Saturday, September 26, 2009
Dumb and Dumber
Russia, China, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Cuba, Obama, Pelosi, et al vs...."the right."
Just why is it that the left is so blatantly clueless about political ideals, human nature, and history?
Celebrities Shall Overcome
Andrew Klavan, funny and insightful as usual.
The Look of Genuine and Sincere Compassion...for a Monolithic State...
This is funny...and, I believe reveals some body language insight into the "compassion" of most stiff, impersonal, and phony politicians who merely seek the implementation of ideologies and concentration of power.
Nice smile...so what.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
“Community Organizer” for President
China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela are happier...
How nice.
(Many citizens of Iran and Eastern Europe, maybe not so happy).
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Greedy Bastards...
You can always tell when you're in an “evil, greedy, and selfish capitalist country"...You can drink the water.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
A Rarity; A Common Sense Politician
A friend sent a link to me from this site and video clip.
It occurred to me that those of us on the libertarian right tend to be more sober in our praise or appreciation of the politicians we like. I've constantly encountered leftists who are totally enamored by some politician whose views they agree with. Obama is probably the best example in recent times of this childish and gullible behavior. All politicians, whether we agree with them or not, are just ...politicians (duh!). The left more often then not seems to treat our public servants (that's what they're supposed to be) as saviors of some kind. The religious tone and fervor directed at them becomes comical at times.
There are probably a few conservatives who get fired up over some speeches and some personalities but I think we've got a better grip on what a public personality is and what a politician's purpose is.
That all aside. The link above is a great example of a public servant who seems to be someone I can certainly respect -- some damn good sober arguments that appear to be quite sincere; no nonsense implying that he's on some spiritual mission to save the world. Some great well-stated points...
...but, I'm not going to wet my pants over it.
Politicians can and should be respected and admired when they act in accordance with our values. They should never be idolized, worshiped, or seen as super-human. If you do that,...you're an idiot, and there are clearly plenty of idiots for Obama and the leftist rabble who surround him and his policies.
Superb Informative Writing
This is most assuredly long reading but it offers some incredible insight into our current circumstance and the historical background that has brought us to where we are.
The People's Cube is primarily satire on par with the popular "Onion" newspaper and on-line site but occasionally the guy who runs it addresses things from a more serious angle. I'll include a few sections of the essay here to let you in on what I'm writing in this regard:
"...It would be absurd to presume that people of the world go to bed every night loving dictators and hating the United States. Obviously, the first conscious thing on the mind of a European, an African, or an Asian as they wake up in the morning is not how to survive another day of "America's economic and cultural imperialism." And since anti-Americanism is incompatible with common sense that guides our daily lives, people must be reminded of it every day to keep it alive. That is the burden that radical intellectuals have taken upon themselves, dispensing daily quotas of leftist clichés to the "unwashed masses" down below..."
Any society, even the freest democracy, has likely autocrats willing to take advantage of others, latent victims willing to give up freedom in exchange for entitlements, and budding free people willing to resist tyranny and defend their liberties. The ratio of these groups in each country may be different, but no nation is ever unanimous - despite all assurances to the contrary by dictators who claim to speak for all people..."
"...Statist regimes need unanimity to justify their existence. If a government's survival depends on unanimity, it will inevitably end up repressing free speech. That alone makes statism an unacceptable form of government. Any government's claim to speak for all people automatically makes it a suspect, just as unanimous voting is a symptom of tyranny..."
"...'I hope the Russians love their children too,' crooned Sting, as if there was any connection between what the Russians loved and what the Soviet government did. Further showing a lack of any sense, Sting claimed in the same song that he didn't believe Reagan, that 'there is no monopoly in common sense,' that 'we share the same biology regardless of ideology,' and "there's no such thing as a winnable war." In other words, all things being relative and all people being mindless biological units anyway, the free world might as well give in to the tyrants ruling over a gigantic gulag, whose voiceless inmates, Sting hoped, loved their children..."
[Quoting a Latin American expert, J. Michael Waller] "...interestingly, the CIA covertly funded the center-left, including socialists, to keep them from falling into the Soviet camp. The CIA almost never covertly supported right-wing forces; those forces were perfectly capable of operating on their own, and many were clumsy and even unnecessarily brutal in crushing the extreme left.
When the Marxists took power in Nicaragua in 1979, with the help of Jimmy Carter, it was the poor rural peasants who led the counter-revolutionary revolt. Campesinos from the countryside took up arms to fight the socialist revolution, because the Sandinistas began taking away their land, forcing them to work on collective farms, and conscripted them into a gigantic revolutionary army with Soviet weapons and Soviet-bloc trainers. The peasant resistance was supported by elements of the old Somoza regime who were the only ones at the time with military leadership experience, but the rank-and-file combatants were overwhelmingly poor peasants. Many of the fighters were former Sandinistas who had grown disillusioned with the socialist ideal...[end quote]..."
"...Today the CIA operates more tightly than ever under strict laws and bureaucratic guidelines, and the oversight committees in Congress are informed of every significant covert operation. Every such operation requires a presidential "finding." The CIA cannot operate on its own. So if the CIA was involved in ousting former Honduran President Zelaya, as Hugo Chavez is claiming, then it was with the personal authorization of President Barack Obama and with the knowledge of the Democrat leadership in both houses of Congress..."
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Love, Peace, and Socialism
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
One Speech Down
After my last post it would be rude to not note that Obama's speech to America's children on their first day of school was a good speech (yes, my eyes still rolled up). After some noteworthy changes, particularly in regard to supplemental material that had asked kids to write a letter to themselves regarding what they could do to help Obama accomplish his goals, the end result was a simple well-crafted encouragement to stay in school and do well -- no problem with that.
I do have to note Michelle Malkin's rather funny note that the personal pronoun "I" greatly outnumbered, "you," "America," "Nation," etc., but that's just him being him. 'Nit-picking, but funny none the less.
Okay, no change, he still a great speech maker and has great speech writers. Now, if we could get him to ease back on socialist revolution we'd be fine.
...and, oh yeah, "It's the economy stupid."
Game Over – Faust Loses his Bargain
(I had typed this at the end of last week and have since read Charles Krauthammer's excellent appraisal of the same issue – he does a better job of course so I recommend reading his comments on the issue of Obama's early fall from heaven).
Anyway, here's what I have to say – for what it's worth:
The entire Obama event has been like something out of fiction; a guy with no experience running anything and a mere couple of years in the Senate (most of that time spent running for the presidency). His other noteworthy “accomplishments” have been to carefully cover a paper trail filled with radical belief, associations, and activity. Obama is a Marxist. Oh, he may differ a bit on specifics, but when fragments of his world view slip through the curtain they're familiar to anyone who understands political philosophy.
Okay,...he's a damn good speaker, he's relatively young, and he's “cool.” Now that his house of cards is collapsing (most media outlets are sill pretending that unemployment is not increasing), his strategy is, as it has always been when he's encountered opposition or his failings become too obvious; “I'll just make a speech” (something Mussolini – another Marxist/Fascist* -- used to say when things got dicey).
But...in power politics, a one-trick strategy can only be maintained for so long before citizens start asking for something with more substance.
Obama got in way over his head from the beginning. He has no business being in the position he's in. (As it's become customary now to cry “racism” when any criticism is made to his holiness I might add that I can think of at least five African-American's I'd love to see occupying the oval office – Obama is not one of them). Thinking he could cram his well-guarded Marxist/community organizer strategies into America's unique free wheeling and diverse system was a really dumb move.
So now; a speech to kids on the first day of the school year and a speech to a joint session of congress (something usually seen during major wars or crisis events). Of course the economy is still a crisis event but Obama's joint session speech is basically to counter the effective campaign of talk radio, the blogosphere, and common citizens who don't want stealth – designed to creep in slowly – government managed health care. No doubt he'll repeat that bogus “50 million uninsured American's” line of bullshit that has been effectively dissected by new media. As for the real crisis, a recession/depression, ...well, that's just a crisis he's "not going to let go to waste" as he uses it to justify a socialist wish list on transforming the most productive, innovative, and dynamic society in history into a weak, subsistence bureau-dictatorship (not an exaggeration. If the Demo-comms and Obama get what they want, American can no longer be an even remotely free country and it's economic system certainly won't be one that motivates growth and progress).
Barry's in a bind, so...“[He'll] just make a speech” -- but his time all but the most fervent worshipers will be rolling their eyes. We've all seen the speeches (it's basically the same speech with a few specifics juxtaposed).
Yes your majesty, you make good speeches,...now leave, and take Pelosi with you.
* Mussolini was a Marxist to his dying day and made it clear often. Like Hitler, he despised capitalism. The fact that he added a extreme nationalism to his belief and named his style of socialism, fascism doesn't change that fact – look it up
Monday, September 07, 2009
Michael Moore says, "Capitalism is Evil."
Only something a millionare could say with a strait face...
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Ayn Rand's Short and Simple -- But Poetic -- Homage to the Individual
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Ironies in Appraisals of War and Peace
I like Japan. I live here. Like anyone staying here “for the duration,” I can't help but view Japan now with a more critical eye. None of my criticisms overrides my overall appreciation for the country and its people though.
Most of my criticisms are directed at tolerable weaknesses – most of which occur in abundance in other countries (including my own home country – the U.S.). Japan is bureau top-heavy. Bureaucrats and their procedures clog everything from the country's economic arteries to rules on waste disposal ('talk about making a simple concept like recycling into a labyrinth of inefficient and stupid red tape).
Actions by Japan in World War II don't spark my passions much. It's history. It's other people from another time and another government altogether, but...
The city of Nagaoka, like many cities in WWII, was fire-bombed. Thousands of innocents were killed and/or injured in the horrible tragedy of war. Like the circumstances in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thousands of arguments regarding America's actions could be debated but... Some context please (!).
Bombing Nagaoka had as much strategic value as bombing Dresden, Germany (another senseless tragedy in the deck of Mars' cruel hand). Nagaoka was bombed as a primarily symbolic act in the final week of the war (of course, no one knew it would be the final week of the war as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not yet taken place and the military government of Japan was yet unwilling to surrender). It's the home of Admiral Yamamoto who led the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor thus ushering in American involvement in the world-wide conflict. Again, context is important here. Yamamoto actually was against the idea of picking a fight with the U.S. After all, he had gone to Harvard University and knew that Americans wouldn't likely take the attack on Hawaii well. But, again, its (would be) just history – if it weren't for the fact that people so love to bend and warp history and remove any context that may clarify why tragedies erupt.
Nagaoka annually mourns the horror of the city's bombing in an elaborate fireworks display. Brief references of respect to civilian lives lost are made -- all reasonable expressions of sympathy for the innocent.
Currently there are some photos prominently displayed on the city's main street showing the horrors of the fateful evening when Nagaoka was firebombed. I wouldn't blame a young person if they came to hate the U.S. upon seeing such depictions of violence. After all, how many of them know about “The Rape of Nanking” or the Bataan Death March. No – Japan was just minding its own business and carrying on the mundane affairs of its authoritarian government when the big mean United States just rolled in and started a random bombing raid. Of course, all the atrocities committed by Japan in WWII don't justify killing the innocent civilians of Japan “in retaliation.” War is often quite senseless or at least prods it's participants into overly impulsive action. Nagaoka's citizens, like all places that have endured the violence of war, have every reason to morn the tragedy in their past. My skepticism regarding the issue involves why a few streets away from this image, and this museum, there is a large sculpture/memorial to Admiral Yamamoto. Why is his birthplace enshrined and occasional special exhibits, like this held? There's even a Yamamoto curry sauce marketed in the city (a vast difference from colonel Sander's eleven herbs and spices or General Tao's Chicken). To my knowledge (I may be wrong) there is no proud display honoring the military official who oversaw the German attack on Poland in 1939.
The only reason this issue has caught my attention is that we live in an era when hypocrisy is now the order of the day when people express anti-war sentiments. The U.S., its history, and its actions are continually critiqued and its darker actions elevated as testament to its character (presumed to be downright evil). Such critiques are seldom presented with any degree of context, balance, or honesty.
So it is that citizens in a city in Japan now mourn the tragedy of innocents killed in a bombing raid in WWII...while simultaneously celebrating the heroism of an instigator of the very same war.
“Stop war!...but try this delicious Yamamoto brand curry sauce.”
Crazy crazy world...
