Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Never Send a Theoretician to do a Pragmatist's Job
When considering all the negative attributes of the current Obama-nation (and his administration), they all boil down to a fervent allegiance to the theoretical as a standard for making policy.
In addressing the economy, social issues (i.e. healthcare), and even foreign relations, Obama and his staff of social planners view the U.S. as one large laboratory for the conducting of societal experiments and the imposition of theories.
To address genuine problems in a practical fashion using known solutions is beyond him / them. The economy is in a tailspin? Now would be a good time to go shopping for every item on the Democrat's wish list. Millions unemployed? What could be a better time to try to implement a massive healthcare grab.
Unemployment, economic growth, energy production, international tensions? -- throw the taxpayer's money at solar panels and tilt at windmills. Drill known oil reserves? -- not a chance ( a case in point).
Classic leftism. While not the gulag, citizens are none the less to become laboratory animals to test the dreams of eggheads who have produced nothing of value and have never participated in anything with practical or successful ends.
"Hope and change" doesn't pay the bills.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mundane Crimes in Mundane Times
('Just wanted something to fill the space, at a time when there's plenty to comment on but little time to do so. The following may have been posted before -- long ago. This blog is usually not for posting poetry but...oh well...)
I passed a wealthy man on my left and a poor one on my right and realized that neither of them was of harm or help to me.
I passed a country club of leisure success stories and later a shanty town of broken sidewalks and destitution and realized that I had created neither (except within the fantasies of mock rebels who would blame the very weather on innocent bystanders).
I and my kind were accused of both crimes and lapses in morality for failing to obey the edicts of imposed guilt – but were later found guiltier still…for not feeling guilty (by those with less innocence than my own).
The world spun out its charms…and its fouler images, never reaching equilibrium ("equality") or the satisfaction that imposed order affords planners with mundane gripes against the hands that feed them.
The world remained quite normal and I collaborated with its non-existent scheme to side with no one while some well-paid philosopher kings demanded I hang my head in shame so they could pretend to occupy a moral throne above and beyond the simple things that have always been.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Excellent Insight and Prosaic Sarcasm by Mark Steyn
(sorry, the link hadn't effectively posted earlier)
[“]They're anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life – just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What's happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: the government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class and the criminal class in order to stick it to what's left of the beleaguered productive class. It's a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn[“...]
[...“]It's the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It's more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don't mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al, but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old "unemployed cosmetologist" with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it's London, 1977, and she's killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that's three-and-a-half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America's revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can't even invent their own hideous fashion statements? [...“]
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
The “99%”
Don't make me laugh. The whining spoiled brats of America's Occupy Wall Street crowd actually think that their hodge-podge of leftist stew represents 99% of what American's believe – pleeeeaze.
As usual, this crowd is demanding XY and Z with no regard for what actual fellow citizens want. While fellow citizens may have gripes with Wall Street, most are probably okay with our capitalist system (even though it's actually become a mixed system with increasing government control and collaboration). We can, of course find out what people really think on election day. I doubt if the Communist party or it's many socialist variations are going to be getting 99% of the vote (as they often do in Communist countries – where no one else is allowed to run).
My advice to these clowns; they can vote – even for communists if they choose. Then again, it may just be possible that they're really not the “99%” but just another extremist clique' seeking to impose their deluded will upon everyone else – that certainly wouldn't be a new thing.
(p.s. I'm well aware the exception. Not everyone at these demonstrations is without good cause to protest. Ironically, the Tea Parties were the first to protest the Obama – Democrats' collaborations with Wall Street and were merely mocked by the press for it. Exceptions aside, it's clear what mentality is dominating these groups; it's the pathological crowd we've seen whenever the closet authoritarian thinks his time has come)