who just don't like them because of their skin color. 

Cap and Trade: This completely ridiculous law actually passed the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives, but Republicans barely managed to kill it in the Senate.  It's one of the main reasons, along with Obamacare, that Republicans were able to win control of the House.

Card Check: Even some Democrats couldn't support this one.  It would have essentially legalized Union extortion and coercion.  It would have produced false results that forced unionization on hundreds or perhaps thousands of American companies.

Coal Industry Destruction: The president is accomplishing this one without any help from the elites in congress.  He's simply telling the EPA to make regulations on coal-powered electrical generation plants so onerous they are forced to close the plants or convert them to operate on natural gas.  So far we're just lucky that gas is relatively cheap.  For now.

Nixon resigned in shame in large degree because he unsuccessfully tried to get the IRS to target his political enemies.  Obama succeeded in getting the IRS to target his political enemies, yet he and his elite supporters do their best to cover up the scandal.

Obama wants to attack Syria.  An overwhelming majority of Americans want him to forget it.  Yet it seems likely that he'll end up launching some cruise missiles into the country anyway.  All we can hope is that his actions don't escalate the Syrian civil war into a Middle Eastern conflagration that pulls in Syria's neighbors, Israel, and possibly ignite WWIII.  All in the midst of a massive reduction in military readiness, which makes America unprepared for any new wars, let alone the third World War.

Obama has managed to coddle our enemies and insult our friends.  He promised a change that would get the rest of the world to stop hating America.  I guess he succeeded, only rather than hating America, they now have lost all respect for America.

Obama nationalized General Motors and unlawfully sold off Chrysler, then boldly claimed that he had saved the American automobile industry.  Meanwhile Detroit is a bankrupt, failed city.  Americans not part of the leadership of the UAW objected and were ignored.  Obama's top objective was to get GM to bring the Volt, and all-electric car, to market.  Nobody bought it, despite outrageous rebates provided by the Federal Government to try to help them sell.  The Volt's a running joke.

Obama bailed out the banks, brokerage firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Americans objected, but he did it anyway. 

Congress pushed through a law nationalizing Student Loans.  It's been a disaster.  College students are racking up unprecedented debt to pay the outrageous tuition and fees hiked out of sight by their universities, then can't find a job and are unable to repay.  That law got pushed through so fast that there was no time for opposition to get organized.

When pressed on the poor economy, he mostly continues to blame his predecessor.  But his only economic solutions are higher taxes and more regulation, which of course effects the economy negatively.  He's either bent on destroying American business or is clueless about what makes American business work.  I have concluded it's the former.

In his first term, I considered Obama as about the equivalent of Jimmy Carter in terms of the race to become the worst president in my lifetime.  Now he's surpassed the peanut farmer from Georgia, hands-down.

How Would I Vote on Bombing Syria?

Over the holiday weekend I heard some congressmen talking about Obama's request that they pass a resolution granting him authority to punish Assad by tossing a few tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria.  It was quite interesting to hear Republicans and Democrats alike saying pretty much the same thing:

"I'm not sold yet.  I'm going to need to get a lot of questions answered before I'm willing to vote to authorize the use of force against Syria."

The words weren't the same, but the sentiment certainly matched.

The Syrian civil war has been boiling for nearly 2 years, but only now do we have the president paying attention.  The reported death toll in their civil war so far is about 120,000.  But Obama drew the "red line" in the sand, promising he would act if Assad used chemical weapons.  The chemical weapons came out almost immediately, but Obama ignored them.  So they came out again recently, and Obama was being embarrassed by his failure to follow through on his red line.

Now it seems the president wants to toss a few tomahawks into Syria so he can say he acted on his ultimatum.  But tossing a few tomahawks into the desert that destroy some empty buildings sounds like an empty effort to me.  Worse yet, what if some of the missiles destroy a bunch of civilians but fail to take out any military assets?  Whether that happens or not, we can count on Al Jazeera airing lots of pictures of mourners in the streets with their dead families they claim were killed in the American attack.

The critical question is, what American interests are at stake?  How can we insure our actions help the side in the civil war that will be friendly to Americans rather than affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, and/or Al Quaeda?

They say that the Middle East is watching closely to see what America does.  If we choose not to respond, it telegraphs a message that we won't actually do anything to the rogue regimes.  We won't stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.  We won't be serious about stopping terrorism.  Perhaps we won't even help Israel if they are attacked, even with nuclear weapons.

My thinking is that if America is really serious about stopping rogue middle eastern dictators from using WMD, we probably should mount a campaign against Assad with the simple objective of destroying the Assad regime.  Then we let the vacuum be filled by whoever is strongest, which probably means radical islamists and probably Iran.

So way back a year ago, when the Syrian rebels were supposedly not radical Islamists, maybe Obama should have funneled resources to the rebels and mounted an air campaign to destroy the Syrian military capability.  But that ship sailed a year ago.  There is no good option today.

So I agree with the people in congress who have said they need a lot more information before they would vote to support this symbolic attack.  Without any information to convince me that the attack will be the least bit meaningful, I think my vote would be "No".  Or in congress, maybe it would be "Nay".

If I Made the Rules - Part 10: The Role of Government

If you haven't figured it out by reading the previous chapters, I'm a constitutionalist.  Rather than buying into the modern Liberal philosophy that says the Constitution was written by a bunch of 200-year-old white men who wore powdered wigs and bizarre wool clothing so it has no bearing on modern society, I believe those founding fathers were a smart bunch of fellows.  Certainly they were better educated than 80 percent of Americans today.  They were well versed on history, philosophy, religion, and had terrific insights on human nature.

We're a republic, not a democracy.  We were founded to be a tolerant society, not a libertine anarchy.  Freedom is the preeminent value of America.

We live in a time where people are demanding majority rule over a representative republic, and consequently have made it their mission to destroy all opposition to insure their majority by silencing their opponents.  There are things public figures dare not say in public - those things may not get them put in jail, but they'll certainly be driven out of their jobs and forcibly banished to a life in hiding from the persecutors.  Expressing any thoughts opposing or even questioning gay marriage, climate change, or abortion continues to cost high profile people their jobs.  All at the same time as those on the left openly fantasize about assassinating George W. Bush and openly expressing their wish that Dick Cheney die from his heart condition.

The Federal Government must only be permitted those enumerated powers granted it by the Constitution.  That means that nearly the entire alphabet soup of federal agencies should not exist.  No department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection, Education, Communication, Public Broadcasting, Social Security, Health and Human Services, and so on ...

The Federal Government may provide the standing army, and is first and foremost responsible for our country's security.  They may oversee the building and maintenance of our interstate highway system.  They may act as arbiters to help resolve disputes between states.  They may help America establish and maintain trading relationships with other countries.

For better efficiency and less corruption, the Federal Government should contract the building and maintenance of the interstate highway system to private contractors.  In a perfect world, the projects may be bid on by any company with the ability to complete them in line with the parameters required.  American business should create a trade organization that takes the lead in negotiating trade agreements with foreign countries, with the agreements only required to fit withing the guidelines set by congress.  A partnership between the private trade organization and the State Department should be forged, which would produce much less corrupt and more equitable trade policies than those created by the current government bureaucracy.

Citizen education and welfare is solely and specifically left to the states.  If Massachusetts and California want to create a generous welfare system that takes 70 percent of wages away from earners to give to the non-productive residents, they have the freedom to do so.  Conversely, if Texas and the Dakotas choose to take no income taxes and provide much lower benefits to their poor residents, they also have that freedom. 

Liberals argue that such a system would overload the welfare systems of the most generous (or in their parlance, "fairest") states, which they claim is "unfair".  But if the productive flock to the low-tax, low-regulation states and the non-productive flock to the high-tax, high welfare states, each state legislature and governor can blame nobody but themselves. 

Liberals also argue that without federal oversight, states with the worst schools will sink lower.  If anyone can give me a single example of a federally-imposed education policy that produced a measurable improvement in student performance, perhaps you can soften my bad attitude toward federal tyranny in education.  I'm pretty certain that there are no such examples.

What if a handful of states do everything right and are able to entice many companies to locate there?  What if their well-educated citizens become the best employees for those companies and are able to help those companies dominate the marketplace?  It seems to me it would result in a few states becoming leaders, with the most prosperous citizens in the country. 

Wouldn't it make sense that the states that don't perform very well in comparison might ask themselves, "what are they doing to be so successful?", and eventually decide to emulate them?  As the most extremely liberal states fail, isn't it more likely that their unproductive citizens might begin to decide to try their luck finding a good job in a successful state?  Who says we need a federal government to impose mediocrity on the country as a whole and call it "fair"?

Government exists to keep order, protect us from those who wish to do us harm, and sometimes provide things that are more difficult for individuals to do on their own.  Freedom is the most important American value.  Fairness tends to be found only in the eye of the beholder.

We now have a government that openly declares their primary value to be "fairness", and has yet to acknowledge any interest in freedom.  Obama and Company define "fairness" as those things that benefit only them - that fails any reasonable test of the word. 

Freedom!

Book Break

I'm taking a break from my little blog book.

The hot topics this week were Miley Cyrus and Syria. Miley's merely the next Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan, and deserves none of the attention she's getting.  MTV should be taken down for showing that trash. No, I didn't watch, and I am avoiding it on the web.  There's no point.

So let's tackle the more serious topic.  It was over a year ago that Obama announced his "red line".  Now that Assad has crossed it twice (or possibly more), our president is getting ready to retaliate.  Once again, it's not about national security.  It's not even about protecting Syrian citizens from their tyrannical dictator.  It's only about Obama, as is everything else he does.

The irony of this president doing with Syria exactly what he and his supporters so viciously accused George W. Bush of doing in Iraq is certainly not lost on me.  Although it sure is lost on all the media outlets.  Oh well, such is life in wacky America.

If the plan is to take out Assad, that might be worthwhile.  But they've already said it's not that.  If the plan is to take out all of their chemical weapons, that would be a positive objective.  But that ship's already sailed because the administration has announced their intentions.  All Assad needs to do is move his weapons somewhere else so we bomb empty buildings.

So it looks like Obama's going to have the military launch a bunch of cruise missles that most likely will destroy a bunch of empty buildings in Syria.  But at least he can say he took action!

Meanwhile there's a rally in Washington today memorializing Martin Luther King.  Republicans were neither invited nor welcome, so it was merely a Democratic Party Rally.

The congressman who claim to be Republicans and claim to oppose Obamacare are trashing their colleagues who are trying to lead an effort to leave funding for that horrible law out of the next funding bill.  There is no courage to be found among the Republican party leadership, which means the Democrats win.

Overall it's been a discouraging week.

If I Made the Rules - Part 9: Welfare

One of the major points of contention between conservatives and liberals is about how generous the government should be in providing an economic "safety net" to those who find themselves in poverty.  As president Obama moves forward in his second term, we've seen a massive explosion in the welfare rolls.  Huge increases have been seen since Obama took office in the number of Americans receiving Food Stamps, Disability Benefits, Housing Assistance, Medicaid, and benefiting from myriad other federal, state, and local programs created to assist the poor.

As a Roman Catholic Christian, I believe it's important for me to do what I can to help people who need it.  Therefore I've got firsthand experience dealing with the poor and their problems.

During a training class I attended to prepare me to become a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), perhaps the most memorable thing I learned was this:

There are two basic categories of the poor.  The temporary poor, and the permanent poor.  The temporary poor are the people who have suffered a setback of some sort.  They've lost their wealth to divorce, a lawsuit, a business failure, or a medical bankruptcy.  These temporary poor don't like being poor, and are highly motivated to escape that condition.  Therefore, these are the easiest people to help.  All they need is temporary assistance to get past their immediate problems, but once they get back on their feet they will rapidly become self-sufficient and no longer need or want assistance.

The permanent poor, however, are much more difficult to help.  Because they are often third or fourth generation poor, and being dependent on services from the government and charity is a way of life.  You could reasonably say that their profession involves maximizing their benefits.  These folks make it their business to know about all of the government programs that will give them money, housing, food stamps, and other benefits.  They also know about all of the local charities and their rules, and show up at the charities for whatever handouts are offered.  The permanent poor have no intention of finding a job and becoming self-sufficient; in fact, they can't even imagine such a lifestyle.

In my experience working with the poor, most are high school dropouts or if they graduated high school did so just barely.  Many of them are illiterate and have no idea how to do simple things like balance a checkbook or go grocery shopping with a budget and a meal plan.  They often lack basic skills in simple things such as cooking, cleaning, or basic home repair.

The welfare mom is a modern tragedy.  Imagine a young woman, 20 or 21 years old, who is raising 4 children on welfare.  The first of her 4 children was born when she was only 14 or 15, sometimes younger.  The father of that child is almost always an adult, and should have been prosecuted for statutory rape.  But the overloaded social services agencies are too overloaded to pursue justice in those cases, because they are so common.

The welfare mom doesn't marry any of her baby daddies because if she were to do so she would lose her benefits.  Those benefits are significant, and if we added up the value of all of them we would find that she's making a much better living from taxpayers than she ever could working as a clerk at the local fast food restaurant or convenience store.  Baby momma gets a decent house, paid for by HUD.  She gets free healthcare, courtesy of Medicaid.  She gets hundreds of dollars worth of Food Stamps, now issued on a debit-like card called EBT.  And she maximizes her monthly welfare salary check by virtue of her 4 children, giving her plenty of spending money. 

She probably has a boyfriend, who may or may not be the father of one of her children.  He lives with her, but knows that if he gets caught it could result in a reduction in her benefits.  In most cases I've observed personally, the house has little to no furniture, aside from the 50-inch flat screen TV in the living room.  The house is a mess, with dirty clothes piled up in every room that have been soiled by the dog(s) and/or cat(s) that roam the house. 

In many cases, baby momma is addicted.  Unfortunately that can mean she sells her food stamps to get more money to buy her drugs and there's nothing in the house for the kids to eat.  So if the kids are in school, they get fed there.  Or they figure out where they can go to get a free meal and fend for themselves.  Also, the kids have to be wary of the boyfriend.  He's more likely than not to abuse them, molest them sexually, or both. 

The poor have their own neighborhood watch.  Only they're not watching for criminals.  They're watching for cops and social workers.  They have elaborate alarm systems, that alert everyone on the block when the social worker is driving up.  The boyfriends all high-tail it out the back door and disappear, knowing that if they're caught in the house they might have to answer some uncomfortable questions or perhaps even get arrested.

My conclusion is that the welfare system is broken.  Republicans got Bill Clinton to sign their Welfare Reform bill in the 90's, which make a huge impact on getting people more self-sufficient and into the job market.  But president Obama has repealed that law without the approval of congress (I still can't figure out how he got away with that) and has reverted the system back to the bad old days.

If I were in charge, I'd have to realize we can't move so many millions of unwed baby mommas off the rolls overnight.  But I would set up programs that form partnerships between the government agencies and charities, with the goal of eliminating duplication.  I would build incentives for the government agencies whereby they are rewarded for the number of people they get off the welfare rolls, rather than current policies that reward them for bringing more people onto those rolls.  The stated goal for all government social services agencies will be to work themselves out of a job, when the day comes that nobody needs them anymore.  Perhaps that would be achievable someday and the charitable organizations could meet all of the needs of the relative few who hit a string of bad luck.

Addiction treatment would be an important component in freeing up welfare moms so they can hold down a job.  Although I'm not a fan of daycare, it would also need to be a component in removing one of the biggest obstacles to welfare moms taking a job. 

It is past time to stop the nonsense of the popular culture, which encourages irresponsible behavior that leads people to illegitimacy.  Leaders, churches, and schools must be united in spreading a positive message to everyone that our best chance for a happy and prosperous life is to find and marry someone for life and become partners in raising smart and successfuly children.

There is a category of people that need outside assistance to survive.  That category is the physically and mentally disabled.  Our government has turned the mentally disabled out and closed their hospitals, causing chaos.  (Evidenced by just about all of the mass shootings we keep hearing about, for example).  My preference would be to see the churches and charities band together to take care of these folks when their families cannot.  But I wouldn't raise a fuss if the government decided to re-open the mental hospitals for the low-functioning people who will never be able to live independently.  And of course the physically disabled deserve whatever help we can provide them.

This is a multi-generational problem that was begun by Lyndon Johnson.  It was only briefly solved in Clinton's second term and through the Bush years, but now has reverted back to the dysfunction we see today.  It can be resolved, but not until we elect people smart and principled enough to enact the right solutions.

If I Made the Rules - Part 8: Education

The case can be made and has been made by many that many of our country's most serious problems can be traced to a root cause which is the dismal failure that is our education system.  Liberals propose solutions that involve ever-increasing intervention by the Federal Government, plus of course throwing lots more money at the teachers.  Republicans (which I'm purposely separating from Conservatives on this issue) seem to like testing and grading as a tool to shame poor-performing schools to turn things around "or else".

I come from a family of teachers, and must reluctantly admit to having been a teacher once a long time ago.  This is a topic I think I'm qualified to address, and let me start by stating that Republicans and Democrats are both wrong.  Certainly my teacher friends and family would happily accept more money, but even they would have to admit that just paying them more won't solve the intransigent problems in our schools.

What everyone must come to realize is that our schools reflect us.  Kids don't learn because their parents don't value their education.  So let's start with the lower levels and work our way up.

I entered elementary school in the 60's.  It was so exciting for me to start with half-day Kindergarten at age 5.  But only 2 months into the school year, we moved across town to the more prosperous and growing side, where the elementary school had not yet begun to offer Kindergarten.  So my parents let me go to my old Kindergarten class' Halloween party, then I waited impatiently the rest of the school year to turn 6 and be allowed to enter my new school as a first grader.

My elementary education was excellent, at least from my memory.  Every subject challenged me.  I was pretty much average within my class.  I was below average in Math and Science.  I was horrible in Handwriting and Art Class.  But I excelled at Reading and Spelling, and won all my class spelling bees.

What actually took me by surprise was the fact that as I moved up into Junior High (it wasn't called Middle School in those days) and High School, I found myself ascending steadily to the top of the class in most subjects.  Except Science and Art, both of which remained elusive and mysterious to me the rest of my life - I wouldn't be any good at Art still today, although I like to think I might be able to pass a Science class by now.

Why did I become a top-flight college-bound student, while so many of my classmates faded well behind?  I think the answer is very simple: because my parents cared, and consequently I also cared.  So many of my classmates had no parental pressure to succeed, or the parental pressure was more focused on athletic pursuits.  Sure, I was an athlete, and also a band member.

So by high school, I felt a bit like a freak.  Our school had distinct social groups; the jocks, the band, the eggheads, the hoods, and the heads.  In case you aren't familiar with the lingo, I'll translate in the same order: Athletes, Musicians, Geeks, Delinquents, and Hippies.

The reason I thought I was a freak was that I belonged to multiple groups.  I was a member of the jocks, band, and eggheads.  Although I didn't hang out much with hoods or heads, I sometimes felt more welcome among them than among the jocks. The social rules were puzzling, and very difficult to navigate for me as an adolescent teenager.  I'm sure many people wish they had been less concerned with being "cool" during those years - I know if I had the self-confidence to just be myself, I would have been much happier.

What does all this have to do with education?  That's the best question.  It has nothing to do with education. And everything.  It means that kids are more influenced by their peers than by any adults.  So being a member of the band, egghead, and to a lesser degree the jocks group meant I was destined for college.  The other groups didn't stand a chance.  What's unique is that with few exceptions, these groups were all insular.  You belonged to one, not several.  Yes, there were a handful of jocks in the band, but many of the other guys disdained the company of their fellow band members.  Yet as far as I can recall, there were no other jocks in the egghead group.  It must have been some kind of social suicide for a jock to be seen with the eggheads - perhaps that partly explains my feeling of being a freakish exception.  Your group affiliation determined your future.

So in the early 70's while I was in high school, the hippies became our teachers.  And they were strange people who introduced us to strange ideas.  Not the math and science teachers, of course - they remained the same nerdy guys with pocket-protectors they always have been.  But the other teachers did weird stuff: They started wearing jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts to class.  They were using modern slang and trying to be our friends rather than our teachers.  They tried to influence us to always question authority, disrespect our parents and especially politicians and administrators, and abandon our parents' stodgy old religion.

In the meantime, I coasted through high school.  Nothing was hard, except my Chemistry class, in which I was lost from day one and never did figure out how to understand that old periodic table.  I had a couple of outstanding teachers though, one math and the other English literature and composition.  They actually forced me to apply myself to find and use my brain, and I'll always be thankful to both of them.

What if we could deliver children to our schools who are ready to learn and excited to learn?  What if behavior problems could be all but eliminated?  What if we eradicated drugs and assault and sexual behavior and make our schools safe for all students?  What if we could influence social groups to become less exclusive and made up of a majority of kids who really want to learn?

It starts with rebuilding the family.  Many of the things I talk about in the other chapters are focused on that fundamental solution.  Other solutions like mentoring programs and the adult education that might be offered in my post titled "Life Academy" can help rebuild the family.  Every child must have the message hammered into them on a daily basis - "Knowledge is power".  Kids need to be indoctrinated to a single theme - if you want to be successful in life, learn as much as you possibly can in school.

I favor breaking up the mega-schools and going back to neighborhood schools.  When the "experts" proclaimed that we needed to build these huge schools and close the little neighborhood and small-town schools, they said it would provide efficiency and improve the education experience.  I don't think it did either, and we all have seen the depths to which educational outcomes have sunk.  Why should schools be public?  Let's encourage lots of private schools as well.  I'm a Voucher fan when they provide an escape route for children stuck in failing public schools.

Implement innovation in education, using technology and the Internet to deliver content and turn the focus of schools from rigid classroom education to a varied experience that we can measure by how much kids learned, not how good they are at raising their hand to be recognized by the teacher to speak.

Stop marching kids in lockstep with their class.  If a kid is advanced in English but a bit behind in Math, let her skip to the next level English class and fall back to the next lower level Math class.  Graduation needs to mean you've met the requirements - if you meet them at age 16, you graduate at 16.  If it takes you until age 19, you graduate at 19.  Partner with community colleges to let the advanced students get started with their college career while they're finishing high school.

Most of all, make the primary mission of each and every teacher in each and every school to get their children inspired to learn.  Then just give them the resources and guidance and help them learn!