I’ve arrived … now close the door!

My family moved to North Orange County, California in early 1954. California had a population of about 12.5 million and Orange County had around 240,000 people (the 2008 population is 3.1 million!). In grade school I recall hearing people saying that to preserve our way of life, we need to control the growth in population. I remember wondering about all the new kids in my school, and how they would feel if they were told ‘sorry, you have to go back where you came from … your family wasn’t quick enough to make it here in time.’

I heard this story line repeated numerous times over the next several decades as California’s population surpassed 20 million (in 1970), 25 million (in 1983), 30 million (in 1991) and beyond … “I’m here now, so let’s not let anyone else in and ruin it for us.” … those of us who are now here!!!

I’m hearing the same thing anew, but this time it’s related to wealth. Politicians, supported by Hollywood elitists, Silicon Valley elitists and some of the nouveau riche, call those who start earning more than “middle-class” income “selfish.” At the same time, Warren Buffet calls for increased taxes on those with nowhere near as much wealth as he has, while his accountants dig up loopholes to shelter his inheritance from the IRS. Al Gore doesn’t dare accept a position in Obama’s administration and risk any hint of the value of his estate being exposed to public scrutiny …  notwithstanding how much more energy his home uses relative to the average American’s home.

Joe ‘the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher is called selfish for his unwillingness to share his “wealth.” Those with far more significant resources find ways to avoid having their wealth diminished by sharing it with anyone … except their lawyers and accountants.”I’ve arrived, so now let’s close the door!”

So … Experiment on Yourselves!

Joanh Goldberg wrote an article yesterday on the problems that an Obama administration ostensibly creates if it in fact does what it says it will do … experiment with society.

On Sunday night, President-elect Barack Obama told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be a model of sorts for him. “What you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence, and a willingness to try things. And experiment in order to get people working again.”

Goldberg goes on the raise the question; “What do you want in a surgeon? One who “gets it right” or who projects “a sense of confidence?” Ditto accountants, defense lawyers, mechanics and bomb-disposal technicians: Cocky and self-assured, or gets it right?” It is a great peice and I recommend you read the entire article. However, I’m going to use it as a springboard and go off in a slightly different direction.

One of the primary reasons our society has degraded, in my opinion, is because of the success of trial lawyers. Many business decisions are driven by need to protect the business from the possibility of being sued. The costs for these actions are wrapped into the cost of the products made by a given business. The higher the risk of being sued, the higher the cost of the product … all in the name of “protecting us from unscrupulous businessmen.”

The list of products and services is endless; medical treatment, private aircraft, silicon breast implants, pipe insulation, even a cup of coffee! I don’t mean to imply that there is never a case in which a faulty product hasn’t caused injury, but a $4.3 million award for a burn caused by a cup of hot coffee? That’s what is ridiculous! (By the way, lawsuits have surpassed the lottery as the number one way most people think they can become wealthy.)

Why is it though, that we aren’t allowed to bring suit for the harm resulting from our lawmakers experimenting on us? After all, it is the Liberals and the Democrats (though unfortunately I have to admit not always just them) who love to bring their grand experiments on us. FDR was the most successful in grand experimentation, and we are still paying for his administration’s ventures into social experimentation.

Those who are so concerned about our need to have access to the courts are the same ones who shield themselves from blame for the results of their actions. I say .. what’s good for the goose is good for the gander!

Welcome ttsteff

I’ve invited a new author to contribute … so welcome to my daughter-in-law, Tricia! She’s very conservative and extremely bright. Last year she started home schooling her two children, so I’m looking forward to her posts on that subject as well as anything else she has a mind to  expound upon.

Welcome Tricia!

The Orwellian Two-Step

Last week I wrote a a post on the Fairness Doctrine and listed several other Democrat legislative and programmatic creations with Orwellian handles, I forgot to mention one with equal significance; the Employee Free Choice Act, or so-called card check, which is being driven by the DNC’s primary finance support group. Scott Johnson over at Powerline posted on this this morning.

The EFCA is an attack on one of our most basic freedoms; the secret ballot. Let’s call this the Takeover of Basic American Democracy Act … TOOBAD.

UPDATE: Ask the Dems why they get to keep the secret ballot while at the same time try to deny it to America’s employees?

UPDATE: The Employee Freedom Acrion Committee (EFAC) is getting ready to place a great ad on Fox News and CNN refutting the “benefits” of the Employee Forced Choiced Act.

Round and Round We Go

Oil prices closed at $57.04 per barrel today, down from a high of over $147 last July. Earlier in the summer “experts” were predicting $200 per barrel oil by the end of the year. In 1979, financial and energy gurus published chart after chart showing oil heading to $100 a barrel from its then price of $40 by 1982. When 1982 rolled around, the world price for oil was hovering around $13.

Natural gas followed the same pattern these past months. The local gas utility went so far as to advise its customers to prepare for an 80% increase in prices through the coming winter. Gas prices peaked at almost $14 per MMBtu, likewise in July. Prices on NYMEX closed today at $6.318 per MMBtu, almost $2 lower that this time last year.

Why is it that people don’t get cycles? In 1999 pundits proclaimed business 2.0 …  no more fear of recession … markets are no longer saddled with the burden of supply and demand! Markets only go up from this point forward!

I read a book in the mid 1990′s by Robert Prechter called the Elliot Wave Principle. During the early 1930′s, Ralph N. Elliot discovered that social behavior trended and reversed in recognizable patterns, or “waves.” His initial work focused on the US stock market

Elliot saw waves in the ups and downs of the stock market and later discovered the same patterns in other aspects of business, society and eventually, in nature.

The current economic downturn was as predictable as a wave rolling onto the beach at Huntington. I told on of my sons three plus years ago that the home loans being proffered … and snapped up by people that would never be able to purchase a $500,000 home in the real world, would soon come to a screeching halt. It went on longer than I predicted at the time, and the fallout is far more devastating than I ever imagined.

Folks … whatever goes up, must come down! It’s the LAW!

Are We Red? … or Blue?

Ran across an interesting map, showing the 2008 presidential voting by county. Piquing my curiosity, I found these maps for the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Heartland America was and is still very red!

Re-do! Re-do!

Opponents of California’s recently passed Proposition 8, the amendment to California’s constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman, are furious. Protests have often been angry and disruptive, blocking intersections and entrances to churches. Interestingly, a great deal of vitriol has been against the Mormon Church, which I don’t understand unless it is a continuation of the century + old fear of a minority within the population.

Back to the protests … I predict that a lawsuit will be filed soon, trying to overturn the will of the citizens (not to difficult of a prediction!). I also predict that the activist judiciary will overturn the result of Nov. 4th, declaring the amendment unconstitutional. The radical left ‘can’t let the unwashed masses have a say in their own governance! They’re not intelligent enough to know what’s good for themselves!’

Lastly, I predict the case will end up in the US Supreme Court. I have no idea how that will turn out, but it may end up being decided by the judges Obama will appoint. Fortunately, the Supreme Court judges most likely to retire in the next several years are the leftest on the court, so the Court’s makeup shouldn’t shift between liberials and conservatives … hopefully!

First Law of Holes … Stop Digging!

Megan McArdle writes a great piece on the bail-out and the Dem’s push to support their financiers backers in Detroit.

Why bail out Wall Street a nd not GM, demand many people.  Why do we care about bankers and not ordinary folks?

I think this misses the point of the financial bailout.  Whether or not it works–and I sure hope it will–I don’t think very many people wanted to bail out the financial industry because we were so moved by the plight of those plucky traders on the mortgage desk.  We bailed them out not because they deserved it–they didn’t–but because if we didn’t, there was a very big risk that they would take us down with them.

This is not generalizeable to other industries.  Money is weird.  Finance is weird.  There is no other industry that is, first, so tightly coupled, and second, severely affects every other industry in the country.  Moreover, there are few other industries that are so vulnerable to panic.  Strategic injections of capital can actually salvage operations that are otherwise sound.

GM’s operations are not otherwise sound.  They have been headed for this moment since 1973.  Conservatives blame legacy costs, and liberals blame management.  They’re both …

Read the entire article.

The ‘Gag’ Doctrine?

A growing number of Liberals have been clamoring for reimplementation of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ over the last several months. This is the miss-named rule for countering Conservative thought on the nation’s radio airwaves, first adopted in 1949 by a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation that once required broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.” The doctrine was reaffirmed in the late 1960′s through a Supreme Court decision.

It was overridden by Ronald Reagan (actually by the FCC) in 1987, who discarded the rule because, contrary to its purpose, it failed to encourage the discussion of more controversial issues. There were also concerns that it was in violation of First Amendment free speech principles.

Several issues surrounding the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine need to be addressed by the future Conservative leadership.

The first is to put a new and more descriptive handle on this attack on the First Amendment. The Liberals have become very adept at creating Orwellian titles for leftest positions;

1. ‘affirmative action’ for allowing only those chosen as supposedly needing a hand up, regardless of their need or capacity to take advantage of such a hand while denying access to any other group not deemed as needy.
2. ‘share the wealth’ for taking (if I did that I’d be arrested) without their permission from those  earning more and giving to those deemed worthy (by whatever is the rule of the day) of receiving … and did I mention there would be some handling fees and carrying charges?
3. ‘bipartisan solidarity’ for … who knows? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
4. ‘diversity is unity’ is something new … Obama seems to be the first pol to use these two together. Another oxymoron? Sounds all warm and snuggley!

Republicans need to turn the name of what the Left is attempting around on them. Let’s come up with a name that calls the “fairness” doctrine what it really is … anything but fair! Partial birth abortion was clear enough to the electorate and described exactly what was being done!

Next issue that needs to be addressed is who will lead this charge? Rush, Laura, Sean, Bill Bennett … are obvious choices and can be counted on to do their part by rallying the troupes. We will need the Republicans in the Senate to show more solidarity than we’ve seen from them in the past few years … but I wouldn’t count to strongly on that. Snowe and Collins from Maine and Specter from Pennsylvania are the most worrisome … and McCain can’t necessarily be counted on for something like this (think McCain/Feingold or Comprehensive Immigration Reform!). With three Senate races yet to be decided, there is too little margin to put all hopes in a Senate filibuster.

So what does that leave? The last hope is an unconstitutional finding by SCOTUS. A better choice is the same approach used during the illegal immigration fight a couple of years ago. Will Americans rally to protect their speech rights like they did to protect their borders? I think so.

Conservatism unchained!

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt, I ran across a blog a couple of days ago written by Seamus O’Shansky called Red State Reconstruction and have added it to the blog roll. I really liked his tag line:

Dedicated to the reconstruction and rebirth of the Conservative Movement. A blog of analysis, plans and actions designed to restore the values of Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s Conservatism to a place of prominence in Our National Political Conversation.

Conservatism, not to be confused with the religion called Environmentalism, is the basis for the Republican party. However, the party has strayed from conservationism to the detriment of us conservatives.

O’Shansky’s post this morning is well worth the read. He has expanded on my post yesterday, stating far more clearly the disdain we should all hold for the McCain staffers attacking Sara Palin.

Palin’s Critics … Debunked

Sarah Palin, the Republican’s 2008 VP nominee, underwent a trial by fire after being chosen by John McCain as his Vice Presidential running mate in August (I’ve written before about my support of her nomination.) The Democrats, lead by their publicity arm (the MSM). pummeled her unceasingly throughout the remainder of the race.

There is nothing new in such behavior; political races have engendered animosity and attacks since … probably the first humans organized the ownership of their caves.  Partisan efforts to demean their opponents is as old as dirt. The main thing that changed in this race is the main stream media’s blatant bias for Obama’s candidacy.

Really there is nothing new in their actions. They have been developing their skills since their self-proclaimed crowing achievement … the end of the Vietnam war and America’s first defeat in a foreign war.They honed their skills, following the likes of Castro, Mao, even Joseph  Gobbels (in a speech  on 9 January ,1928 to an audience of party members at the so-called “Hochschule für Politik”, a series of training talks for Nazi party members in Berlin):

Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.

The traditional maxim is “if you repeat a lie often enough, people accept as fact” …

“Palin is a joke candidate only on the ticket as a sop to pro-lifers. End of story.” Frank Schaeffer, the Huffington Post

“Sorry if you’re republican, but I get embarrassed [sic] when I watch Sarah Palin.” The John Stewart Show

I could go on, but do your own damn search

What transpired before the election was expected, though I started getting miffed by Republicans clamoring for attacks on Palin to stop. MSM attacks on her were actually rallying cries for those of us supporting her … the more vile the attack … the greater our support for her.

I could also understand the negative picture of her by several “staunch Republicans.” Some never were (at least in my mind) Republicans (i.e. Christopher Hitchens). Some were just plain snippy, such as Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker (I read both columnists regularly and almost always enjoy their viewpoint, so I was very disappointed by their vitriol against Palin … was it just jealousy’s ugly head showing itself?). Other conservatives were not supportive of her nomination from early on, as written about here and here.

What really surprised me was the vile attacks on her by so-called ‘Republicans’ after the election! Anonymous ‘leaks’ from McCain staffers have painted a picture of a woman that didn’t know, for instance, there were individual states on the African continent! Outlandish pronouncement became even more outlandish … and petty:

Newsweek also reported that Palin may have spent “tens of thousands” of dollars more on wardrobe expenses than the $150,000 that was reported in the days before Election Day. The money allegedly went toward clothes for her and her family from high-end stores, even though she was originally told to buy just three suits and hire a stylist for the Republican National Convention.

One aide called the spree “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” according to the magazine. Palin also reportedly asked to speak at McCain’s concession speech Tuesday, and was denied.

First … why would the McCain staff lash out at someone in their charge for the last two-pulse months of the campaign, and second, why is every single statement by those staff members front page news?

To the first:

“McCain and Palin lost the election! Finished second! Bad news! Somebody’s to blame! Where can the blame for the loss be placed? How about that dumb, hick outsider? After all, we Washington campaign  insiders have to protect our positions for the next election cycle in two years!”

It’s called CYA. The only difference is that we get to see it on the front page of our newspaper (actually I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in years … how about on our browser when we pull up Fox News) or in glorious color on our 1080p as we tune in to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, ABC, CBS. This is nothing more than small people trying to shift the blame of their failure to someone they never respected from the get-go! This is also an issue that is core to the problems haunting the Republican party, and I’ll post more on this soon.

On the second point:

The MSM has been perfecting the art of targeted personal destruction for years. As mentioned earlier, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes a fact. “Bush lied.” … “America is a racist society.” …”Bush is the stupidest President in history.” I was sucked in by this tactic years ago when the MSM pilloried Dan Quail, George H. W. Bush’s VP.  Dan Quail was no more or less of an intellect than any other national politician on either side of the aisle (with the possible exception of Newt Gingrich, the brightest thinker to have passed through Washington for the past three decades). However, if every gaff is the lead story on the six o’clock news and repeated in every major newspaper across the country, you eventually begin to look pretty stupid. Especially when there is never a similar story on the gaffs made by a Democrat politician.

Sarah Palin, along with the likes of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, are people we conservatives will be looking to for leadership over the next several years. What is important is our need to learn how to better counter the personal attacks perpetrated by the MSM and denounce those in our own party when they adopt the slimeball tactics of the Liberia Left and the MSM … but then I repeat myself.

“… vindicated my faith in America!”

On Friday while on a campaign stop in Iowa, the presumptive winner of the presidential race, Barak Hussain Obama, said:

My faith in the American people was vindicated and what you started here in Iowa swept the nation.

Are the American public really going to elect, to office of the President of the United States, a man that doesn’t believe that the citizens of this nation would have been willing to elect any man, or woman, qualified to occupy that most critical office? This is something Reverend Wright would have included in one of his Sunday sermons on the evil of ‘white America.’

I’ve been tied up on work stuff to the point I haven’t been able to post for the past few weeks, but because the election is only days away and having seen to quote above … I couldn’t help myself!

It’s not over yet. Only the main stream media … and Obama, have declared Obama President. As I  said in an earlier post, the only poll that counts is the one conducted on November 4th. I’m going to put my faith and my prayers in the American public.