President Obama said today: "...Business, not government, is the engine of economic growth in this country..."
I wonder why then, that Komrade Nancy Pelosi and Komrade Barney Frank, want to continue with this Socialist "redistribution of wealth" and social spending that IS NOT GOING TO STIMULATE the economy RIGHT NOW OR LATER... President Obama himself even acknowledges that his government can't help save jobs saying, "...It is true that we cannot depend on government to create jobs or long-term growth"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the architect of the last century's American socialism, of whom which we still ride the coat-tails of, they being Social Security and the American Welfare system... FDR's own Secretary of the Treasury after World War 2 said that all the money they spent in infrastructure and social entitlement programs was not instrumental in America emerging from the Depression - what was instrumental was the growth of American industry to support the massive needs of the World War that employed Americans and fueled the prosperity America still seems to rest on...
BUT 20 days ago, President-elect, at the time, Obama was leading the government spending charge...
On Jan. 8th he said: "...only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe..."
Monday, January 5, 2009
A current topic of interest of mine is the bailout of the "Big 3" auto manufacturers.
Just before the eclipse of 2008, the Big 3 U.S. auto manufacturers came to Washington, hands out, to ask the federal government for BIG money to tithe them over while they were trying to figure out if they could make it through the next few years. They flew to Washington to ask for this money - because they ARE SOOOO CASH STRAPPED- in their own respective private jets.
Now we're just going to go on a mathematical tangent here for a couple'a minutes because I am distracted by the beggars arriving on their own respective private jets (owned by each respective auto manufacturer corporate).
Okay here we go: One jet - USED we're talking a minumum of $1,000,000 for a USED 4 passenger jet to $16,000,000 for something new and relatively nice but not too posh. A pilot runs around $100,000 a year, most jets have 2 of these. A hangar runs around $3-4K/month and maintenance teams can be up to $15K for every 40 hours of flight. Avgas is averaging around $3.50/gallon and these planes gotta have around 200-400 gallon tanks (if not bigger!) Just those simple figures mean that to maintain these jets that only the elite of their respective companies get to use the corporations are probably spending up to a million dollars to maintain the jets... Now if you were going to beg for a handout, wouldn't you go looking your raggediest or most thrifty to not look TOO RIDICULOUS?
So they went a begging and they got some interesting responses - one of which was that they had to give some plans and figures on how they were going to use the money loaned to them to become profitable again and how and what kind of timetable they were going to pay the loan back... Well this offended the auto executives!
C'mon people, when you go to the SBA (Small Business Administration) for a loan, they don't just cut you a check. Guess what- they want a business plan, they want to know how your business is going to work and succeed to pay the SBA loan back. Just because you think you can build flying saucers isn't exactly a guarantee of guvment checks to finance your personal pipe dream...
Sooo... if you go to Washington, on your private jet, and ask the government to bail your BIG business out- why be miffed that they send you home until you come back with a business plan that shows how/when you will pay back that investment. Private equity and investment houses would ask no less themselves, why is it different when that "investor" is the American people/Government.
Now, I DO AGREE that the most wasteful people with a checkbook are congressional politicians, and most especially Democrats as well.
Also, another pet peeve - the unions! When their constituents' jobs are all on the edge of the axe, that auto unions are unwilling to bend on the compensation, benefits and ridiculous retirement that are sucking the auto manufacturers dry. Just grandfather out the benies for the workers there for more than 15 or 20 years and move on. Make the workers partners and alienate the unions, give the workers bonuses on lowering costs to production and lowering rejection and assembly line mistakes that lead to costly recalls.
We already have more than half a million new unemployment claims last month, so what's a couple more thousand auto workers to add to that right?
Wrong, we really want to save the industry- we don't want to hand that huge sector over to foreign auto manufacturers without a fight BUT we need to do it intelligently with the American ingenuity that has sustained us for over 235 years.
Some of those auto manufacturers create the very strategic vehicles needed for our infrastructure, our security and military, so there is a national security aspect to it in that you don't want a foreign investment to buy into it either and have access to the patents and technology that makes us innovatively superior to other nations. It leaves us in a conundrum...
I guarantee that guys like my old Marine Corps buddies Arthur and Lewis who sell those cars aren't getting those union benefits and its ridiculous that non-college educated relatively low skilled jobs, that are predominantly supplemented by robotic labor on assembly lines, get paid that much and get those much benefits while the rest of non-union, blue and white collar, and working class America cannot relate to them and we pay our co-pays too! These people make more than 60% of our teachers and have better retirement than they who prepare our children for their futures!
Auto Unions can be a cancer on further expansion and advancement of the current American auto industry... Prove to me they aren't potentially a malignant cancer and that they have a use to us now in 2009. Do not give me 1892 Industrial Revolution health and welfare issues and examples... I challenge any of you to tell me why in 2009 with comprehensive labor reform and federal and state labor laws and protections for workers, that we need labor unions... Unions drive up the price of goods manufactured to pay for the ridiculous concessions that they require for their members. Are there some good unions, yes I grant that there are, but I am not addressing anything other than specifically auto industry unions in this essay. The bailout of these Big 3 and their re-structure for future growth and competitiveness has to address unions.
Another thing it has to address is timetables and development of new technology for fuel efficiency and fuel independence for vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles specifically that are AFFORDABLE to common Americans.
Now, Ford went home, they now say they don't need the money, they'll go it alone without it.
Congress also has to do its share. the time of the free meal ticket for foreign nations to import into the U.S. at will with little to no tariff and taxation is over. When our own auto manufacturers cannot be competitive abroad because their competitor markets ration the number and type of vehicles that they can export to competitor nations. You want free trade and you want a favored nation status for trading with America - open your markets and have parity with our industry...
Tuesday, December 23, Foxnews.com reported that Pope Benedict XVI, the current Primate of the Catholic Church, as being accused of "stoking homophobia after speech."
What is really interesting is the way that the MSM (mainstream liberal media) likes to ignore secular (non-religous) world leaders and national states of true homophobia, and would rather concentrate on attacking a religious leader instead. Remember, in America, Church/religious speech is protected and separate under our Constitution...
One case in point of a target that the MSM has been soft on, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rather should I call him the Iranian state emissary of ignorance and intolerance and hate, a main spokesperson for what President Bush refers to as the "Axis of Evil."
In 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to Columbia University, said that "homosexuality does not exist in Iran." In Iran, since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual,transexual) rights have come under intense governmental persecution, with international human rights groups reporting public floggings and executions of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. This is a national state, people, with laws and rules of public society based on fundamentalist Islamic laws and codes, that is endorsing this aberrant public physical corporal punishment and behaviour at a secular level. We won't even go into the Iranian state's public and vociferous calls for the destruction of the nation of Israel and anyone who supports and recognizes that state (hello, that includes us, the US of A), the MSM ignores that too...
Anyway, I digress, let's get back to the main topic, which are the comments made by Pope Benedict XVI, where they were made and their context.
Let us PLEASE remember and consider, as previously stated here in this essay, that Pope Benedict XVI is the Primate, the LEADER AND EARTHLY VOICE, of the Roman Catholic Church. Note, the Catholic Church is the LARGEST CHRISTIAN CHURCH in the world, counting in its membership number 1/6 of the world's population. Let me stress and repeat again - A CHURCH.
Pope Benedicts comments were made in his end-of-year address to the Curia. This is akin to the Chairman of the Board making a closed address to the board of governors of a corporation. The Curia is the administrative body, the central governing body of the entire Roman Catholic Church. It coordinates and provides the necessary central organization for the correct functioning of the Church and the achievement of the Church's goals.
Now what exactly did he say during his last "staff metting"? Well, he was doing what every CEO is supposed to do, he was getting his people on message and focusing them on their mission. One of the missions he set for his team in that address was getting humanity, that is all of us people in case you have forgotten, to listen to the
“language of creation”.
He was stressing to his team that the intended roles of man and woman and behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations was a
“destruction of God’s work”
. Let's put this in simple terms for the MSM and liberal-minded folks, God created Adam and Eve NOT Adam and Steve. GOD created Adam and Eve to go forth and be fruitful not to be "fruity". He also said,
“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less,"
"What’s needed is something like a ‘human ecology,’ understood in the right sense. It’s not simply an outdated metaphysics if the Church speaks of the nature of the human person as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected.”
The Pope also said,
“That which is often expressed and understood by the term ‘gender’ in the end amounts to the self-emancipation of the human person from creation and from the Creator."
"Human beings want to do everything by themselves, and to control exclusively everything that regards them. But in this way, the human person lives against the truth, against the Creator Spirit.”
Nowhere in this message do I read HOMOPHOBIC.
Okay, so let's explore that word and what it means and how it is abused by the liberal and LGBT groups to attack people or organizations that they perceive as a threat to their LIFESTYLE CHOICE.
Homophobic is being prejudiced against homosexual people.
The simple truth is this:
The Catholic Church does oppose gay marriage and the social acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex relationships, because those relationships and acts are against God's design for man and woman, and those relationships inherently promote sinful homosexual acts that are not condoned by God and are, obviously, out of wedlock. Wedlock/marriage, which by Church definition is a union of a man and woman for procreation.
Noteworthy, the Church does not exclude homosexual PEOPLE from the liturgy and from participation in the Church. The Catholic Church also teaches that homosexual persons deserve respect, justice and pastoral care. The ACTS and LIFESTYLE that they commit as homosexual persons are the SINS the Church says need to be ostracized not the actual people. SINFUL ACTS can be avoided, we can choose not to steal or lie, but a LIFESTYLE is a CHOICE... And God, in their infinite wisdom did give Man and Woman free will.
So, in summary, the MSM labeling leaders of conservative and ultra-conservative or religio-conservative groups just because of their belief and conviction and that they are contrary to the MSM author's views is the last resort of a liberal losing battle. If they can't change your mind with their unreasonable arguments then they will label you, call you names and cry foul as if you are the wrong and they are the wronged.
In the Frankenstein story, penned by Mary Shelley 190 years ago in 1818, an inanimate hodpodge of human remains and viscera are reanmiated to give it life again by a mad scientist. Well guess what, it's 2008 and the mad scientists are really doing it. This time we call them Democrats and the scene of the horrific reanimation of a human corpse is in Minnesota. The political corpse is named of all things Franken, Al Franken-stein to you folks!
Apparently, the voters of Minnesota spoke, and just as in the old 19th century eastern European scene of villagers hunting and destroying the monster and his creater, you'd have thought the will of the Minnesota grand village would have been respected by the mad Democrat political scientists! Nope, they pulled him out of the fire, literally, since he was politically dead with a failed left wing radio talk show he really had nowhere else to go but back to comedy. Now let's be really honest folks- was he really even that funny when he was doing comedy? Nope, he was as funny as Janeane Garofalo so yeah, not very much huh! His comedy had the backbone of a krill and was as funny as a whale digesting them by the ton...
In the Shelley novel, the monster fights to stay alive, it wants to live after all! Well, in the case of Franken, he doesn't even need to fight because he has the Secretary of State of Minnesota, Mark Ritchie, doing that for him in the form of an UNLTRA-BIASED, PARTISAN, and SUBJECTIVE precinct by precinct ballot recount.
Now, you would assume, "OK, they're doing a recount, so ALL of the precincts RECOUNTED and RECERTIFIED would be the official numbers right?" NO, WRONG. In his omniscient wisdom, probably loaned to him by Messiah Obama, he has decided ONLY TO USE THE RECOUNTS THAT SUPPORT FRANKEN and THROW OUT THE RECOUNTS THAT SUPPORT the Reublican incumbent...
I digress here quickly... Talk about DISENFRANCHISING THE VOTERS! Oh yeah, what am I thinking, Messiah Obama did the same thing- he disenfranchised registered voters' choices for candidates on the ballot he was on for Senate- when he had ALL OF HIS OPPONENTS THROWN OFF THE TICKET... with NO ONE TO OPPOSE HIM of course he was going to have the "Landslide win for Change" that Oprah cooed about on her show. "YES WE CAN" was his campaign motto then, they left out, "...REMOVE OUR OPPOSITION FROM THE BALLOT/TICKET"...
Listen people, Democrats no longer care about disenfranchised voters, they now have a market share of doing that themselves... along with the infamous ACORN, who make it their duty to enfranchise voters, even the one's who have been dead for decades and some that are not even citizens or real. Remember when McCain made the crack about Chicago Politicians? He wasn't just name calling he was stating the fact that voters and the press chose not to pursue...
Now back to our previously scheduled programming!
Minnesota SOS Mark Ritchie even claims to have mysteriously FOUND MORE NEW VOTES! Call in Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine! Where did all of these NEW VOTES come from? Remember ACORN? Well, they were instrumental in Ritchie's election success too... you figure it out.
So, while Republican incumbent Coleman won the Election on Election Day and won the intial canvas, and is "winning" the recount (I use that term loosely); Minnesota election officials are doing everything they can to falsely create the win for Franken.
First, let's examine the canvas, which was a process to resubmit the vote totals from election night from the local precincts to a central location. They magically found errors favoring Franken so incredibly statistically improbable that statisticians are questioning the officials in these counties.
However, when the error favors Coleman, Ritchie chooses, in his messianic wisdom, NOT to let it count.
During the recount when an Election Official explained an error that resulted in Franken losing votes had occurred when her precinct double counted some votes on election night. Well, after a bit torque screw pressure was applied from Democrats, mysteriously the official changed her story, AND the Mark Ritchie led Canvassing Board decided for that precinct only the recount did not count and would instead use the more favorable to Franken Election Day total.
One member of his canvassing board said, "We're not going to be entirely consistent. Part of it is going to be how the ballot strikes us." Is Johnny Carson dead or is the Great Karnak reincarnated as a Democrat canvaser assuming the meaning of chads and ticks on voters' ballots...
Post script added on 12/24/2008: Franken's triple digit lead has evaporated to a slim double digit lead in the 20-30 vote range. This is not even calling into question yet the count/recount of almost 1,600 absentee ballots on which both candidates' camps have yet to come to agreement on for tallying...
Post script added: 01/28/2009: Coleman and Franken are now in court dealing with the various inconsistencies of the election and of course, getting the courts decisions, to determine who has actually won the seat... Note: Acorn was here in MIN too...
03/03/2009: Coleman's team rests their case - 3 Judge panel to determine outcome based on percentage of verifiable cheating to margin between candidates... Thanks for cheating again ACORN!
Once upon a time, in Amerika, people were principled. When something was screwed up, lost, miscalculated, manufactured incorrectly, etc., people took responsibility for those faults or issues caused and made good on them...
Remember when the generation of our Grandparents, and in some of your cases Great-grandparents, were referred to as the GREATEST GENERATION? They don't call Amerikans great anymore. We, collectively, are a bunch of whining, crying, tort tossing, irresponsible people. When we burn ourselves on a cup of comrade McDonald's coffee we sue him- AS IF WE DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE HOT COFFEE. Personally, I buy my coffee cold and my soda hot from comrade McDonald's restaurant chain. Yeah, like I like cold showers and frigid women- NOT!
We raise our children without consequences, on a diet of high fructose cartoon violence and dress them in Elmo cuteness... When they get in trouble we swoop in and tell school administrators it's ok- we are having difficulties at home, he has been sick lately, or it was just TOO MANY TWINKIES.
Culpability, what does it mean? Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa - Amerikan popular culture loves to bandy the phrase about without truly coming through and deliverin ghte lesson of what it means. Lisa Simpson, a cartoon character at that, uses it. Jack Ryan, Tom Clancy's hero character of many a novel that I have enjoyed used in a fictitious conversation with the Prince of Wales. We hear it chanted int eh background of one of the scenes in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It's even the title of one of the scenes in Fight Club... BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN? From the smattering of its use in film and fiction, do we truly get the lesson of what mea culpa, culpability, really is? Not really - we get lost in the technicolor washed out director's dreams and concepts of a film and we never really get the lesson.
How would or should we get the lesson? By not settling for less than full justice and full punishment for any crime or infraction, the punishments being proportionate to the acts... Longer time outs for kids- locking the XBox away for more than a few hours when Johnny can't read and gets and F in English... from the time we realize that we should be dumping in the toilet and not in our knickers, our parents and teachers should be chastizing and punishing the wrongful acts. Public trials and figures should never settle for less than what they originally sought to indict an individual for - to do any less cheapens the system, and dilutes discipline and the responsibility of the offending character... LESS IS NOT MORE. MORE IS MORE.
Blagojevich's "I have done nothing wrong." meanderings in his press conference are just garbage and a total indication of the problem of Amerikan society. Not taking responsibility and no culpability. The key word in his statement is the word DONE - indicating the ACT COMMITTED... Unfortunately for Blago, conspiracy and the intent are clearly there... what I'd like to see and most likely won't see is Rohm Emmanuel, our new Chief Executive elect's Chief of Staff select get some of that medicine too- but it won't happen. The media will vindicate him by way of removing any guilt or stain of insinuation thereof from their new Messiah in the 2009 White House.
Pravda (Russian: Правда, for "The Truth") - The Russification of the blog name was intentional. As a child of the Cold War, and later as an adult during the Detente of the late 80's and early 90's, the manipulation of Truth by the Soviet and other Communist regimes fascinated me.
Having been the bright-eyed American youth irresistibly charmed, I just could not fathom how these Communists had gotten away with pulling the wool over almost all of their respective populations... Until now, I had not understand it all, but now Alle ist klar, where if something is repeated enough and popular buzz words are attached to it, i.e. Change and hope, that it is accepted as truth and fact. Yet when held up to real scrutiny is still as crystal clear as a London fog.
Here I use it as an illustration of the path that we all will be walking in the next few years... a path that is as foreign to many of us as the Russian language...
A thing that tends to be as foreign as another continent to many of us is THE TRUTH. Not that we don't strive to use it, tell it, honesty is the best policy, we know this... Women's personal ads scream for it from Men, honesty and truth. ...But today its spun so many different ways that its hard to know what IS really THE TRUTH, where is the actual thread and where the knot was spliced into it.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. GALILEO
"Hold up!" you demand... Well, as I write and invite your thoughts provocatively, we'll discuss that together. What is the Truth of this or that argument? What is the accepted truth and what is the real truth, carefully ensconced and preserved in its glassinine® coat of sterile amber through which we can SEE the trapped insect but can never touch it or really explore it.
Well, with a little simple research and common sense we can determine what that TRUTH is in Spin City and also THE TRUTH, not just the accepted norm of the masses after its been massaged and ingested enough- the two differing states of being an de facto truth and indisputable piece of de jure veritas...
The problem being, of course, that truth is determined and judged to be accurate at so many different levels removed from the common man daily, we don't want to admit that in our free Amerika. It is actually checked, probed, deemed to be fit and approved for consumption just as surely as the food we eat and digest is inspected by the FDA and allowed to pass with so many insect fragments and rodent feces parts per million, spun and weaved into the perfect, beautifully, buttery soft Egyptian cotton "cloth" fit for our public consumption, covering our ears and eyes and minds with someone else's original thoughts Sara Lee packaged to our brains...
After having read this- are you sure you know what truth is?...- Exactly!
A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. ~George William Curtis
