Entries from January 2009 ↓

Lifted from The Wall Street Journal Online

The government lost its final attempt to revive a federal law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.

The court, in an order Wednesday, said it won’t consider reviving the Child Online Protection Act, which lower federal courts struck down as unconstitutional. The law has been embroiled in court challenges since it passed in 1998 and never took effect.

The law would have barred Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet.

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled that would violate the First Amendment, because filtering technologies and other parental control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online.

Today I witnessed something strange; for the first time in more than a year, those who opposed Obama shuddered, moving in the darkness of their lairs. Some stirred enough to speak, to voice a quiet, timid dissent before returning to the safety of silence.

I will not be one of those people. I will speak in the light.

Just as the papers I read in England are divided between the comically conservative (The Daily Mail) and the absurdly liberal (The Guardian), so too are divided the papers in the United States. Reader reactions in The New York Times to President Jesus’ speech span the gauntlet from hand job to out-right worship of a demi-god, divine made flesh on earth. Meanwhile, the readers at The Wall Street Journal heard a message of a different kind — fire and brimstone, the Whore of Babylon riding through the streets, and saw the spector of four horsemen on the horizon as they headed to Lowes, Home Depot, and the nearest supermarket to stock up on hand-crank radios and canned goods.

I heard neither the end of the world nor the second coming in President Jesus’ speech today. I did, however, hear an eerie message that gives credence to the insane ramblings of a lunatic and the chipping away of what made our country great in the name of “progress” and “freedom” but what should be given the name of that which it is: socialism.

A recap of President Obama’s speech:

“My fellow Americans…blah blah blah [socialism] blah blah blah [redistribution of wealth] blah blah blah [take care of the lazy, the weak, those that cannot and will not contribute to our nation's glory] blah blah blah [new world order].

What?

“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders;”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

With those words, President Jesus implied something more powerful than most — other than conspiracy theorists like David Icke — can comprehend. We have to take care of other nations, says President Jesus. We have to not just redistribute the wealth [AKA Socialism] within our borders, but outside as well. And when we start treating all nations as one, we have one world power — the power of he or she who’s charge is the redistribution of that wealth. And he who holds that power holds the world and all of its nations under his control.

That, my friends, is the concept of The New World Order; that, my friends, is what Barack Obama has promised to bring about.

Are you as sick as I am? Did any lingering glimmers of hope die for you with that? Or did your hope vanish with President Jesus’ other promises, as did mine?

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

There, my friends, is where my heart turned cold and the skys drew dark on my horizon, where the specter of all that I loathe about the liberal guilt-trip and socialism in shepard’s clothing is given a name and face. No liberal wants to ask if our government is too big because the answer is a resounding yes. Yet for socialism to work — and that is President Jesus’ goal — then we must have big government. So he couched his vision of American government in terms of “does it work?” But for whom does it work is the better question. For people who cannot save for their own retirement, he wants government to work. For those who cannot pick up the pieces of a job terminated, dream deferred, marriage dissolved and move forward under their own power, Mr. Obama wants the government to work. For those who are intellectuals and artists of varying work, our socialist president will provide health care and wages to create ideas and art that may well be worth less than the paper they are not printed upon.

For those who work and are industrious, you are fools under the regime of President Jesus.

“Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control”

President Jesus ignores the SEC and FTC regulators who watched and fiddled while Rome burned and Madoff made off with so many fortunes and continues to roam free to redistribute that wealth in the way he sees fit. He ignores that government is, by and large, corrupt and that corrupt government cannot regulate even itself, let alone private industry.

“The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.”

And here he is again, adorning his socialist policies in fine words while never giving their true name. Today, his speech revealed that the Emperor wears no clothes, that he is a socialist despite his best efforts to dress it to the contrary. President Jesus will raise your taxes to pay for the food, shelter, education, retirement, and health care of those who choose not to work, of children you did not give birth to and parents who did not bear you.

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

And yet, I believe that we will see new waives of censorship in the name of playing nice, of not offending anyone, of bringing back the Clinton-era Thought Police who searched for thoughts against the government, as Bush did, and for thoughts that weren’t nice or politically correct or in line with what others believe.
“The false choice between our safety and our ideals.” He danced around the word freedom, because we will not be free under a man, a president, who believes freedom is something that can be granted by government. Freedom, my President Jesus, is intrinsically free. You are not giving freedom when you dole out benefits to the undeserving or the unfortunate. You are not spreading freedom in your social programs any more than Bush spread freedom in Iraq and the middle east. Freedom comes from being able to think or say or do whatever one wishes. Freedom is my ability to take my wages earned with my blood, my sweat, my tears, and give it to those whom I think deserving, not you, Mr. President, not you. Freedom is not compromising, not backing down, the ability to say that 2+2=5, as George Orwell put it; the freedom to know that if I buy a TV and the man next door to me cannot feed his family, he does not have the right to take my TV to sell to buy a proverbial loaf of bread because it is mine, free and clear. Yet all that freedom is would be sacrificed by President Jesus, to make sure we all have the security of retirement, food on every plate, and a roof over every head — the later promise being the promise of several presidents that caused the housing market bubble (that could only burst) in the first place.

I think Benjamin Franklin answered President Jesus best when he said “those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.” Your social programs do exactly that, President Jesus–sacrifice freedom in the form of private property rights for personal security that can be attained, a point which you yourself are proof of–and per Mr. Franklin, I believe that you and your supporters deserve neither.

You know, I never disliked Barack Obama. Really. Even as a libertarian, even though I basically feel that he’s a socialist in progressive clothing, I never had a negative word about him as a person. Hell, I was crossing my fingers for the man to win against Hillary Clinton, after Mike Gravel dropped out of course, because he seems like more of a uniter, where as Ms. Clinton seems much more divisive, even among her party members, let alone among others. Mr. Obama never gave me hope — the soon-to-be President, in fact, has always made me uneasy with the easy in which he can ensnare a crowd with a turn of phrase. People have used the term “drunk from the Obama Kool Ade” to describe some of his strongest advocates, and you know, I can see those similarities, I can even find both humor and discomfort in them, but I still liked him as a person. He seemed like a nice guy, a good human being, someone who wasn’t going to be a dick. Sure, nice guys who are just doing what they think is right will cause unjust wars and some of the worst fiscal damage to a nation in a century, but this nice guy also seemed to be intelligent, and nice and intelligent were a consolation for me, after the last eight years.

But these stunts — these constant reminders that he is from Illinois and is progressive and, for lack of a better word, Lincolnish — are really driving me toward disdain for our now and future President.

On the eve of his inauguration, he hosts a party at the Lincoln memorial. Before that, he took a short train ride to Washington, traveling the paty that Lincoln did. He’s a young senator from Illinois, like Lincoln. He is intelligent, as I’ve already mentioned, and rose from humble beginnings, like Lincoln.

And you know, I’m sick of the way he’s pointing to these similarities, as though he does not feel he is a strong enough personality to carve his own path through history, so he must ride the coat tails and follow the well-marked journey of one who’s successfully come before.

Well, not the exact same path, hopefully.

But, while this can be interpreted as an awkward, wavering faith in his own ability to lead, I see this as potentially something much more serious: hubris. Bravado. Showboating. It’s the kind of boastful displays that are called “excessive celebration” in football. Dallas Cowboys wide receiver T.O. is often penalized for bragging about his touchdowns in the endzone — this year, after a particularly spectacular touchdown, my favorite player in the league crouched down in a runner’s stance before taking off, ostensibly in honor of the Olympic victory of Usain Bolt. “Look at me, I’m as fast as the fastest man on earth,” he seemed to say. “Unsportsmanlike,” the refs called it and penalized the Cowboys by 15 yards.

Same situation applies.

You cannot compare yourself to someone of such stature yourself — to draw such comparisons on your own makes you look like a braggart. Let others do so — and many have called the comparison between the two junior senators from Illinois — and your detractors may come around to see the similarities and transpose one’s success to the other. Do it yourself, and it is excessive celebration, it is bragging, it is a disgusting display and makes me wonder exactly how badly I’ve misjudged this “nice” guy who seemed relatively harmless until his socialist-leaning liberal friends became a major power in congress and until he let his ego show.

Which, I add without hesitation, is something very un-Lincolnish indeed.

There’s a new disease sweeping this country, and I have given it a name: anti-private-sector-itis. What is this horrible affliction affecting 60% of Americans? It is this strange, wrong-headed belief that everything should be publically funded, that all private industry is intrinsically bad, and that if you give the government control, things will get better.

Of course, after 8 years of failing grades in a public school that failed me, I became an A student in the challenging world of private school, where the government didn’t dictate what I learned. After years as a diligent worker in the private industry, I’m frustrated by the “slack off or be the office work horse while the rest of us slack off” public sector job that I have. I hate watching my tax dollars go to people who don’t deserve them, which decreases my ability to make charitable contributions to organizations who help the truly needy!

I’m tired of congress being in debt and solving the debt problem by creating more debt.

Yes, the private sector — by which most people mean Wall Street and the housing market — crapped out on us. But it was overinflated. We should not have been getting 15 and 20% returns annually, but that’s what many people in the market were getting because it was all artificial. It was inflated because the government gave mortgage securities incentives to inflate the numbers by giving ridiculous mortgages to those who couldn’t afford them and by constantly drilling home the message that Everyone Deserves a House. If you ever subscribed to the David Bach podcast, you’d have heard the sponsor, Wells Fargo, talk about The Great American Homeowner Challenge — the goal to put all Americans in a house of their own.

But guess what — land ownership is not a right, it’s a privilege. Yes, I have the right to own the property I buy with the money I earn, which I have the right to keep and spend as I so see fit. No, I am not entitled, by virtue of being born in the United States, to a house. No, I’m not even entitled to a home. I’m entitled to work my ass off to get to where I need to in this lifetime.

Of course, that’s not a warm and fuzzy thing to say. It’s much easier — and allows most to sleep better at night — to say that it was private industry who failed the people. It wasn’t. It was your government and the people who thought “This bank is going to give me $300,000 when I only make 30,000 a year and give me thirty years to pay it off? How can I go wrong?” The government pushed, coerced, and outright bribed banks to make loans available to the lowest, most impoverished and undereducated people imaginable. People who couldn’t just leave public school for the greener pastures of private school, as I did, so that their lack of understanding about interest and how someone on $30k can’t buy $300K of house is a direct result of shitty government-funded, government-sanctioned education.

This crashed stock market has the government’s fingerprints all over it, and they’re using your hard-earned money to cover it up. And you’re letting them, people!

The private sector corrupted and failed not because the government is intrinsically good or that private industry is intrinsically bad. It wasn’t a lack of government oversight that caused us to implode but a lack of individual oversight and personal responsibility, because we expect the government to do all of our thinking for us. And yet, when the government does just that — as with the recent lead testing laws for toys — people balk and bitch that it’s not fair, that it’s poorly thought through.

Newsflash: EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT DOES IS POORLY THOUGHT THROUGH.

Americans have become lazy. They expect the government to run their affairs and police their lives in ways that make it easier to enroll Jr. in five different after school activities because now you have time. Why pay attention to your investments: the government has the SEC for that. Why stop shopping at Walmart due to unfair labor practices and defective merchandise: the government has the FTC for that. Read about the medicine you’re taking or get a second opinion? Why bother when the FDA will tell you what to put in your body? Ditto for paying attention to dieticians and personal trainers when there’s a US government approved food pyramid that tells you what is (ketchup) or isn’t a vegetable! And rather than explain to Jr. what a breast or nipple is (a food delivery system for newborns), just bitch to the FCC if one shows up for three seconds during the Super Bowl. After all, it’s the job of Hollywood and The Government to raise your kid, not yours.

In a the New York Times article:

In what industry analysts said was an example of the excessively cozy relations between high-flying subprime lenders and federal bank regulators, the Office of Thrift Supervision’s West Coast director allowed IndyMac’s parent company to backdate an $18 million contribution to preserve its status as a “well-capitalized” institution.

Yes, that’s right, the regulators were in bed with the people they were supposed to be regulating, figuratively speaking. But clearly, this is the work of rogue agents, right?

But, oh shit, SEC regulators are now being investigated for the way they failed to regulate Bernie Madoff.

It’s almost as if, oh I don’t know, government regulation is not the answer or something.