Cranky-D

Here is a piece written before the election, but I think it’s still a good read. A quote:

Let me back up a moment here. I had read some of Atlas shrugged, but I confess,not all. That said, I have read a number of reviews on the ideas presented by Ayn Rand in the form of the objectivist ideology, and the debates surrounding them. For those who do not know what I am talking about, I suggest you read up on it, because I am seeing striking number of themes from Atlas Shrugged being played out in real time in the election ahead. Anyway, “going John Galt” is basically refusing to allow yourself to be punished for achieving. This is done by withdrawing your contribution to society in the form of taxes, by producing less, and thusly getting taxed less. For instance; a contractor can work six days a week, earning $300K per annum, and paying $150K in taxes netting him $150K for himself, or he can work two days a week, earning $100K per annum, falling into the “middle class” category, paying just $25K in taxes, and keeping $75K for himself. So, he chooses to work two days a week, gets to spend more time with his family, and stiffs the government of $125K in tax revenue. It works well for him because a third of the work means only a loss in half his pay, and he keeps more dollars per hour he works by curtailing his productivity. On a macro scale across the nation, this kind of revenue loss will deprive the government of wealth, and therefore; power. In this way, the productive will blackmail the government. Also, it will be more likely that the productive will start blackmarket trade. They will hide the transfer of goods and services. Watch for it.

There are a few things to note. First of all, if taxes go up enough, I will strongly consider cutting back in work. Right now I don’t make enough for it to really matter, but I have the potential to make a lot more. If that happens, well, I have the feeling that I will consider working less. Those who know me know how lazy I am anyway, so perhaps that isn’t really news.

The big thing will be the underground economy. I expect it will happen, and happen pretty soon. Even without policy changes, the bad state of economic affairs and the soon to be inflating dollar will take many out of the money game. I guess since I have only debt, high inflation will help me since I’ll be able to pay it off with “cheap” dollars. However, we will all have less overall wealth since I cannot see the government changing tax rates to compensate for their debasing of the currency (see bailouts, which are now apparently going as high as 7 trillion dollars… yikes!).

There are other things. Our new president has a track record of being in favor of laws that restrict the second amendment rights of citizens. His chief of staff is of a like mind, as is his apparent nominee for attorney general. If they are able to pass restrictive laws, or even attempt to do so, I expect the states to follow. I live in a purple midwestern state, and I like it here very much, but if they decide that gun ownership is to be restricted here more than it is already, I will have to leave it behind and go elsewhere.

I guess I will probably go to Texas in that event. North Texas, I think, because I don’t like humidity all that much. I think that Texas will probably be the last stand of citizens who refuse to be subjects.

I hope I’m wrong, and none of this happens, and all the panic buying of firearms and ammunition we are seeing turns out to be for naught. However, don’t count on it.

Here.

Found here.

Ace

The worst aspect of racism — in terms of actual impact — in this country is not white racism, but hyperbolically overstated black claims of white racism, which in turn create a sense of futility, anger, and ultimately powerlessness and stagnancy in the black community.

The idea that learning or success is “white” is devastating to black advancement, and there’s nothing whites or the government can do to change that. Blacks have to change that mindset themselves, and give up on a basically oppositional culture which seems to state that whatever whites might do is haram.(emphasis in the orginal)

This is something that I’m not sure can be said enough. Acting successful is not “acting white.” It is… acting successful. White people had to learn to do it to. Many of them haven’t learned that lesson, and they are the worse for it. But there appears to be a large number of black people who think trying to succeed is acting white. Obviously it is not true for all, and for all I know it isn’t true for most. But there is a significant subculture in which education is shunned. And like ace said, there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it.

The standard solution is to throw money at the problem, as if you can transform students who don’t give a damn about learning into students who will give a damn if they have nicer equipment or whatever. That won’t do it. The question is, what will? I have no idea.

Thomas Sowell:

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending “the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life.”

He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics.

…

Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance.

What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof.

That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.

…

But the ignorance of Ph.D.s is still ignorance and high-IQ groupthink is still groupthink, which is the antithesis of real thinking.

Yep. I guess I can count myself among the intellectuals, since I have the papers to prove it. And I have dealt with them for a long time, though not so much any more. Any time I deviated from the accepted norms, I got, at least, funny looks. I imagine they saved any derision they might have had for when I wasn’t there.

In the article, Sowell mentions a few presidents (I’m making you go there to find out for yourself who they were) who are not known as intellectuals, but as it turns out were incredibly well-read people who would read some of the classics in the original Greek, Italian, or Latin. I find that pretty impressive, and pretty “intellectual” as well. The problem was, of course, that they weren’t the right kind of intellectual. They probably didn’t put on the proper airs is my guess. One must act like an intellectual to be perceived as one.

I have know plenty of intelligent people. The smartest of them were not interested in “acting intellectual.” They had much better things to do with their time, like discussing their ideas so they could better understand them. They also didn’t automatically assume your positions and beliefs matched theirs. They were more interested in the quality of your thinking. And, of course, if you liked beer or not.

With Obama, we have a man who appears to be an intellectual, and therefore is praised for it. We shall see if this truly translates into something better for our country. I tend to doubt that highly, but I won’t judge until I see the results.

The latest from Bill Whittle.

So consider this, my fellows in arms: On Tuesday, the Left — armed with the most attractive, eloquent, young, hip, and charismatic candidate I have seen with my adult eyes, a candidate shielded by a media so overtly that it can never be such a shield again, who appeared after eight years of a historically unpopular President, in the midst of two undefended wars and at the time of the worst financial crisis since the Depression and whose praises were sung by every movie, television, and musical icon without pause or challenge for 20 months . . . who ran against the oldest nominee in the country’s history, against a campaign rent with internal disarray and determined not to attack in the one area where attack could have succeeded, and who was out-spent no less than seven-to-one in a cycle where not a single debate question was unfavorable to his opponent — that historic victory, that perfect storm of opportunity . . .

Yielded a result of 53 percent.

Folks, we are going to lick these people out of their boots. (emphasis in the original)

Bill is upbeat, and I think that’s a good thing. The Obama campaign had a huge advantage over McCain, and the most he could muster is a margin of 53 percent. If this country were truly moving left, this margin would have been much higher. We need to keep fighting, but not like the left has done these past 8 years, with sniping about “The Chimperor in Chief” or cries for impeachment. Instead, we need to calmly note mistakes and/or differences of opinion, and explain where we are coming from. Perhaps progressives will be more willing to listen now that they have the reigns.

Okay, I’m dreaming again. Still, we need to act like adults, even if they won’t. And we need to not give up our principals in the name of achieving power. Our representatives did that, and look what it got them. Unelected, and rightly (no pun intended, and yet it is) so. They need to get back to first principles, and they need to stick to them. That’s the only way they (and we) will find themselves able to govern again.

That’s right, I’m turning this blog into an all-comic site. I got it from here.

Just wait until I start cat-blogging. I have to get a cat first, of course. Don’t tempt me!

P.J. O’Rourke is one of my favorite political writers. I guess he’s called a humorist because he basically makes fun of things. His latest piece is here. As is often the case, it contains a good amount of truth disguised as humor.

He starts out with his thesis that conservatives have failed to make their case:

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.

Later, he talks about the financial mess:

Wall Street looked at the worthless paper and thought, “How can we make a buck off this?” The answer was to wrap it in a bow. Take a wide enough variety of lousy mortgages–some from the East, some from the West, some from the cities, some from the suburbs, some from shacks, some from McMansions–bundle them together and put pressure on the bond rating agencies to do fancy risk management math, and you get a “collateralized debt obligation” with a triple-A rating. Good as cash. Until it wasn’t.

Or, put another way, Wall Street was pulling the “room full of horse s–” trick. Brokerages were saying, “We’re going to sell you a room full of horse s–. And with that much horse s–, you just know there’s a pony in there somewhere.”

That made me laugh. Also, it’s pretty much spot on.

He also has a take on what the free market means to liberals and conservatives:

What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That’s not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. “Jeeze, 230 pounds!” But you can’t pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters–all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs–think so too.

Again, as usual, he hits the mark.

The question is, what do we do about it? We have to make the case, not let the progressives make the case for us, as I expect them to do again, just like Carter did in the late 70s. I’m not sure we can afford to let that happen again.

From here.

The following is from an Obama/Biden policy statement found here.

Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.

You know what “commensense” means? It means a way to incrementally take away guns.

The guns on foreign battlefields are fully automatic weapons (otherwise known as “Assult Weapons”). If you want to purchase such a weapon, you have to pay a high price. First of all, they are available only in limited numbers, and are thus expensive. Second, you must pass an FBI background check to own one. The “Assult Weapons” ban actually refers to semi-automatic versions of such weapons. They are no more dangerous than any other rifle. In the hands of a law-abiding citizen (the only person who would obey such a ban) they are the same as any other rifle. In the hands of a criminal, they are dangerous, just like any other gun in the hands of a criminal.

“Assault weapons” only account for a fraction of the crimes in which a gun is involved, something less than 1 percent I believe. Therefore, such bans mostly effect law-abiding citizens. The fact that taking away guns from honest citizens raises the crime rate in general is also something ignored by many of our representatives. Of course, they think that crime is not a people problem but a gun/knife/baseball bat problem. I find it impossible to understand how they reach such conclusions, but that’s because my brain is actually fully functional and I don’t like depriving rights from my fellow citizens. Also, while I have a huge ego, I still believe in my heart of hearts that I really don’t know what’s best for anyone other than myself. I would make a bad philosopher-king. A good portion of our representatives think of themselves in a much more elevated manner.

Of course, I don’t own any guns, so I guess it really doesn’t matter to me. But I worry about other people’s rights. We need to keep an eye on our new president-elect lest he stray from the path.

Update: they have since removed all the content from that page. There is a google cache of the page as it used to be. I found out about the change at Ace’s blog.

One of the first blogs I ever read was the one Steven Den Beste used to write, many years ago. He is still out there, but he got tired of dealing with all the crap a popular blogger gets, and he also had some health issues. However, he is still out there writing about anime, which I’m sure is much less stressful (at least I hope it is), and he has produced a piece about the election titled, “Not the end of the world.”

It’s easy to let yourself go in despair and start thinking things like “We are well-and-truly fucked” or “This is the worst of all possible outcomes”. But it isn’t true.

I think this election is going to be a “coming of age” moment for a lot of people. They say, “Be careful what you wish for” and a lot of people got their wish yesterday.

And now they’re bound to be disappointed. Not even Jesus could satisfy all the expectations of Obama’s most vocal supporters, or fulfill all the promises Obama has made.

I urge you to read it all. Most people in the right-leaning blogosphere are linking it, so I could’ve found it anywhere.

It was a good wake-up call. I admit I was a little worried about this outcome, and I still am. However, there is no reason to get upset beforehand. We need to wait and see exactly what he will actually try to accomplish, and also see how well he manages to do it.

I really don’t think he planned to win the nomination this time around, and I’ll bet he is quite surprised right now, no matter what he says. I also think at least a part of him knows that he is not qualified to be president. However, I don’t think anyone is qualified to be president. Sure, you can get a manager type who knows how to run the day to day stuff, but frankly they have other people to help with that at the presidential level (or they should). The biggest part of being a president is to shoulder the burden of being the leader of the free world. Other countries may disagree, but let’s face it, the world looks towards the United States, either as a country to love or at least admire, and as a country to hate. The question is, will Obama be able to take on that burden. We will obviously find out soon enough.

SDB has some gloom and doom stuff in his piece, but I happen to agree with his assessment. If Obama puts forth a foreign policy like the one he presented in the last two years, he will definitely be tested. I expect him to be found wanting, but I hope I’m proven wrong. I would much rather he turned out to be a good president and I be wrong than the alternative. My country means more to me than my being right.

In the mean time, he has a few months to get ready. I join with others on the right in saying that this man is my president. I will do my best to not sound like an unhinged lunatic at the mention of his name, like many on the left have done with Bush. I will support him as best I can, to honor the office if nothing else. However, I will not be spare in my criticism when he gets something wrong, and I will definitely be free with “I told you so” to the lefties I know.

I am, however, preparing myself for the worst. It could be a long four years.

From here.

From here:

I held out a lot of hope today, especially after reading some of the articles I referenced in previous posts. However, it looks like McCain will lose this election.

I was not a big fan of his, and I went through a long period in which I was not going to vote for him. Sarah changed that. I liked Sarah a lot, and she really got me interested in the campaign to the point of donating money to them. I think they should’ve trusted her more earlier and let her talk to the media as soon as she joined the ticket. Now she’ll get to go back to being a governor for a while longer, and hopefully will be ready to run for president in 2012.

The question is, of course, “Now what?” Right now, I don’t know. I have already been moving forward on a defensive plan related to legislation I expect to see in the future, but that is a targeted thing. If Obama can pass his tax reform then the economy is really going to go into the toilet. He wants to increase the tax on businesses that make more than $250K per year. Now, the business I work for is safe because it consists of the owner and myself (at least, I think it’s safe), but there are a lot of businesses that are considered “small” that employ more than, say, four people. Higher taxes on them will most likely result in some people losing their jobs. I have seen some people who have small businesses saying they might just close the doors instead. Either way, the economy will suffer.

Obama also wants to raise trade barriers. That is the exact opposite of what should be done given our weak economy. With that and the tax increase, you have a recipe for a new depression which the Democrats will, of course, blame on George Bush.

The only hope we can have at this time is that Obama will not be able to enact many of his policies. Perhaps the Dems in the house and senate will look ahead and realize that if they go too far off the reservation, they will be unelected just as quickly as they were elected.

Obama is a radical by nature. Perhaps he will not be able to govern as one.

Obama uses the phrase “righteous wind” in a speech, which is something Mao said as well. No one in the legacy media cares, most likely.

Here.

Well, for Palin/McCain anyway. Article is here, found here.

This video is awesome. If you’re for Palin/McCain (see what I did there?) go watch it and perhaps feel a bit better. I don’t care for the way Arnold has moved to the left (just banning the BMG .50 was enough for me) but he is a natural politician.

Again, if you don’t know who you’re voting for, please watch this video. It runs for about nine minutes. The narrator has a lot of energy, and he has a lot of cuts in there, but once you get used to his style, it’s really good. In fact, watch it even if you know who you’re voting for, perhaps it will either change your mind (doubtful, but I have hope) or will make you feel better about the election.

We’re in the home stretch, people. We cannot give up, because that is what the Obama campaign wants us to do. Republicans always have a higher ultimate turnout than Democrats. Let’s get out there and vote. Even if you’re in a blue state, you can contribute to the total votes count, which is important in giving “legitimacy” to a candidate.

You can find more videos done by the same guy by searching for “machosauceproduction” at YouTube. I have downloaded much of his work and have enjoyed it all.

Here, at Ace’s, the story of two political candidates hung in effigy. The first, Sarah Palin, did not result in any legal action. The second, Barack Obama, ended up with two men being arrested.

Interesting, no?

Here’s the deal. Either it’s okay to do something like this because it’s a free speech issue, or it is not because it is a veiled death threat (or encitement to riot or whatever). You cannot have it both ways depending on who the “victim” is.

I admit that Obama had nothing to do with the arrests, but it does give you an idea of the kind of mindset that will be even more prevalent if Obama is elected president. We will have to walk on tippy-toes around the man, for fear of giving offense or, even worse, putting us open to charges of “racism.” Can you imagine what the discourse will look like if that happens? Can you imagine a president with a majority in the house and senate who also has a free ride from the press? It should frighten you. It sure frightens me.

You might recall the story of three reporters being thrown off Obama’s plane (also here with a cool photoshop) because the papers they work for endorsed McCain. I truly believe that is a “tell” into how the Obama administration plans to treat reporters. Anyone who crosses him will risk being removed from access.

Tell me again about the evil President Bush, who kicked out reporters he disagreed with. Oh, wait, that never happened. The progressives believe it did, of course, because that is what they would do in the same circumstances.

BTW, here is an opinion piece about President Bush that I think deserves your attention. I happen to like President Bush, and while I disagree with many of the things he has done, he at least has had the courage to stand by his convictions, which is a rare quality in politics. If you love him, like him, ambivalent, or can’t stand the man, you should at least click over and spend a few minutes reading.