The Dixie Chicks are just one of the many faceless, inconsequential, and, by the way, liberal groups of ingrates who squander the American public's gift of a second chance.
America offers forgiveness but rarely; activist liberals ruin their second chances every time by mistaking mercy for some hint of weakness and re-offending every they perceive the public letting its guard down.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Chicks-ee Dix-ee
I don't follow the Dixie Chicks much (except for the political trouble they had not long ago) and I didn't watch more than a glimpse of the Grammy Awards show.
But the media's video bites which reviewed the Dixie Chicks' attitude during their acceptance appearances seemed extremely odd to me.
I think the Chicks have mistaken their amazing luck, to be offered forgiveness and a second chance in the market, as some kind of national apology from the fans.
I have no doubt that NOBODY, outside of the lead singer of Dixie Chicks, believes that version of things as they are.
I have no doubt the Chicks are delighted to have rehabilitated their career and made a comeback. The political skirmish was years ago, and Americans have settled our views and moved on. It was the Chicks who did the catching up with the times, even playing up their own past disgrace with a hit single, generic enough to be a mainstream country hit, about not being "ready to make nice." "Tears in My Ears" had nothing on this Chicks hit song.
The mouthy one's mimicking of the Simpsons' "Ha-ha" at the Grammy awards microphone was bizarre, considering that the Grammy vote is tiny and insular, and considering that nothing has changed for them in the real world except that a lot of listeners were just starting to get over their irritation.
Practically everybody in the world who voted those Grammy Awards to the Dixie Chicks WERE IN THE THEATER on awards night -- a theater not much bigger than most Midwestern "girls gyms," where countless small-time sock hops have determined the success or failure of local romances for decades.
That's all.
And the Grammy show wasn't the Grand Ole Opry, folks. It was an auditorium in true-blue Los Angeles, California.
So, a few thousand record industry liberals vote an act called the Dixie Chicks some awards as a political statement.
Then the Chicks nearly snatch defeat from the jaws of their comeback by militantly misinterpreting a one-night theaterful of blue-state Grammy voters as a nationwide vindication of their dead-horse politics.
As I said: Odd. Bizarre. And that's the generous summation.
The Chicks would have done far better if they had accepted their awards with humility, grace -- and no little measure of gratitude for the unusual second chance -- without the sour grapes, and just been thankful an audience took them back for another album.
When one foot finally heals is not the time to shoot yourself in the other foot.
But the media's video bites which reviewed the Dixie Chicks' attitude during their acceptance appearances seemed extremely odd to me.
I think the Chicks have mistaken their amazing luck, to be offered forgiveness and a second chance in the market, as some kind of national apology from the fans.
I have no doubt that NOBODY, outside of the lead singer of Dixie Chicks, believes that version of things as they are.
I have no doubt the Chicks are delighted to have rehabilitated their career and made a comeback. The political skirmish was years ago, and Americans have settled our views and moved on. It was the Chicks who did the catching up with the times, even playing up their own past disgrace with a hit single, generic enough to be a mainstream country hit, about not being "ready to make nice." "Tears in My Ears" had nothing on this Chicks hit song.
The mouthy one's mimicking of the Simpsons' "Ha-ha" at the Grammy awards microphone was bizarre, considering that the Grammy vote is tiny and insular, and considering that nothing has changed for them in the real world except that a lot of listeners were just starting to get over their irritation.
Practically everybody in the world who voted those Grammy Awards to the Dixie Chicks WERE IN THE THEATER on awards night -- a theater not much bigger than most Midwestern "girls gyms," where countless small-time sock hops have determined the success or failure of local romances for decades.
That's all.
And the Grammy show wasn't the Grand Ole Opry, folks. It was an auditorium in true-blue Los Angeles, California.
So, a few thousand record industry liberals vote an act called the Dixie Chicks some awards as a political statement.
Then the Chicks nearly snatch defeat from the jaws of their comeback by militantly misinterpreting a one-night theaterful of blue-state Grammy voters as a nationwide vindication of their dead-horse politics.
As I said: Odd. Bizarre. And that's the generous summation.
The Chicks would have done far better if they had accepted their awards with humility, grace -- and no little measure of gratitude for the unusual second chance -- without the sour grapes, and just been thankful an audience took them back for another album.
When one foot finally heals is not the time to shoot yourself in the other foot.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Pelosi Undercuts Democrats' Invested Mantra that We Need More Troops in Iraq
I did an amused triple-take when I heard that nouveau House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced she "might" block a call for a troop surge in Iraq. It looks like she is already being forced by her party to backpedal on that language.
For years, the Democrats have owned the argument, the insistence that we need more troops to get the job done right, apparently in hopes of looking more hawkish (and therefore more electable) compared to Republicans.
I remember their incessant harping on the idea because I wondered if it didn't secretly gall them to be the party of more troops (but then I remembered Democrats were in the White House as the Viet Nam war expanded and became a grinder for American GIs). I doubted they were sincere about it, but they committed themselves beyond anyone's ability to forget.
Now we are supposed to believe that anyone but Pelosi would be blamed if she were to make this anything more than a pointless bluff? I hardly think so.
Even if the press is as liberal as Ann Coulter says it is, there are still plenty of reporters, tv producers and analysts willing to remind the American people what Democrats have been saying about more troops in the last several years to make Pelosi's political posturing very transparent and fairly devoid of sincerity or compassion.
If this tiny tempest lasts more than a week, expect to start seeing file tape of Democrats with long faces and furrowed brows saying that if they were making the decisions, more troops would be dispatched ASAP.
If I were president, I'd be very inclined to say, fine, Ms. Pelosi, if you want to go against your own party line AND the commission's recommendations, be my guest. I'll take your advice in a spirit of cooperation and hold the line at the present level on your counsel.
Pelosi seems curiously anxious to climb onto the hot seat. I wouldn't turn up the burner on her, but I wouldn't exactly run to turn it off in this case.
These are our troops she's playing politics with.
I'm already wondering if the Democrats understand what the voters expect of them, and whether they'll surrender to their predictable compulsions and blow it by '08. If I had to place a bet, I'd remember history and bet against liberal zealotry.
Maybe the top tier hasn't received the memo about how the moderates (aka, those who are more conservative) are the new pop stars of their party? More likely, they don't give a damn about the new moderates. Regardless of party you may be able to see the truth in that scenario.
For years, the Democrats have owned the argument, the insistence that we need more troops to get the job done right, apparently in hopes of looking more hawkish (and therefore more electable) compared to Republicans.
I remember their incessant harping on the idea because I wondered if it didn't secretly gall them to be the party of more troops (but then I remembered Democrats were in the White House as the Viet Nam war expanded and became a grinder for American GIs). I doubted they were sincere about it, but they committed themselves beyond anyone's ability to forget.
Now we are supposed to believe that anyone but Pelosi would be blamed if she were to make this anything more than a pointless bluff? I hardly think so.
Even if the press is as liberal as Ann Coulter says it is, there are still plenty of reporters, tv producers and analysts willing to remind the American people what Democrats have been saying about more troops in the last several years to make Pelosi's political posturing very transparent and fairly devoid of sincerity or compassion.
If this tiny tempest lasts more than a week, expect to start seeing file tape of Democrats with long faces and furrowed brows saying that if they were making the decisions, more troops would be dispatched ASAP.
If I were president, I'd be very inclined to say, fine, Ms. Pelosi, if you want to go against your own party line AND the commission's recommendations, be my guest. I'll take your advice in a spirit of cooperation and hold the line at the present level on your counsel.
Pelosi seems curiously anxious to climb onto the hot seat. I wouldn't turn up the burner on her, but I wouldn't exactly run to turn it off in this case.
These are our troops she's playing politics with.
I'm already wondering if the Democrats understand what the voters expect of them, and whether they'll surrender to their predictable compulsions and blow it by '08. If I had to place a bet, I'd remember history and bet against liberal zealotry.
Maybe the top tier hasn't received the memo about how the moderates (aka, those who are more conservative) are the new pop stars of their party? More likely, they don't give a damn about the new moderates. Regardless of party you may be able to see the truth in that scenario.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Afraid Your Night Vision Is Degrading? Maybe Your Car Has Cataracts.
______________________________
This is a rough draft which is being posted in this form as a matter of public interest. This raw draft will be edited for grammar, quality, brevity, clarity of useage, repetitions, imprecise wording, etc. on the next available workday.
______________________________
Walk along an area where your friends' and neighbors' cars are parked. Take a quick look at your headlights, and everyone else's. If your headlamps are obscured by fog, moisture, scratching or other wear, take a minute to try to clean them so your headlamps can shine through with 100% of their intended efficiency. Can't get the junk off your headlight covers? Don't feel bad -- you're about average.
Walk down the line of cars at any parking lot, whether supermarket, shopping mall or the most high end apartment complex. Scan the "clear" plastic covers on the headlight assemblies of the cars parked there, even the newest and most advanced auto designs.
The currently designed headlight assemblies on most American cars -- with their clear plastic covers -- are nearly all scratched, discolored, grey, or otherwise degraded so much that many people PROBABLY CAN'T SEE AT NIGHT as well as they should.
Then ask yourself why nobody is talking about the fairly obvious issue you have identified without much of my help. Do this simple investigation now, then read on, if you like doing your own homework. But if you are pressed for time, read on and let me tell you what I have seen every day of the week wherever I go and cars are parked.
You'll see a vast number, maybe the majority of America's currently driven personal automobiles and SUVs, with headlights that are covered by scarred, scratched, yellowed and/or befogged plastic coverings such that the probable intended light output each night is reduced to 50% or less of optimum brightness -- and the focus of that light diffused, spread out and obliterated, reducing the effective power of the beams to a fraction of their original ability.
In my case, my '97 Pontiac Grand Prix headlights had gotten so bad that I had driven off the road at a railroad crossing in the rain one night. As someone who often works nights in bad weather, this was unacceptable to me.
The problem was so obviously dangerous that I decided to research and buy the best superbright headlamps I could find. I'm not paid to market headlamps, but I will say that I selected a bulb called the Silverstar (I think). The benefits of these new extra-bright, extra-white headlamps were immediately apparent. I was no longer driving as if my headlights were turned off. That's right. The new bulbs were not blinding the oncoming traffic or showing me things in the far distance I had never been able to see while driving at night.
These really nice and deluxe superbright headlamps do nothing more for a guy like me with marred and scratched plastic over his headlamps than to return my ability to see at night to about what it may have been with the old headlamps -- before the clear plastic covers on those headlight assemblies became worn with normal use.
I have a dog, and I walk her in my apartment complex daily, so I began noticing other residents' headlights. And I found what you will find if you take a walk and examine most people's transportation -- without special tools you can easily see that the headlights of most vehicles sold in the last 10 years or so to American consumers quickly deteriorate to the point that focus is blurred and brightness may be less than 50% of the original capability.
You have to wonder just how far below the safe minimum a headlamp is when a foggy grey covering develops over it like a cataract.
Given that the plastic-covered design exists on most trendy cars these days (rather than the older, far more durable glass headlight without the extra cover), I would not be surprised if the majority of vehicles in many parts of the USA are operating at 50% efficiency -- or less, both in brightness and in properly aligned focus.
Once all these plastic covers become badly scratched, which they do very quickly because they are very soft compared to glass and not designed to prevent this kind of easy damage, your headlights can no longer produce a safe level of light on your path at night. Whatever headlamp brightness you DO have left will now be diffused, as I pointed out, all over the roadway including the oncoming lane, which inevitably means (as a matter of simple physics) much less light where you actually need it. And that's why a lot of you find yourselves checking to see if your headlights are turned on while you are moving down the road.
In bad weather like rain or snow, as you may imagine, this very real problem becomes impossible -- a hazard that can easily be the difference between life and death. In fact, as you stroll down your local parking lots looking at all the permanently bruised and befogged plastic headlight coverings, I think you'll begin to wonder as I did not WHETHER, but HOW MANY people have been killed thanks to this nationwide defect.
My old headlamps left me blinded so that I might have to pull off the road for a while in heavy rain, snow or fog. I put up with it for a long time, as I'm sure many others do, before I realized just how anemic and inadequate my headlight beams had become. I frequently, even regularly, found myself checking to see whether my headlamps were turned on, or possibly burned out. I remember being surprised at times that neither of my headlights was off and yet it seemed the road ahead was dark and entirely unlit. I began using my fog lamps while driving in good weather; I checked the alignment of the headlamps.
I venture to say, given the number of obscured headlight coverings I see every day, that most people aren't yet aware of the fact that their own light covers are severely degraded.
Even when I did identify my own risk factor and shop for new and brighter lamps from my car dealership -- I discovered another real problem for many people --
The clear plastic coverings cannot be replaced alone! Thank you, GM.......
Every American driver wishing to replace his or her worn or damaged plastic headlight covers can only buy the entire assembly for each headlight. To get a fresh headlight cover you'll have to change out the entire headlamp assembly at a total cost starting around $100 per lamp.
So most people who DO figure out what the problem is with their view of the road at night find they can't afford to replace the entire assemblies -- and so put off the repair. They are forced bythis compounded problem to continue driving with the dim, unfocused headlights, in some cases for the life of the car -- even though experience has already proved such a driver can't see his or her path properly at night -- even in good weather.
Something should have been done long before now. This design defect has almost certainly been identified years ago by more than one rational auto engineer. We should wonder why the very real danger persists. We should ask why such a large percentage of all cars sold in the US are still being manufactured with these plastic (polycarbonate or other polymer recipe) coverings that are so easy to degrade. We should ask why nobody in Motor City (for example) has identified and taken steps to eliminate the risk that any of us can see, once we've noticed the issue, in every parking lot everywhere -- thousands of cars, perhaps millions, with permanently, seriously impaired headlight assemblies.
Millions of cars, perhaps, blinded by cataracts.
It should be part of the routine maintenance checklist to target and fix dangerous headlight cover conditions. It should become a design requirement on covered headlight styles to ensure that consumers can regularly replace these plastic coverings with fresh and clear parts for safety's sake, as one changes windshield wipers.
One last note. and it is unfortunate but true. Anyone can verify the following with some inquiries to veteran auto designers, engineers, and/or automotive trade magazine veterans:
This is NOT a new, or uncommon, or unanticipated problem with this design, even though these defaced headlight covers have now become routine on autos throughout America.
These clear coverings -- marred, scratched, yellowed, dirtied -- have been well known AND ill reputed in the auto design business for ages. They have been tried over and over again and always discarded for the same well understood reasons. Everyone with even moderate experience in the auto industry knows why this headlight design has been discarded repeatedly in the past.
And the reason, as back issues of countless car magazines can confirm, is that these coverings are well known to deteriorate in the natural course of driving to the point that light can't properly penetrate the damaged covers. Why these are once again so common on American cars is a problem in business ethics -- the elements include uninformed consumers, well-known risks, and an unwillingness to shelve a flawed design at least until the auto maker is capable of making headlight coverings out of a scratchproof, non-discoloring material which is STILL easy to replace.
This is a rough draft which is being posted in this form as a matter of public interest. This raw draft will be edited for grammar, quality, brevity, clarity of useage, repetitions, imprecise wording, etc. on the next available workday.
______________________________
Walk along an area where your friends' and neighbors' cars are parked. Take a quick look at your headlights, and everyone else's. If your headlamps are obscured by fog, moisture, scratching or other wear, take a minute to try to clean them so your headlamps can shine through with 100% of their intended efficiency. Can't get the junk off your headlight covers? Don't feel bad -- you're about average.
Walk down the line of cars at any parking lot, whether supermarket, shopping mall or the most high end apartment complex. Scan the "clear" plastic covers on the headlight assemblies of the cars parked there, even the newest and most advanced auto designs.
The currently designed headlight assemblies on most American cars -- with their clear plastic covers -- are nearly all scratched, discolored, grey, or otherwise degraded so much that many people PROBABLY CAN'T SEE AT NIGHT as well as they should.
Then ask yourself why nobody is talking about the fairly obvious issue you have identified without much of my help. Do this simple investigation now, then read on, if you like doing your own homework. But if you are pressed for time, read on and let me tell you what I have seen every day of the week wherever I go and cars are parked.
You'll see a vast number, maybe the majority of America's currently driven personal automobiles and SUVs, with headlights that are covered by scarred, scratched, yellowed and/or befogged plastic coverings such that the probable intended light output each night is reduced to 50% or less of optimum brightness -- and the focus of that light diffused, spread out and obliterated, reducing the effective power of the beams to a fraction of their original ability.
In my case, my '97 Pontiac Grand Prix headlights had gotten so bad that I had driven off the road at a railroad crossing in the rain one night. As someone who often works nights in bad weather, this was unacceptable to me.
The problem was so obviously dangerous that I decided to research and buy the best superbright headlamps I could find. I'm not paid to market headlamps, but I will say that I selected a bulb called the Silverstar (I think). The benefits of these new extra-bright, extra-white headlamps were immediately apparent. I was no longer driving as if my headlights were turned off. That's right. The new bulbs were not blinding the oncoming traffic or showing me things in the far distance I had never been able to see while driving at night.
These really nice and deluxe superbright headlamps do nothing more for a guy like me with marred and scratched plastic over his headlamps than to return my ability to see at night to about what it may have been with the old headlamps -- before the clear plastic covers on those headlight assemblies became worn with normal use.
I have a dog, and I walk her in my apartment complex daily, so I began noticing other residents' headlights. And I found what you will find if you take a walk and examine most people's transportation -- without special tools you can easily see that the headlights of most vehicles sold in the last 10 years or so to American consumers quickly deteriorate to the point that focus is blurred and brightness may be less than 50% of the original capability.
You have to wonder just how far below the safe minimum a headlamp is when a foggy grey covering develops over it like a cataract.
Given that the plastic-covered design exists on most trendy cars these days (rather than the older, far more durable glass headlight without the extra cover), I would not be surprised if the majority of vehicles in many parts of the USA are operating at 50% efficiency -- or less, both in brightness and in properly aligned focus.
Once all these plastic covers become badly scratched, which they do very quickly because they are very soft compared to glass and not designed to prevent this kind of easy damage, your headlights can no longer produce a safe level of light on your path at night. Whatever headlamp brightness you DO have left will now be diffused, as I pointed out, all over the roadway including the oncoming lane, which inevitably means (as a matter of simple physics) much less light where you actually need it. And that's why a lot of you find yourselves checking to see if your headlights are turned on while you are moving down the road.
In bad weather like rain or snow, as you may imagine, this very real problem becomes impossible -- a hazard that can easily be the difference between life and death. In fact, as you stroll down your local parking lots looking at all the permanently bruised and befogged plastic headlight coverings, I think you'll begin to wonder as I did not WHETHER, but HOW MANY people have been killed thanks to this nationwide defect.
My old headlamps left me blinded so that I might have to pull off the road for a while in heavy rain, snow or fog. I put up with it for a long time, as I'm sure many others do, before I realized just how anemic and inadequate my headlight beams had become. I frequently, even regularly, found myself checking to see whether my headlamps were turned on, or possibly burned out. I remember being surprised at times that neither of my headlights was off and yet it seemed the road ahead was dark and entirely unlit. I began using my fog lamps while driving in good weather; I checked the alignment of the headlamps.
I venture to say, given the number of obscured headlight coverings I see every day, that most people aren't yet aware of the fact that their own light covers are severely degraded.
Even when I did identify my own risk factor and shop for new and brighter lamps from my car dealership -- I discovered another real problem for many people --
The clear plastic coverings cannot be replaced alone! Thank you, GM.......
Every American driver wishing to replace his or her worn or damaged plastic headlight covers can only buy the entire assembly for each headlight. To get a fresh headlight cover you'll have to change out the entire headlamp assembly at a total cost starting around $100 per lamp.
So most people who DO figure out what the problem is with their view of the road at night find they can't afford to replace the entire assemblies -- and so put off the repair. They are forced bythis compounded problem to continue driving with the dim, unfocused headlights, in some cases for the life of the car -- even though experience has already proved such a driver can't see his or her path properly at night -- even in good weather.
Something should have been done long before now. This design defect has almost certainly been identified years ago by more than one rational auto engineer. We should wonder why the very real danger persists. We should ask why such a large percentage of all cars sold in the US are still being manufactured with these plastic (polycarbonate or other polymer recipe) coverings that are so easy to degrade. We should ask why nobody in Motor City (for example) has identified and taken steps to eliminate the risk that any of us can see, once we've noticed the issue, in every parking lot everywhere -- thousands of cars, perhaps millions, with permanently, seriously impaired headlight assemblies.
Millions of cars, perhaps, blinded by cataracts.
It should be part of the routine maintenance checklist to target and fix dangerous headlight cover conditions. It should become a design requirement on covered headlight styles to ensure that consumers can regularly replace these plastic coverings with fresh and clear parts for safety's sake, as one changes windshield wipers.
One last note. and it is unfortunate but true. Anyone can verify the following with some inquiries to veteran auto designers, engineers, and/or automotive trade magazine veterans:
This is NOT a new, or uncommon, or unanticipated problem with this design, even though these defaced headlight covers have now become routine on autos throughout America.
These clear coverings -- marred, scratched, yellowed, dirtied -- have been well known AND ill reputed in the auto design business for ages. They have been tried over and over again and always discarded for the same well understood reasons. Everyone with even moderate experience in the auto industry knows why this headlight design has been discarded repeatedly in the past.
And the reason, as back issues of countless car magazines can confirm, is that these coverings are well known to deteriorate in the natural course of driving to the point that light can't properly penetrate the damaged covers. Why these are once again so common on American cars is a problem in business ethics -- the elements include uninformed consumers, well-known risks, and an unwillingness to shelve a flawed design at least until the auto maker is capable of making headlight coverings out of a scratchproof, non-discoloring material which is STILL easy to replace.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Evan Bayh of Indiana is "OUT OF IT"
This is what golfers call a gimme. In this case, it's a fookin' Christmas gift.
Evan Bayh, the Indiana-based U. S. Senator, has just announced that he will officially DROP OUT of the Democrat presidential race for 2008.
All I can say, as a politically active Republican American from Indiana, is "Thanks, Evan. We hardly knew ye, but yere misguided and confused stands on matters like our gun rights were not persuasive enough to guarantee that enemies -- like old maid Paul Helmke and his paranoid/alarmist mob -- would be properly and justifiably neutralized during a Bayh presidency."
I guess you should have made me some more promises if you wanted into the Big Game. I don't hate a moderate Democrat, but I do hate one who passes more despicable regulations upon Americans' gun rights.
I still wonder whether you possessed the guts to tell a loose cannon Hoosier politician like Helmke to go to hell on gun control.
I fear you would have felt compelled to GIVE Helmke something. And that would have been out of the question, sir.
............... Out -- of -- the -- question. ---------- Am I getting through ?
Evan Bayh, the Indiana-based U. S. Senator, has just announced that he will officially DROP OUT of the Democrat presidential race for 2008.
All I can say, as a politically active Republican American from Indiana, is "Thanks, Evan. We hardly knew ye, but yere misguided and confused stands on matters like our gun rights were not persuasive enough to guarantee that enemies -- like old maid Paul Helmke and his paranoid/alarmist mob -- would be properly and justifiably neutralized during a Bayh presidency."
I guess you should have made me some more promises if you wanted into the Big Game. I don't hate a moderate Democrat, but I do hate one who passes more despicable regulations upon Americans' gun rights.
I still wonder whether you possessed the guts to tell a loose cannon Hoosier politician like Helmke to go to hell on gun control.
I fear you would have felt compelled to GIVE Helmke something. And that would have been out of the question, sir.
............... Out -- of -- the -- question. ---------- Am I getting through ?
Saturday, December 16, 2006
"It's a Wonderful Life" -- the Unrated 3-Hour Director's Cut?
I was looking at the TV directory tonight and noticed that "It's a Wonderful Life" is being broadcast. It has been a few years since I've seen the outstanding Frank Capra classic, and the thought of settling down with the TV was just taking hold when I noticed that 3 full hours of time were blocked out of the Saturday night schedule for the movie.
Excuse me while I take a moment. ........
Alright..... Did we just say... Three hours....? With a straight face?
You know, I had forgotten that "It's a Wonderful Life" was a road picture. Funny. I don't even recall where they put the intermission...
Well-justified, cable-directed sarcasm aside for a moment (I may require it again despite my best effort), I do not have an entire evening to waste (time is money, you know, and Americans are busy, busy, busy) seeing an atmospheric cinema favorite that has been fine-tuned with a hatchet.
You see, the actual running time of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, according to Leonard Maltin's expertly edited books, is 86 minutes.
Eighty-six minutes.
For those of you who like things boiled down a bit, 86 minutes is 4 minutes under an hour and a half. Only 90. Minutes.
But NBC sets aside 3 hours... I can only imagine what fabulous and worthwhile DVD extras NBC might provide during the holiday presentation to occupy the remainder of that prodigious hunk of time.
Surely there must be another half of the evening loaded like a Horn of Plenty with rich additional materials.
The alternative would be that NBC's "holiday presentation of a beloved American classic" grinds along at an interminable and indecypherable HALF SPEED. With commercial content as long as the movie. As long as the movie. As long as the movie.
When TV was absolutely free over the air, commercial breaks were shorter than they are now that cable charges at least $60 a month for a marginal, analog, hype-laden product.
Think about that. For this kind of unrestrained butchery of your programs, programs which are why you turn on the TV, some otherwise smart Americans have been conditioned to pay $60-150 a month for a coaxial cable drilled through the siding.
If you're paying a lot of money for MORE commercials than you used to get for FREE with a UHF or VHF antenna in your attic ... You have been given the silver-plated shaft by the cable or dish or fiber-optic business in the last few years. Either commercials finance TV, or we do. But not both.
There is still time to kick the habit before the delusion that we have to pay $150 a month for commercial TV takes hold.
Here's an effective prescription for descriminating viewers -- As long as they insist upon trying to insert ads into your programming -- Go to Radio Shack. Get yourself a $50 attic or roof antenna to attach to your co-axial cable.
Watch commercial TV for nothing, as it was intended.
Commercial TV, or radio, was never supposed to cost money. The ads are the price you pay for free TV. Any other pitch is just cable wire and snake oil.
If somebody wants to SELL me media hardware or software, fine, but I peel off the ad labels when I get home, I put that media into my own personal home theater, and enjoy my media clean and uninterrupted.
If you load your product with ads and other graffiti? -- It's a promotional give-away. Don't expect ME to forget that.
Excuse me while I take a moment. ........
Alright..... Did we just say... Three hours....? With a straight face?
You know, I had forgotten that "It's a Wonderful Life" was a road picture. Funny. I don't even recall where they put the intermission...
Well-justified, cable-directed sarcasm aside for a moment (I may require it again despite my best effort), I do not have an entire evening to waste (time is money, you know, and Americans are busy, busy, busy) seeing an atmospheric cinema favorite that has been fine-tuned with a hatchet.
You see, the actual running time of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, according to Leonard Maltin's expertly edited books, is 86 minutes.
Eighty-six minutes.
For those of you who like things boiled down a bit, 86 minutes is 4 minutes under an hour and a half. Only 90. Minutes.
But NBC sets aside 3 hours... I can only imagine what fabulous and worthwhile DVD extras NBC might provide during the holiday presentation to occupy the remainder of that prodigious hunk of time.
Surely there must be another half of the evening loaded like a Horn of Plenty with rich additional materials.
The alternative would be that NBC's "holiday presentation of a beloved American classic" grinds along at an interminable and indecypherable HALF SPEED. With commercial content as long as the movie. As long as the movie. As long as the movie.
When TV was absolutely free over the air, commercial breaks were shorter than they are now that cable charges at least $60 a month for a marginal, analog, hype-laden product.
Think about that. For this kind of unrestrained butchery of your programs, programs which are why you turn on the TV, some otherwise smart Americans have been conditioned to pay $60-150 a month for a coaxial cable drilled through the siding.
If you're paying a lot of money for MORE commercials than you used to get for FREE with a UHF or VHF antenna in your attic ... You have been given the silver-plated shaft by the cable or dish or fiber-optic business in the last few years. Either commercials finance TV, or we do. But not both.
There is still time to kick the habit before the delusion that we have to pay $150 a month for commercial TV takes hold.
Here's an effective prescription for descriminating viewers -- As long as they insist upon trying to insert ads into your programming -- Go to Radio Shack. Get yourself a $50 attic or roof antenna to attach to your co-axial cable.
Watch commercial TV for nothing, as it was intended.
Commercial TV, or radio, was never supposed to cost money. The ads are the price you pay for free TV. Any other pitch is just cable wire and snake oil.
If somebody wants to SELL me media hardware or software, fine, but I peel off the ad labels when I get home, I put that media into my own personal home theater, and enjoy my media clean and uninterrupted.
If you load your product with ads and other graffiti? -- It's a promotional give-away. Don't expect ME to forget that.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Go Ahead; Make My Millennium!
The comments are hopefully turned ON here for registered members now. I look forward to amplifications on any topic.
If you're new to the web, please get over the deadly boring predictable phase of foul mouthing and pontificating before you settle in here.
Thanks a million.
If you're new to the web, please get over the deadly boring predictable phase of foul mouthing and pontificating before you settle in here.
Thanks a million.
Are You Somebody's Billboard? Charge Them, or Burn the T-shirt.
Consumers are the mob. Oh, we are all consumers of course, high and low, but if you're an elitist, you're convinced that somehow you're above the retail consumption fray. You are wrong, but you are still convinced.
Today I'm focused on a tiny, maybe insignificant example of consumer foolishness, but one that represents billions of dollars, making it a matter of keen interest to American capitalists like, well, me.
If you want me to wear your advertising, don't expect to charge me money for your T-shirt or hat or sweat pants. Either give me the damn things free, or if they're really ugly, pay me to wear them. NO, wait. If they've got your logo on them, pay me to wear them even if they ARE attractive. Screw you.
You get great benefits from my wearing your logos, trademarks and slogans. If I walk around all day wearing your advertising, you get lots of what the marketing suits like to call "impressions" -- aka, free eyeballs on your brands. If you want me to be your freaking billboard, you pay me for the privilege. Be glad I only want a free shirt most of the time. My price could be a whole lot higher depending on where I'm going to be seen. But don't expect to charge me $20 for a shirt with your ad on it. There are very few brands I'll hawk for nothing, and you're almost certainly not one of them.
I play keyboards in a good band. Now I know why people like Paul Shafer on Letterman cover the nameplates on their keyboards. Because the keyboard company was too cheap (and short-sighted) to offer a free keyboard (which costs much less than one ad with the same reach and duration) for the advertising they would get by having god knows how many thousand eyeball "impressions per day" on their brand name at each performance I do for a couple of years.
Here's a sidebar which, like many sidebars, is likely more to the point than the headliner:
A friend of mine once passed along a lesson which I have never forgot. About to meet with executives to make a deal which would earn him an unquestionably serious salary, a friend and advisor in the industry recommended he approach the upcoming job interview this way: "It will cost them less to pay your annual salary than they waste on ONE mistake on every project they currently do."
You won't be surprised, I imagine, that that summation is a perfect haiku mantra for me when approaching any project large or small which is proposed to me.
So, at the very least -- compensate me to advertise your product. Don't expect me to buy your stuff if it is defaced with your logo splashed across it. When I pay good money to own something, I clean the stickers and tags off, first thing.
If I do select your product from among the competing offerings, duct tape is cheap, and I'll cover your logo until and unless you figure out who should be charging whom to display your company trademarks.
By the way, it's time for me to mention this little factoid:
Often times in the past I have mistakenly assumed I was thinking and acting in a unique or counter-culture way -- only to find a newspaper article in the next few weeks announcing that MY ENTIRE GENERATION IS TRENDING IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS I HAVE BEEN GOING OF LATE.
So -- deride my observations at your peril, and a lot of luck to you.
Today I'm focused on a tiny, maybe insignificant example of consumer foolishness, but one that represents billions of dollars, making it a matter of keen interest to American capitalists like, well, me.
If you want me to wear your advertising, don't expect to charge me money for your T-shirt or hat or sweat pants. Either give me the damn things free, or if they're really ugly, pay me to wear them. NO, wait. If they've got your logo on them, pay me to wear them even if they ARE attractive. Screw you.
You get great benefits from my wearing your logos, trademarks and slogans. If I walk around all day wearing your advertising, you get lots of what the marketing suits like to call "impressions" -- aka, free eyeballs on your brands. If you want me to be your freaking billboard, you pay me for the privilege. Be glad I only want a free shirt most of the time. My price could be a whole lot higher depending on where I'm going to be seen. But don't expect to charge me $20 for a shirt with your ad on it. There are very few brands I'll hawk for nothing, and you're almost certainly not one of them.
I play keyboards in a good band. Now I know why people like Paul Shafer on Letterman cover the nameplates on their keyboards. Because the keyboard company was too cheap (and short-sighted) to offer a free keyboard (which costs much less than one ad with the same reach and duration) for the advertising they would get by having god knows how many thousand eyeball "impressions per day" on their brand name at each performance I do for a couple of years.
Here's a sidebar which, like many sidebars, is likely more to the point than the headliner:
A friend of mine once passed along a lesson which I have never forgot. About to meet with executives to make a deal which would earn him an unquestionably serious salary, a friend and advisor in the industry recommended he approach the upcoming job interview this way: "It will cost them less to pay your annual salary than they waste on ONE mistake on every project they currently do."
You won't be surprised, I imagine, that that summation is a perfect haiku mantra for me when approaching any project large or small which is proposed to me.
So, at the very least -- compensate me to advertise your product. Don't expect me to buy your stuff if it is defaced with your logo splashed across it. When I pay good money to own something, I clean the stickers and tags off, first thing.
If I do select your product from among the competing offerings, duct tape is cheap, and I'll cover your logo until and unless you figure out who should be charging whom to display your company trademarks.
By the way, it's time for me to mention this little factoid:
Often times in the past I have mistakenly assumed I was thinking and acting in a unique or counter-culture way -- only to find a newspaper article in the next few weeks announcing that MY ENTIRE GENERATION IS TRENDING IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS I HAVE BEEN GOING OF LATE.
So -- deride my observations at your peril, and a lot of luck to you.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Thanks without the Eating (Really)
I was awakened this holiday morning around 10:30 am by my mother calling from her cell phone in Mom & Dad's car, en route to my sister's house for Thanksgiving lunch through a semi-dangerous fog (no pun intended).
I always have to size myself up when roused in the morning to see if I can sound sensible if I answer the phone, but I picked up. "Are you about ready to leave?" "Oh, I wasn't going to leave for a while yet -- what time is lunch?" "Noon!" The drive in fog may take nearly an hour, and I need a shower first. I'm as cooked as my sister's turkey.
"Well, I'll probably be last-minute." Mom knows by now what I'm implying. "Well, if - for SOME reason - you can't make it, be SURE to call so we know something didn't HAPPEN to you on the road in this fog!"
Click.
Me and my dog (who wasn't invited to the bash anyway, so she's happier out of the kennel-cage) are having a quiet day at home. Doesn't it feel like Thanksgiving Thursday was supposed to be NEXT week?
Maybe I'll call later and ask Mom to drop off a care package & doggie bag on the way back through town. I don't feel too guilty about that, because I have to call anyway, to settle Mom's inevitably rising anxiety that I've become a smudge on the rear end of a semi truck - "in this fog."
I always have to size myself up when roused in the morning to see if I can sound sensible if I answer the phone, but I picked up. "Are you about ready to leave?" "Oh, I wasn't going to leave for a while yet -- what time is lunch?" "Noon!" The drive in fog may take nearly an hour, and I need a shower first. I'm as cooked as my sister's turkey.
"Well, I'll probably be last-minute." Mom knows by now what I'm implying. "Well, if - for SOME reason - you can't make it, be SURE to call so we know something didn't HAPPEN to you on the road in this fog!"
Click.
Me and my dog (who wasn't invited to the bash anyway, so she's happier out of the kennel-cage) are having a quiet day at home. Doesn't it feel like Thanksgiving Thursday was supposed to be NEXT week?
Maybe I'll call later and ask Mom to drop off a care package & doggie bag on the way back through town. I don't feel too guilty about that, because I have to call anyway, to settle Mom's inevitably rising anxiety that I've become a smudge on the rear end of a semi truck - "in this fog."
Friday, November 17, 2006
Democrats and Al-Qaeda in Blissful Accord
This paragraph is taken directly from published news reports:
>The head of al Qaeda's Iraq operations
>yesterday gloated in a new audio tape
>over the resignation of Defense Secretary
>Donald H. Rumsfeld and praised U.S. voters
>for punishing President Bush and the
>Republicans in Tuesday's midterm elections.
What Chuck Schumer calls "a victory for the American people," The Enemy calls a victory for Al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda now congratulates the American people for our '06 election results.
It's up to the Democrats now to prove Al-Qaeda dead wrong. I know this obligation is unwelcome to a percentage of liberals -- I just shudder to wonder how LARGE a percentage. So should other good Americans.
Unification
It's well worth remembering right now that after the 2004 election, Democrats heard Bush talk about post-election "unification" and spun it to assert that THE LOSERS were supposed to stand still and let the Republicans move toward THEM.
Since that's how they've labored to define it these last 2 years, okay -- it's now time for them to take the "high road" and show us how they can move TOWARD George W. and the Republicans and the moderate Democrats, in order to answer the clear mandate to unify in the moderate and independent center...
Don't hold your breath. (Hope springs infernal. )
Thursday, September 15, 2005
I know You Love Your SUV or Pick-up, BUT...
People don't like to be embarrassed about their choice of vehicle purchase. We all like to think we're smart consumers -- but not all of us are. Things have changed bigtime, and if there were ever any good reasons to buy a truck for the home (much less for a solo commute), they're quickly evaporating.
Sure, Detroit doesn't offer great replacements yet, but there's no good replacement for gas at all, and it now costs almost as much per gallon as silver costs per half ounce. Let's see, a gallon of gas, a half ounce of pure silver. Hmm. "Fill 'er up, honey! Right after you sell your necklace on eBay! Oh, you sold that last week? ...Uh-oh."
I have no doubt that if you look at sticker prices on used car lots, there are a lot of nervous numbers already. If the bottom hasn't dropped out yet, I think there's no doubt, it will. More and more folks are going to quietly switch to Saturns and Civics, or if they can get one, a hybrid, and suddenly claim to have gone from smart to smarter (rather than from "low performance left-lane-hogging, view-obliterating, rollover-prone gas guzzler" to responsible, if I may say so).
Once the self-esteem adjustment is made, people who thought their truck was a smart buy are going to quietly decide something else is a lot smarter. And they would be right, I think. Hauling all that extra steel around just to get a bigger trunk, when a good sedan holds 5 people and gear for a camping trip for a half-ton less?
Biggest losses on trade-ins will go to the hindmost in this deal. Gas isn't going back down to sane any time soon, unless some bigwig politicians and CEOs have some kind of a road to Damascus experience, and believe it or not, things aren't nearly bad enough for that to happen, yet. .
I'm already starting to miss those little Dodge Colt hatchbacks from Japan in 1971 that got 45 miles to the gallon and yet performed like little muscle cars -- and they didn't cost much either, if you factor out dealer gouging.
It's not about the SUV or pick-up, ladies and gentlemen -- it's about the gas.
Sure, Detroit doesn't offer great replacements yet, but there's no good replacement for gas at all, and it now costs almost as much per gallon as silver costs per half ounce. Let's see, a gallon of gas, a half ounce of pure silver. Hmm. "Fill 'er up, honey! Right after you sell your necklace on eBay! Oh, you sold that last week? ...Uh-oh."
I have no doubt that if you look at sticker prices on used car lots, there are a lot of nervous numbers already. If the bottom hasn't dropped out yet, I think there's no doubt, it will. More and more folks are going to quietly switch to Saturns and Civics, or if they can get one, a hybrid, and suddenly claim to have gone from smart to smarter (rather than from "low performance left-lane-hogging, view-obliterating, rollover-prone gas guzzler" to responsible, if I may say so).
Once the self-esteem adjustment is made, people who thought their truck was a smart buy are going to quietly decide something else is a lot smarter. And they would be right, I think. Hauling all that extra steel around just to get a bigger trunk, when a good sedan holds 5 people and gear for a camping trip for a half-ton less?
Biggest losses on trade-ins will go to the hindmost in this deal. Gas isn't going back down to sane any time soon, unless some bigwig politicians and CEOs have some kind of a road to Damascus experience, and believe it or not, things aren't nearly bad enough for that to happen, yet. .
I'm already starting to miss those little Dodge Colt hatchbacks from Japan in 1971 that got 45 miles to the gallon and yet performed like little muscle cars -- and they didn't cost much either, if you factor out dealer gouging.
It's not about the SUV or pick-up, ladies and gentlemen -- it's about the gas.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Selfish Minority Interferes with NOLA Effort
Yes, folks, sad as the trait may be in the human species, there are always some thugs who are willing to use a human tragedy to rationalize extreme selfishness.
In this case, it's the Democrats.
After waiting an indecent interval, on day four of the tragedy the liberals have done just what they planned to do since Katrina reached category 5 status in the gulf and took aim at Biloxi -- blame it all on Bush, and, believe it or not, the war in Iraq -- for pure, fictional, partisan political purposes.
Yes, the Democrats, faced with the largest domestic natural disaster in modern times -- decided to make some hay for 2008.
So, it's all the war in Iraq's fault, folks. You thought it was the size of the relief effort, or the snipers shooting at copters and medics, but no. It's that war the liberals have never been able to make its peace with, that war the American people have already been heard on, that war that liberals living in the past still believe they can cancel, erase, and undo. That war the Democrats lost over in 2004.
For them, it couldn't be that this is the first disaster of its kind in modern history, and that the state and local officials didn't immediately take control of the massive federal resources President Bush delivered to the perimeter of the disaster area.
For liberals, it must be about Bush and the war in Iraq. It must be that Bush isn't the man Gore was. It must be that if only THEY were in charge, life would be better, Islamists would love us, gas would be cheap, looters wouldn't loot, levees would hold, toilets would flush, and evacuees would be singing Kum-ba-yah before campfires in the Superdome while young American troops, fresh back from Iraq, hold their s'mores over the embers.
It must be that they're irretrievably nuts.
.
.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The Nation's Economic Chaos
I don't believe everything in this nation must trickle down. The middle class is under direct attack, as is Americans' accustomed standard of living. We're giving away the store to foreign nations, and in this country we are disadvantaged by the hemorrhages of NAFTA and CAFTA, the drug companies, insurance companies, medical costs, rising utilities, union busting, underemployment, and unemployment.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with passing some legislation to fix the problem and to deliver direct relief to the shameful circumstance of a shrinking middle class in the United States of America.
I use the word class advisedly, since we as a nation disdain the notion of classes. We believe in equality of the people and should always act like it. There is no higher type of human being in the United States of America than "American." The common man rules, and insists on ruling, this republic, and it is the common man's generous heart that shares our bounty with the rest of the world. But we can't take care of the world if we can't take care of ourselves first.
I don't mind the idea of giving up bad jobs for a new nation of "individual entrepreneurs" -- but why is all the seed money and other benefits going only to the big corporations so far, while all us new entrepreneurs are left to languish, as if we were the worker mob of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" or Lang's "Metropolis?" This isn't what we bargained for.
I assure you, Americans do not consider themselves a worker mob -- particularly if they had good jobs before all this strategic bankruptcy and outsourcing to India and Mexico. They watch incompetent management preside over the demise of the company they work for, and they have good reason to conclude that THEY were the smarter half of the staff all along.
Our people consider themselves, accurately, the grass roots American majority, the backbone of the nation. They know they have the vote and the raw power, and they are feeling screwed lately -- by unkept promises of a strong standard of living based on a new individual entrepreneurship. They're underemployed, they're bankrupt, they're making less money while the cost of energy skyrockets. They're wondering if some immoral corporations are under the delusion that America can work without Americans. The current economy seems to imply a notion that there can be a strong America and thriving capitalism while the population languishes.
Such a development could not be hidden, and the people would bring it ALL down before allowing such a thing to occur -- thriving capitalism without thriving Americans. If America's managers are to abandon their own employees, dump their benefits, break their unions, reduce their salaries, declare a strategic bankruptcy, and create for themselves a golden parachute when they go -- then the balance of productive Americans are going to demand a red, white and blue parachute.
As a Republican, it's my view that the last election reflected NOT a rise of a die-hard Republican majority, certainly not a suddenly larger radical right, but something far more subtle and fascinating -- a taking back of the controls by our fed-up grass roots majority, who have decided to vote in larger numbers and declare their own agenda for a change. Politicians who get this are going to be the most successful in the near future.
I think whoever is talking sense in the next election will win regardless of party. The guy who is telling the middle class of America to tough it out, or to have sympathy for the rich, or to normalize radical lifestyles, or to "reform" the Constitution will find no friendly ear. We voted to let Bush try jump-starting the economy from the top down last time, but Americans are not going to put up with working at Wal-Mart for more than a heartbeat or two. They are not going to put up with gasoline that rivals the price of Sterling silver while their underemployment paychecks grow smaller.
About 200 million Americans are EXPECTING the promised results of all these choices we've let our administration make for us. I hope the White House is listening... Because I'm a Republican (for now), and I'm sounding the alarm.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with passing some legislation to fix the problem and to deliver direct relief to the shameful circumstance of a shrinking middle class in the United States of America.
I use the word class advisedly, since we as a nation disdain the notion of classes. We believe in equality of the people and should always act like it. There is no higher type of human being in the United States of America than "American." The common man rules, and insists on ruling, this republic, and it is the common man's generous heart that shares our bounty with the rest of the world. But we can't take care of the world if we can't take care of ourselves first.
I don't mind the idea of giving up bad jobs for a new nation of "individual entrepreneurs" -- but why is all the seed money and other benefits going only to the big corporations so far, while all us new entrepreneurs are left to languish, as if we were the worker mob of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" or Lang's "Metropolis?" This isn't what we bargained for.
I assure you, Americans do not consider themselves a worker mob -- particularly if they had good jobs before all this strategic bankruptcy and outsourcing to India and Mexico. They watch incompetent management preside over the demise of the company they work for, and they have good reason to conclude that THEY were the smarter half of the staff all along.
Our people consider themselves, accurately, the grass roots American majority, the backbone of the nation. They know they have the vote and the raw power, and they are feeling screwed lately -- by unkept promises of a strong standard of living based on a new individual entrepreneurship. They're underemployed, they're bankrupt, they're making less money while the cost of energy skyrockets. They're wondering if some immoral corporations are under the delusion that America can work without Americans. The current economy seems to imply a notion that there can be a strong America and thriving capitalism while the population languishes.
Such a development could not be hidden, and the people would bring it ALL down before allowing such a thing to occur -- thriving capitalism without thriving Americans. If America's managers are to abandon their own employees, dump their benefits, break their unions, reduce their salaries, declare a strategic bankruptcy, and create for themselves a golden parachute when they go -- then the balance of productive Americans are going to demand a red, white and blue parachute.
As a Republican, it's my view that the last election reflected NOT a rise of a die-hard Republican majority, certainly not a suddenly larger radical right, but something far more subtle and fascinating -- a taking back of the controls by our fed-up grass roots majority, who have decided to vote in larger numbers and declare their own agenda for a change. Politicians who get this are going to be the most successful in the near future.
I think whoever is talking sense in the next election will win regardless of party. The guy who is telling the middle class of America to tough it out, or to have sympathy for the rich, or to normalize radical lifestyles, or to "reform" the Constitution will find no friendly ear. We voted to let Bush try jump-starting the economy from the top down last time, but Americans are not going to put up with working at Wal-Mart for more than a heartbeat or two. They are not going to put up with gasoline that rivals the price of Sterling silver while their underemployment paychecks grow smaller.
About 200 million Americans are EXPECTING the promised results of all these choices we've let our administration make for us. I hope the White House is listening... Because I'm a Republican (for now), and I'm sounding the alarm.
Fair Tax, Flat Tax
I like the concept of a sales tax to replace income tax, as long as there isn't a stampede by wealthy congressmen to pass new legislation to create loopholes for their cronies in big business to avoid paying the same rates on their materials as the rest of us have to pay for our goods. The government would have to lean harder on us if it gave corporations new breaks, and that would not be a "fair" tax.
Even saying this, I just can't help suspecting that the code for such a federal tax, on sales rather than income, would be written so that business paid some "wholesale" sales tax rate on their goods while consumers are forced to pay a higher, "retail" sales tax rate.
A fair tax would have to be utterly fair, or the rioting would be near-instantaneous. A fair tax would be all too easy to ridicule and reject if it were exposed as not truly fair. And you can bet the media would dig fiercely to find any hidden breaks for the wealthy. There would be a predictable temptation, which would have to squashed, for manufacturers to pass along their supposed "increased cost of materials" to the consumers in a way that they didn't necessarily do when they were filling out tax forms. Of course, this tax would not be an increased cost of a material. It would simply be a repositioned way of paying the taxes due. If they used to have loopholes that the rest of us don't, then such a flat tax would be MORE fair.
One obvious advantage of collecting tax via goods and services is that a person could perhaps control his gross annual taxation -- by buying cheaper goods, or fewer consumables, during lean times, or when saving for something big. You'd get nearly your whole paycheck (for a change), and you'd control your tax cost depending on how much or how little you chose to spend or save.
Of course, the cost of goods WILL be significantly higher for all of us, with federal sales tax hung on every price tag, so if you buy the same as always your effective tax could be the same or even higher, I suspect (but without the 1040s, if that helps any). One assumes that even our utilities might be included in this type of tax. And insurance premiums and medical costs, etc. Everything could go up from rent to car payments and that sort of thing would not be adjustable. People with high medical bills, who get a deduction now, might find that they were taxed on all of it, if we aren't careful.
The income tax has seemed a real burden for years now, involuntarily taking way too much of a middle class person's income -- changing his economic status every April. With a "shrinking middle class" as we have now, fattening the average American's paycheck by 25% or more will seem like a great deal at first. I assume any such bill will be scrutinized to the last comma before passage, at the insistence of all of us.
Having said all this, I rush to add that it's too soon to make up one's mind on such a concept. I'm only able to discuss the most rudimentary possibilities here. We should see the details first, and chew on them a while to be sure we understand all the consequences.
We'll have to be satisfied that fair is really fair, and that the new system will be better for all Americans -- most particularly the majority which is the grass roots/middle class. This should not be passed over the average man's objections because some politicians think their version of the scheme is "the right thing" in spite of everybody else.
Even saying this, I just can't help suspecting that the code for such a federal tax, on sales rather than income, would be written so that business paid some "wholesale" sales tax rate on their goods while consumers are forced to pay a higher, "retail" sales tax rate.
A fair tax would have to be utterly fair, or the rioting would be near-instantaneous. A fair tax would be all too easy to ridicule and reject if it were exposed as not truly fair. And you can bet the media would dig fiercely to find any hidden breaks for the wealthy. There would be a predictable temptation, which would have to squashed, for manufacturers to pass along their supposed "increased cost of materials" to the consumers in a way that they didn't necessarily do when they were filling out tax forms. Of course, this tax would not be an increased cost of a material. It would simply be a repositioned way of paying the taxes due. If they used to have loopholes that the rest of us don't, then such a flat tax would be MORE fair.
One obvious advantage of collecting tax via goods and services is that a person could perhaps control his gross annual taxation -- by buying cheaper goods, or fewer consumables, during lean times, or when saving for something big. You'd get nearly your whole paycheck (for a change), and you'd control your tax cost depending on how much or how little you chose to spend or save.
Of course, the cost of goods WILL be significantly higher for all of us, with federal sales tax hung on every price tag, so if you buy the same as always your effective tax could be the same or even higher, I suspect (but without the 1040s, if that helps any). One assumes that even our utilities might be included in this type of tax. And insurance premiums and medical costs, etc. Everything could go up from rent to car payments and that sort of thing would not be adjustable. People with high medical bills, who get a deduction now, might find that they were taxed on all of it, if we aren't careful.
The income tax has seemed a real burden for years now, involuntarily taking way too much of a middle class person's income -- changing his economic status every April. With a "shrinking middle class" as we have now, fattening the average American's paycheck by 25% or more will seem like a great deal at first. I assume any such bill will be scrutinized to the last comma before passage, at the insistence of all of us.
Having said all this, I rush to add that it's too soon to make up one's mind on such a concept. I'm only able to discuss the most rudimentary possibilities here. We should see the details first, and chew on them a while to be sure we understand all the consequences.
We'll have to be satisfied that fair is really fair, and that the new system will be better for all Americans -- most particularly the majority which is the grass roots/middle class. This should not be passed over the average man's objections because some politicians think their version of the scheme is "the right thing" in spite of everybody else.
Illegal Aliens -- Messy Order at the Border
I'm not 100% sure the immediate outcome of tight security at our southern border will be "the end of illegal aliens" as some suggest. Things have gone so far downhill now, it could be that some stubborn border jumpers, who by now may feel ENTITLED to break our laws and sneak in and out of our country, would start arming themselves and skirmishing with Americans along the border, perhaps even ambushing peaceful residents. Wouldn't THAT be an interesting development...?
Is vigilante justice still justice? Yes. It is imperfect justice, but it can, in the defense of good Americans, be vastly better than no justice at all. Not always, not even frequently, but at least on rare occasions.
In a case when citizens, like the Minutemen, are defending both themselves AND the law of the land, I wouldn't be too quick to call them vigilantes anyhow. "Vigilante" is a word carefully chosen by opponents of the Minutemen to attempt to characterize concerned citizens in a negative way. They could have simply called these people volunteers, but they chose not to. They also should be calling the Mexicans in question "illegal aliens" rather than "immigrants," but they choose not to. Apparently there's too much law on the books already covering illegal aliens for their comfort.
And that's the point -- the complainers are politically opposed to enforcement of our law, as recent protests prove. Most of them seem to prefer that we look the other way and ignore the law, but that way lies madness. (I'm guessing these abetters of crime think they are championing "progressive reform" -- sound familiar?) A few of the critics are anarchist crackpots, in favor of cancelling the US-Mexican border altogether, if you can believe that.
But of course Vicente Fox and his illegal aliens are a secondary priority now, and the push to relax the borders couldn't come at a worse time. If we don't sew up our borders with Mexico and Canada, I don't think there's ANY reasonable doubt that it's only a matter of time until terrorists begin using those gaping holes to ship in tools of mass destruction.
Is vigilante justice still justice? Yes. It is imperfect justice, but it can, in the defense of good Americans, be vastly better than no justice at all. Not always, not even frequently, but at least on rare occasions.
In a case when citizens, like the Minutemen, are defending both themselves AND the law of the land, I wouldn't be too quick to call them vigilantes anyhow. "Vigilante" is a word carefully chosen by opponents of the Minutemen to attempt to characterize concerned citizens in a negative way. They could have simply called these people volunteers, but they chose not to. They also should be calling the Mexicans in question "illegal aliens" rather than "immigrants," but they choose not to. Apparently there's too much law on the books already covering illegal aliens for their comfort.
And that's the point -- the complainers are politically opposed to enforcement of our law, as recent protests prove. Most of them seem to prefer that we look the other way and ignore the law, but that way lies madness. (I'm guessing these abetters of crime think they are championing "progressive reform" -- sound familiar?) A few of the critics are anarchist crackpots, in favor of cancelling the US-Mexican border altogether, if you can believe that.
But of course Vicente Fox and his illegal aliens are a secondary priority now, and the push to relax the borders couldn't come at a worse time. If we don't sew up our borders with Mexico and Canada, I don't think there's ANY reasonable doubt that it's only a matter of time until terrorists begin using those gaping holes to ship in tools of mass destruction.
Faulty Thimking -- Liberal Poll "Analysis"
Here's another bit of nonsense that annoys me lately --
Liberal pollsters erroneously conclude that if we've answered a poll by saying we're not delighted with the way Iraq is going right now, or not happy with George W. Bush, we must be "against the war" or "disillusioned," or "moving to the Democrats."
Hardly.
The poll questions are poorly written, if these are the kinds of answers some social scientist is looking for. I would answer a poll question like "do you think the war in Iraq is going well?" the same way as everybody else, but my support of the effort in the middle east remains unaltered. I'm not giving up, or abandoning the Republicans. And that's not what the polls asked me. They only asked if I thought the war was going well at the moment.
When "our boys" were on the Normandy beaches, Bataan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, nobody was concluding that Americans were ready to give up and go home because it wasn't a cakewalk.
Liberal pollsters erroneously conclude that if we've answered a poll by saying we're not delighted with the way Iraq is going right now, or not happy with George W. Bush, we must be "against the war" or "disillusioned," or "moving to the Democrats."
Hardly.
The poll questions are poorly written, if these are the kinds of answers some social scientist is looking for. I would answer a poll question like "do you think the war in Iraq is going well?" the same way as everybody else, but my support of the effort in the middle east remains unaltered. I'm not giving up, or abandoning the Republicans. And that's not what the polls asked me. They only asked if I thought the war was going well at the moment.
When "our boys" were on the Normandy beaches, Bataan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, nobody was concluding that Americans were ready to give up and go home because it wasn't a cakewalk.
Monday, August 15, 2005
The Sheehan Show
It's a bit embarrassing watching these aging hippies attempt to relive their glory days on a rural easement near Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Ms. Sheehan, now thoroughly discredited as a radical kook, is spouting the old, old liberal line. Liberals have had the Iraq war stuck in their craw since the day the Senate voted to go to war, and their main disappointment seems to be that their plan to use that war to unseat Bush in 2004 didn't work out.
Now these anti-war types are stuck with a war they voted for, and their rationalization is that Bush lied to them. (Of course, all the intelligence everyone had access to at the time did not originate in the White House.) Yet the American people side with the hawks, and Democrats can't embrace the medusa Sheehan without assuring their own political demise. So they will "sympthize" with her little faction, but only the most foolish will risk a photo op.
Sheehan, off-topic of her dead hero son, thinks our current effort in Iraq is "not about bringing democracy to Iraqis," but rather to "have a permanent base" there. (She also says, wide-eyed, that Syria's occupation of Lebanon is the very same thing as the U.S. effort in Iraq -- go figure.) Despite the fact that NO American claims to want to conquer or annex Iraq, she insists we are a bunch of no-good "imperialists" (including her son, one supposes). That's delusional thinking by all non-partisan accounts, but it's not news -- liberals have claimed their homeland is "imperialist" for one thing or another since long before 9/11. I really think they would have preferred America seek no justice, drain no swamp, in the wake of the attacks on Manhattan and Washington. Just hold Al-Qaeda's hands and find out why the poor dears are upset -- then "negotiate" at the U.N., and apologize to the French for our recent impolitenesses. And, one imagines, settle in with "Reds" on the DVD player at the end of their exhausting day. This, to a liberal, is a reasonable course.
One also can't help but wonder whether Ms. Sheehan was this controlling of her son when he was alive. He was a grown-up, and clearly making his own decisions. Having his mother belittling his choices after he's died for his country seems downright bitchy. The son would no doubt disagree with EVERYTHING the mother is saying as she pursues her own leftist agenda using her dead son's fame to do so. Personally, I think she should go to her son's grave and apologize, but maybe their relationship wasn't that good.
These days, liberals including Ms. Sheehan are stuck in the past, constantly "reminding" everyone within earshot of the supposed invalidity of the war in Iraq. Of course, at the time of the original debate, we all knew there were various reasons for going to Iraq -- back issues of news magazines will be found discussing a variety of points besides WMDs -- WMDs were highlighted as the item most likely to persuade nations at the U.N. of the necessity to finally take some action. But now, liberals claim WMDs were the only item ever discussed, in an effort, one supposes, to deflect their own embarrassment for ALSO believing at the time that there were plenty of WMDs under Saddam Hussein's control. And for agreeing to Bush's concept of "draining the swamp."
Draining the swamp where terrorists are born and raised was bound to require lancing the boil at its center, and Iraq is, after all, centrally located in the middle east, and convenient to the whole swamp. I'm not sure anymore that liberals understood what "drain the swamp" meant, or even where the swamp is. If you typed "the swamp" into your GPS unit, you might just get a big red "X" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, with spokes leading out to Syria, Iran and various other West-hating, Islamist-radical nations.
Let's never forget, since WMDs matter so much to liberals, that it is Saddam's fault that all the world's intelligence agencies as well as most of its citizens believed he had WMDs. Saddam ran U.N. inspectors out of his country rather than allow them to inspect his facilities because he was determined to foster the impression that he did indeed have lots of prohibited weapons programs. The fact that he and Tariq Aziz may have been playing a high-risk-for-them game of "let's pretend" (assuming they didn't transport their WMDs to Syria as the war approached) certainly can't be laid at Bush's door.
And don't forget those 17 flaunted U.N. resolutions for which Saddam was owed punishment. Saddam tried to make a mockery of his own deal to stop the first gulf war. He badly miscalculated, again. He was hoist on his own petard.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Comments?
You may wonder why the "Comments" feature is not active on this "blog." The reason is this: when I published this blog online for the first time, Comments were indeed active and available. Tragically, the very first "comment" received on a topic was -- Spam. Comments were turned off immediately.
There will be no responses permitted on this weblog -- until the management of Blogger/Blogspot is able to provide robust controls to assure that ONLY those wishing to compose a sensible comment on the topic, with no irrelevant commercial motive, are permitted to post. Spam is not even advertising. It is grafitti. It is vandalism. It is harrassment. It is litter along the scenic berms of the Information Superhighway, discarded by the same kind of slobs and losers who trash your neighborhood in real life.
There will be no responses permitted on this weblog -- until the management of Blogger/Blogspot is able to provide robust controls to assure that ONLY those wishing to compose a sensible comment on the topic, with no irrelevant commercial motive, are permitted to post. Spam is not even advertising. It is grafitti. It is vandalism. It is harrassment. It is litter along the scenic berms of the Information Superhighway, discarded by the same kind of slobs and losers who trash your neighborhood in real life.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
How Liberals Can Win Some Elections for a Change - Sshhhh!
I have a strategy for liberals to win some elections, but it relies upon their smartening up about an issue that is a "poison pill" in middle America. It's a strategy guaranteed to work, if they are willing to take the advice.
Let's start with the premise that there are more than enough gun rights supporters to swing an election. How do we know this? Because there are about four million NRA (National Rifle Association) members, give or take, and 99% of them will vote in an election -- they want to vote, will not miss an opportunity to vote. In the last election, the Democrats had their highest popular turn-out in history -- and lost by three and a half million votes -- or a half million less than the membership of the NRA alone.
There are other large grass roots lobby groups in Washington of course, one or two even larger than the NRA -- the AARP, for example. The AARP, we know, is a liberal front and favors gun control, but that is its management only -- among their grass roots, most members don't even know the AARP has a political agenda. I guarantee that nowhere near 99% of AARP's membership votes. And many who do, vote Republican -- because they joined the AARP for coupons, not politics. So out of the entire AARP, only management and an undetermined fraction of the membership can be counted on to vote liberal -- for its own gun control policy.
Let's go back to the NRA for a second. The NRA, with its four million voting members, is not by a long stretch the entire body of pro-gun voters. How do I know this? Because if you know many other gun owners, you know as I do that there are a large number of gun owners who refuse to join the NRA. And they are eager to tell you why: they think the NRA is TOO WEAK, too compromising, and has SOLD OUT. So a significant group of additional gun owners won't join the NRA because they claim to be EVEN TOUGHER on gun rights. They may join other organizations like GOA (Gun Owners of America), and you can bet they definitely vote, as well -- to prove they are tougher than the NRA, for one thing.
In short, there are many millions of voting pro-gun Americans, all of whom are alienated by gun control candidates. The Democrats push almost all of those candidates, and many of them lost handily in the last national election.
When gun rights supporters hear a liberal making promises, they hear an unspoken phrase at the end of every sentence: "and I'll ban some more of your guns." Democrat candidates promise to do better for you on jobs (and ban some more of your guns). They'll fix your health care (and ban some more of your guns). They'll give you better deals on health insurance, Social Security and peace on earth (and ban some more of your guns). Of course, they'll also rush to get out of the post-9/11 conflicts we entered -- something else most gun owners don't like. But even then, they can be counted on to ban some more of your guns, and if you're not careful, they'll even try to sell gun control as some sort of domestic "war on terror." Actually, of course, gun owners know it's a war on the Second Amendment. No one is being fooled.
And that's why we can't vote for Democrats despite what we think of them on "jobs" or "health care" -- we won't trade away the Second Amendment. What the Democrats aren't saying makes them appear dishonest -- hiding the facts of their rabid gun ban agenda while wearing camo vests and saying "nobody wants to take your guns." We see through the act.
The answer of course is therefore simple. One strategy for winning future elections is to drop their war on the Second-Amendment. All the Democracts have to do to win several million more American votes -- from voters who actually like some of their positions on jobs, health care, drug companies, and corporate greed -- is to give up on the failed policy of unconstitutional abridgement of gun rights. I don't mean to PRETEND to do so -- I mean to drop it. "Gun control" was more responsible for the Democrats' 2004 losses than perhaps they understand. By showing off John Kerry in a camo vest with a goose gun, the Democrats actually spotlighted the Big Lie -- it put guns at center stage, and NOBODY believed Kerry was no threat to guns. In fact, every time the Democrats bring up their supposedly happy relationship with the Second Amendment, they always add the same sinister, unmistakeable phrase -- "... but we ARE for REASONABLE GUN CONTROLS." They can't leave it alone. Perhaps they are addicted -- the definition of addiction being a "self destructive habit." Certainly, gun control continues to shoot Democrats in the foot -- because they can't seem to relegate it to the ash heap of history. And as long as there is a Second Amendment to go with the other nine, the law of the land will prevent the Democrats' policies from seeming "reasonable."
The votes are there to be had in Middle America, if we don't have to abandon our Second Amendment protections against gun infringements in order to elect a Democrat. Infringe is a word that means "around the edges." The Democrats would like to trample gun rights, as a matter of the party's perennial platform, a lot more than just around the edges (is there anyone who doubts that?) -- and the Second Amendment doesn't allow for any tampering AT ALL. We know, because we can read. We can read the amendment, which protects guns NOT for hunting but for SECURITY, and we can read the papers of the Founders which all confirm that the intent was an individual right of all citizens of good character to keep and bear arms IN THEIR OWN DEFENSE against enemies foreign and domestic.
Yet the Democrats so far won't abandon this poison pill as the failed policy it is. They won't take the plank out of the platform, even to win back the American people. That is especially telling. Surely, there are much more important concerns for the Democrats than stealing one of our liberties out of the Bill of Rights? Trust me when I say that there are many people who are listening to moderate Democrats and who would vote for some of them in large numbers -- IF ONLY IT DID NOT REQUIRE THEM TO UNDERGO ANOTHER TERM OF EGREGIOUS GUN CONTROL. Take guns off the table, or better yet, vow to re-visit and repeal certain unconstitutional infringements of the right to keep and bear arms which are already on the books, and the floodgates of Middle America will open.
Now that I've told my little secret -- we'll see just how addicted to destroying themselves in the vain effort to demolish the Second Amendment (while fighting to the death to defend the First, bizarrely enough) the Democrats are.
Side Note: Instead of always arrogantly reprinting the text of the First Amendment on their editorial pages, all American newspapers should print all ten articles of the Bill of Rights in rotation -- it may help them never to forget what should be obvious -- that if one article of the Bill of Rights is sacred, then all ten articles are equally sacrosanct in American life. And if one may be torn down little by little, the others will surely follow. In fact, the Second is the article which helps guarantee the other nine...
Let's start with the premise that there are more than enough gun rights supporters to swing an election. How do we know this? Because there are about four million NRA (National Rifle Association) members, give or take, and 99% of them will vote in an election -- they want to vote, will not miss an opportunity to vote. In the last election, the Democrats had their highest popular turn-out in history -- and lost by three and a half million votes -- or a half million less than the membership of the NRA alone.
There are other large grass roots lobby groups in Washington of course, one or two even larger than the NRA -- the AARP, for example. The AARP, we know, is a liberal front and favors gun control, but that is its management only -- among their grass roots, most members don't even know the AARP has a political agenda. I guarantee that nowhere near 99% of AARP's membership votes. And many who do, vote Republican -- because they joined the AARP for coupons, not politics. So out of the entire AARP, only management and an undetermined fraction of the membership can be counted on to vote liberal -- for its own gun control policy.
Let's go back to the NRA for a second. The NRA, with its four million voting members, is not by a long stretch the entire body of pro-gun voters. How do I know this? Because if you know many other gun owners, you know as I do that there are a large number of gun owners who refuse to join the NRA. And they are eager to tell you why: they think the NRA is TOO WEAK, too compromising, and has SOLD OUT. So a significant group of additional gun owners won't join the NRA because they claim to be EVEN TOUGHER on gun rights. They may join other organizations like GOA (Gun Owners of America), and you can bet they definitely vote, as well -- to prove they are tougher than the NRA, for one thing.
In short, there are many millions of voting pro-gun Americans, all of whom are alienated by gun control candidates. The Democrats push almost all of those candidates, and many of them lost handily in the last national election.
When gun rights supporters hear a liberal making promises, they hear an unspoken phrase at the end of every sentence: "and I'll ban some more of your guns." Democrat candidates promise to do better for you on jobs (and ban some more of your guns). They'll fix your health care (and ban some more of your guns). They'll give you better deals on health insurance, Social Security and peace on earth (and ban some more of your guns). Of course, they'll also rush to get out of the post-9/11 conflicts we entered -- something else most gun owners don't like. But even then, they can be counted on to ban some more of your guns, and if you're not careful, they'll even try to sell gun control as some sort of domestic "war on terror." Actually, of course, gun owners know it's a war on the Second Amendment. No one is being fooled.
And that's why we can't vote for Democrats despite what we think of them on "jobs" or "health care" -- we won't trade away the Second Amendment. What the Democrats aren't saying makes them appear dishonest -- hiding the facts of their rabid gun ban agenda while wearing camo vests and saying "nobody wants to take your guns." We see through the act.
The answer of course is therefore simple. One strategy for winning future elections is to drop their war on the Second-Amendment. All the Democracts have to do to win several million more American votes -- from voters who actually like some of their positions on jobs, health care, drug companies, and corporate greed -- is to give up on the failed policy of unconstitutional abridgement of gun rights. I don't mean to PRETEND to do so -- I mean to drop it. "Gun control" was more responsible for the Democrats' 2004 losses than perhaps they understand. By showing off John Kerry in a camo vest with a goose gun, the Democrats actually spotlighted the Big Lie -- it put guns at center stage, and NOBODY believed Kerry was no threat to guns. In fact, every time the Democrats bring up their supposedly happy relationship with the Second Amendment, they always add the same sinister, unmistakeable phrase -- "... but we ARE for REASONABLE GUN CONTROLS." They can't leave it alone. Perhaps they are addicted -- the definition of addiction being a "self destructive habit." Certainly, gun control continues to shoot Democrats in the foot -- because they can't seem to relegate it to the ash heap of history. And as long as there is a Second Amendment to go with the other nine, the law of the land will prevent the Democrats' policies from seeming "reasonable."
The votes are there to be had in Middle America, if we don't have to abandon our Second Amendment protections against gun infringements in order to elect a Democrat. Infringe is a word that means "around the edges." The Democrats would like to trample gun rights, as a matter of the party's perennial platform, a lot more than just around the edges (is there anyone who doubts that?) -- and the Second Amendment doesn't allow for any tampering AT ALL. We know, because we can read. We can read the amendment, which protects guns NOT for hunting but for SECURITY, and we can read the papers of the Founders which all confirm that the intent was an individual right of all citizens of good character to keep and bear arms IN THEIR OWN DEFENSE against enemies foreign and domestic.
Yet the Democrats so far won't abandon this poison pill as the failed policy it is. They won't take the plank out of the platform, even to win back the American people. That is especially telling. Surely, there are much more important concerns for the Democrats than stealing one of our liberties out of the Bill of Rights? Trust me when I say that there are many people who are listening to moderate Democrats and who would vote for some of them in large numbers -- IF ONLY IT DID NOT REQUIRE THEM TO UNDERGO ANOTHER TERM OF EGREGIOUS GUN CONTROL. Take guns off the table, or better yet, vow to re-visit and repeal certain unconstitutional infringements of the right to keep and bear arms which are already on the books, and the floodgates of Middle America will open.
Now that I've told my little secret -- we'll see just how addicted to destroying themselves in the vain effort to demolish the Second Amendment (while fighting to the death to defend the First, bizarrely enough) the Democrats are.
Side Note: Instead of always arrogantly reprinting the text of the First Amendment on their editorial pages, all American newspapers should print all ten articles of the Bill of Rights in rotation -- it may help them never to forget what should be obvious -- that if one article of the Bill of Rights is sacred, then all ten articles are equally sacrosanct in American life. And if one may be torn down little by little, the others will surely follow. In fact, the Second is the article which helps guarantee the other nine...
Monday, March 28, 2005
Credit and Bankruptcy "Reform"
Credit card companies and probably the second mortgage outfits are modern-day loan sharks. Not too many years ago people went to prison for loaning money like this to needy, vulnerable Americans and demanding the kind of interest rates and penalties these shysters do. It is usury, and it is gangsterism on a national scale.
Bankruptcy laws were not in need of change, at least not so as to benefit credit card companies, and what Congress is now calling bankruptcy "reforms" are not reforms at all. They are a pandering truckload of new restrictions on the people of this country that accomplish nothing more noble than to make it harder for the average Joe or Jane to get out of the clutches of a credit card company or its hired thugs, the collection agencies. The only "help" being offered here is a fat handout to the already bloated plastic peddlers. Meanwhile, the loan industry helps itself with a new national campaign to sucker American consumers into exchanging their unsecured debt (which can be forgiven in a bankruptcy) for secured debt -- in the especially sinister form of a second lien on their homes -- which a bankruptcy cannot forgive. Not even Suzy Orman approves of the tactic of trading your credit card debt to a loan company in exchange for an easy lien on your house, to use against you if you default.
The whole affair is a shameful pander to the lobby of the meanest financial gang out there, and Congress should be ashamed of itself -- because their betrayal WILL BE recognized, sooner or later, and they WILL BE held responsible by history for this massive fraud. History will reflect the ruin of these politicians' legacies and reputations, because of their collusion in this scheme to keep Americans indentured to an abusive system while putting more millions into the pockets of the already Jabba-like "credit" companies. It is usury. It is loan sharking. And now the government is poised to become part of the conspiracy.
Bankruptcy laws were not in need of change, at least not so as to benefit credit card companies, and what Congress is now calling bankruptcy "reforms" are not reforms at all. They are a pandering truckload of new restrictions on the people of this country that accomplish nothing more noble than to make it harder for the average Joe or Jane to get out of the clutches of a credit card company or its hired thugs, the collection agencies. The only "help" being offered here is a fat handout to the already bloated plastic peddlers. Meanwhile, the loan industry helps itself with a new national campaign to sucker American consumers into exchanging their unsecured debt (which can be forgiven in a bankruptcy) for secured debt -- in the especially sinister form of a second lien on their homes -- which a bankruptcy cannot forgive. Not even Suzy Orman approves of the tactic of trading your credit card debt to a loan company in exchange for an easy lien on your house, to use against you if you default.
The whole affair is a shameful pander to the lobby of the meanest financial gang out there, and Congress should be ashamed of itself -- because their betrayal WILL BE recognized, sooner or later, and they WILL BE held responsible by history for this massive fraud. History will reflect the ruin of these politicians' legacies and reputations, because of their collusion in this scheme to keep Americans indentured to an abusive system while putting more millions into the pockets of the already Jabba-like "credit" companies. It is usury. It is loan sharking. And now the government is poised to become part of the conspiracy.
Politicians Doing "The Right Thing?"
When a politician vows he will "do the right thing," be sure you ask him if he has contacted his constituents to find out what "the right thing" is.
If he hasn't asked them, he doesn't know. Politicians regularly exclaim that they are doing "the right thing" when they are just doing precisely whatever the hell they want to.
Politicians are elected to represent their own constituency -- not to get elected with lies, then grab power and suit themselves. There is deep-rooted rationalization in all three branches of government that some politicians use as excuses to overrule the folks at home, but a republic is a representative government -- which means we send our own elected representatives to Washington D.C. as well as Indianapolis, so that we don't all have to drive down there and vote on every bill and court decision, and approve or disapprove every political agenda item ourselves.
"The right thing" is not the product of a virgin birth out of politicians' brains. Most of the time, if politicians are really doing the will of the folks at home, they never have to make speeches to their constituents ASSERTING to them that they are doing the right thing. The people who voted for him or her will know.
It is a product of the constituents' will. Politicians are and will always be PUBLIC SERVANTS, and you should not let them ever forget that -- especially whenever they threaten to support policies AGAINST the wishes of the home community they campaigned to represent, including yours and mine.
If he hasn't asked them, he doesn't know. Politicians regularly exclaim that they are doing "the right thing" when they are just doing precisely whatever the hell they want to.
Politicians are elected to represent their own constituency -- not to get elected with lies, then grab power and suit themselves. There is deep-rooted rationalization in all three branches of government that some politicians use as excuses to overrule the folks at home, but a republic is a representative government -- which means we send our own elected representatives to Washington D.C. as well as Indianapolis, so that we don't all have to drive down there and vote on every bill and court decision, and approve or disapprove every political agenda item ourselves.
"The right thing" is not the product of a virgin birth out of politicians' brains. Most of the time, if politicians are really doing the will of the folks at home, they never have to make speeches to their constituents ASSERTING to them that they are doing the right thing. The people who voted for him or her will know.
It is a product of the constituents' will. Politicians are and will always be PUBLIC SERVANTS, and you should not let them ever forget that -- especially whenever they threaten to support policies AGAINST the wishes of the home community they campaigned to represent, including yours and mine.
The Second Amendment
It is a simple fact that the Second Amendment makes no mention anywhere of "hunting." It makes no mention anywhere of "sport," or "sporting purpose." Unless this is understood, no intelligent conversation can be had about the Second Amendment.
Careful reading reveals that the Second Amendment is exclusively concerned with one thing only -- the guarantee of individual arms FOR SECURITY. It is therefore terribly unfortunate that arms which are most suitable to win conflicts and defeat enemies foreign or domestic are those that gun controllers find most objectionable. The guns protected under the law are first and foremost those that banners love to ban. That is why so much of existing gun law is unconstitutional. What guns ARE most suited to state security, anyway? Ahhh. So you DO know the answer...
If you doubt my premise, please re-read the text of the Second Amendment carefully for comprehension, as if reading it for the first time. You will find no mention of or reference to hunting; no mention of or reference to sport. There was no national guard in 1790, so the only "militia" was the citizenry, ordinary people who used their personal arms to fight, then went home with their guns when the fight was over. The government of the day even gave the citizens MORE of the VERY BEST GUNS AVAILABLE for free (the Brown Bess was one state-of-the-art rifle issued to citizens at the time) to be sure they could WIN when defending themselves and their country.
Therefore, when someone dons a camo vest, shoulders a goose gun and claims to "support your Second Amendment rights," you should rightfully roll your eyeballs, because he doesn't understand what he is talking about. Hunting is another subject altogether. Hunting and sport are good practice, of course, but the second article of the Bill of Rights guarantees there will be no infringment of the use of arms for SECURITY. Hunting has NOTHING to do with the Second Amendment.
Either we have Second Amendment rights, or we don't. If we do, and nearly everyone agrees that we do have such a thing as Second Amendment rights, then the arms protected are arms suitable to win a fight against a human enemy. No one needs to prove his or her gun has any "sporting purpose" or can be utilized for hunting. Such tests are irrelevant and counterproductive.
A politician who will take a gun away from you because it may be too good at winning conflicts, and leave you with a six shooter (or worse, a phone number) to defend your family and your neighborhood against human predators, is not your friend nor the Constitution's friend.
The Second Amendment enunciates a liberty of the people, not of governmental departments. Institutions do not have "liberties." Only people can have liberties and rights. In our country we affirm that "all men are created equal," and that each has inalienable rights. This language informs us that there can be NO special class of citizens, with rights that the others do not have. Law abiding U.S. citizens all have the same liberties. There is no higher level than "U.S. citizen."
All ten articles of the Bill of Rights were written in part to assure us protection against our own government, against "all enemies foreign and domestic." Government may not infringe upon its citizens' ability to defend themselves against it -- because that would be a conflict of interest of the first magnitude, in light of the Constitution. We have gun rights partly to insure the reasonableness of our republic.
The Second Amendment is the law of the land. Liberals wish it were otherwise, but it is the law, and part of the Bill of Rights at that, requiring a constitutional convention to alter. It is among our basic liberties -- the right to arm ourselves against aggressions of all kinds -- that is the constitutional law. This means that if you don't like gun rights, or would like to abridge them, you can't just pass an ordinance. You would FIRST have to repeal the second article of the Bill of Rights -- which protects not just the guns liberals like, but all the guns liberals hate, too. We are not talking about a difference of opinion. We are talking about respecting the Constitution, or undermining it. A gun control advocate hopes to subvert constitutional law -- in collusion with other liberals, sometimes he succeeds. That activist wants to criminalize citizens who have arms he would like to prohibit. You may not like guns, or perhaps freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But they are all protected EQUALLY in the Bill of Rights and stand shoulder to shoulder within it.
Many unconstitutional gun laws are already on the books of course, and those are in need of redress. It has been estimated that there are 40,000 gun laws in the United States. Let me ask: If there were 40,000 laws "regulating" freedom of speech, how large would be the outcry? Answer: Journalists would have taken to the streets long ago. Regularly, federal, state and local laws which attempt to infringe the freedom of speech are struck down. Newspapers proudly quote the First Amendment on many of their editorial pages. They should be able to print the Second Amendment with equal vigor of course, given that it is another clause in the same document. Yet few do. That difference in respect can only be termed hypocritical, schizophrenic double-think.
In the 1960s, a body of law carrying out an unconstitutional doctrine called "separate but equal" was set aside and judged to be a violation of Americans' civil rights. Some day, the body of law which infringes gun rights can, should, and will be set aside by a similar method. If state and local infringement is not to be permitted for the First Amendment, it CANNOT be lawful for the Second. If you know and proclaim the First Amendment is sacrosanct, you recognize the same status for the other, co-equal paragraphs of the Bill of Rights.
Remember, the Second Amendment makes no reference to hunting nor sport. It concerns itself ONLY with protecting arms for security -- security of individuals, their family, and their larger community against other people. Shamefully, those guns most appropriate to win in a seige by other humans bent on your harm are the very guns the gun controllers love most to prohibit. These activists are misguided, and they are patently, objectively and empirically wrong. Arms most appropriate to our defense and security are protected first, not last. Doubters need only read the existing papers and letters of the Founding Fathers to confirm this clear intent. No guesswork needs to be done. No wheel needs to be re-invented. The Founders' intent is clear and the documents confirming this plain fact are plentiful in the Library of Congress.
Careful reading reveals that the Second Amendment is exclusively concerned with one thing only -- the guarantee of individual arms FOR SECURITY. It is therefore terribly unfortunate that arms which are most suitable to win conflicts and defeat enemies foreign or domestic are those that gun controllers find most objectionable. The guns protected under the law are first and foremost those that banners love to ban. That is why so much of existing gun law is unconstitutional. What guns ARE most suited to state security, anyway? Ahhh. So you DO know the answer...
If you doubt my premise, please re-read the text of the Second Amendment carefully for comprehension, as if reading it for the first time. You will find no mention of or reference to hunting; no mention of or reference to sport. There was no national guard in 1790, so the only "militia" was the citizenry, ordinary people who used their personal arms to fight, then went home with their guns when the fight was over. The government of the day even gave the citizens MORE of the VERY BEST GUNS AVAILABLE for free (the Brown Bess was one state-of-the-art rifle issued to citizens at the time) to be sure they could WIN when defending themselves and their country.
Therefore, when someone dons a camo vest, shoulders a goose gun and claims to "support your Second Amendment rights," you should rightfully roll your eyeballs, because he doesn't understand what he is talking about. Hunting is another subject altogether. Hunting and sport are good practice, of course, but the second article of the Bill of Rights guarantees there will be no infringment of the use of arms for SECURITY. Hunting has NOTHING to do with the Second Amendment.
Either we have Second Amendment rights, or we don't. If we do, and nearly everyone agrees that we do have such a thing as Second Amendment rights, then the arms protected are arms suitable to win a fight against a human enemy. No one needs to prove his or her gun has any "sporting purpose" or can be utilized for hunting. Such tests are irrelevant and counterproductive.
A politician who will take a gun away from you because it may be too good at winning conflicts, and leave you with a six shooter (or worse, a phone number) to defend your family and your neighborhood against human predators, is not your friend nor the Constitution's friend.
The Second Amendment enunciates a liberty of the people, not of governmental departments. Institutions do not have "liberties." Only people can have liberties and rights. In our country we affirm that "all men are created equal," and that each has inalienable rights. This language informs us that there can be NO special class of citizens, with rights that the others do not have. Law abiding U.S. citizens all have the same liberties. There is no higher level than "U.S. citizen."
All ten articles of the Bill of Rights were written in part to assure us protection against our own government, against "all enemies foreign and domestic." Government may not infringe upon its citizens' ability to defend themselves against it -- because that would be a conflict of interest of the first magnitude, in light of the Constitution. We have gun rights partly to insure the reasonableness of our republic.
The Second Amendment is the law of the land. Liberals wish it were otherwise, but it is the law, and part of the Bill of Rights at that, requiring a constitutional convention to alter. It is among our basic liberties -- the right to arm ourselves against aggressions of all kinds -- that is the constitutional law. This means that if you don't like gun rights, or would like to abridge them, you can't just pass an ordinance. You would FIRST have to repeal the second article of the Bill of Rights -- which protects not just the guns liberals like, but all the guns liberals hate, too. We are not talking about a difference of opinion. We are talking about respecting the Constitution, or undermining it. A gun control advocate hopes to subvert constitutional law -- in collusion with other liberals, sometimes he succeeds. That activist wants to criminalize citizens who have arms he would like to prohibit. You may not like guns, or perhaps freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But they are all protected EQUALLY in the Bill of Rights and stand shoulder to shoulder within it.
Many unconstitutional gun laws are already on the books of course, and those are in need of redress. It has been estimated that there are 40,000 gun laws in the United States. Let me ask: If there were 40,000 laws "regulating" freedom of speech, how large would be the outcry? Answer: Journalists would have taken to the streets long ago. Regularly, federal, state and local laws which attempt to infringe the freedom of speech are struck down. Newspapers proudly quote the First Amendment on many of their editorial pages. They should be able to print the Second Amendment with equal vigor of course, given that it is another clause in the same document. Yet few do. That difference in respect can only be termed hypocritical, schizophrenic double-think.
In the 1960s, a body of law carrying out an unconstitutional doctrine called "separate but equal" was set aside and judged to be a violation of Americans' civil rights. Some day, the body of law which infringes gun rights can, should, and will be set aside by a similar method. If state and local infringement is not to be permitted for the First Amendment, it CANNOT be lawful for the Second. If you know and proclaim the First Amendment is sacrosanct, you recognize the same status for the other, co-equal paragraphs of the Bill of Rights.
Remember, the Second Amendment makes no reference to hunting nor sport. It concerns itself ONLY with protecting arms for security -- security of individuals, their family, and their larger community against other people. Shamefully, those guns most appropriate to win in a seige by other humans bent on your harm are the very guns the gun controllers love most to prohibit. These activists are misguided, and they are patently, objectively and empirically wrong. Arms most appropriate to our defense and security are protected first, not last. Doubters need only read the existing papers and letters of the Founding Fathers to confirm this clear intent. No guesswork needs to be done. No wheel needs to be re-invented. The Founders' intent is clear and the documents confirming this plain fact are plentiful in the Library of Congress.
Cable Industry's Bait 'n Switch Is Not for Me
We're being shafted by the cable industry.
"Pay TV" was originally hyped as a superior alternative to over-the-air "Commercial TV." You would pay a monthly fee to receive quality programming, commercial-free.
That's right. The big selling point for pay TV was -- no commercials. Commercial TV was being received by antenna, over the air, free of charge, but with those pesky commercials -- including the three networks, Fox, and local PBS programming (which substituted pledge drives for commercials). Pay TV sold itself to us by promising the following: To eliminate the need for commercial interruptions in exchange for our subscription fee. One way, the sponsors paid for the programs; the other way, we paid for the programs in our monthly subscription.
When cable first came to town they told the city government they needed extra money, just during the set-up phase, while the cable was laid. But the price never came back down. Then the cable company claimed they needed extra money for a while longer, in order to lay fiber optic cable. Again the price never came back down. Meanwhile, more and more channels turned up on pay TV with commercials. At first, it was just the "superstations," commercial channels riding free on the cable signal. But then came commercials on cable's own product --Not just commercials -- MORE commercials. REALLY BAD, LOW CLASS, ANNOYING commercials. Worst of all perhaps, channels that used to be commercial-free started interrupting their programs with commercials too.
A funny disconnect occurred -- Cable companies gradually began keeping ALL the fees you gave them for themselves, and started letting -- you guessed it -- SPONSORS pay for the programs. Just like the rabbit ear days. God help us. Meanwhile, that basic fee krept up, from about twenty bucks to fifty bucks a month. That's a car payment for some folks.
Now, of course, cable is a sinkhole of commercials, a ghetto of interruptions, a junkyard of hard breaks -- with rare exceptions like Turner Classic Movies. They're hoping we've forgotten where we came from. I have not.
What's even worse is that the baseline product from cable isn't keeping up with progress. The basic cable you may be paying for isn't even square with technology. Signals are available in digital, but unless you're paying Comcast extra, you've still got analog. Cell phones went all-digital years ago, of course, but cable is behind the times. Your new TV set will shortly have to have a digital signal, and its receiver will no longer be robust enough to receive over-the-air signals -- but basic cable's digital signal will still be priced as an option. In a few years, the FCC says all television broadcasts must be HDTV -- yet cable will, I guarantee you, want you to pay a surcharge for that new HD signal as an "option," even when it's the national standard and there is no more analog or low-res digital to be had.
Keep in mind that hard-wiring went out the first time with the telegraph. A wire hanging from a tree or buried in the ground is NOT the most modern way to transfer data. And now that cell phones are in, land line telephony is going downhill. With the rise of the direct link satellite dish (which really replaces the old rooftop antenna in a satisfactory way), cable is now well on its way to extinction.
Cable could have wired every TV set in the country by now, but, strange as it may seem, they don't want to. If you ask your cable representative why their utility now costs as much as your gas bill, and has more accessory charges than the sticker on an American car, they will inform you that despite the hundred bucks a month you're paying, they are NOT a new utility; they are a luxury option. Yes, your TV has become a non-essential, folks.
If you ask them how, with an attitude like that, they manage to provide service to places like Appalachia, they will tell you that isn't what they are in business for.
They will even insult you (I know firsthand) by saying that if you don't like their prices, "you can always go back to rabbit ears." Hmm. I wonder if the city fathers who contracted for them to wire our town know about this option to go back to rabbit ears.
Yes, we all thought that cable was the modern replacement for the old antenna. When our city contracted with Comcast to string wire throughout the town -- twice -- we sure THOUGHT it was a utility -- a means to upgrade our television signal-- a grid, like the power, gas or phone company. But no.
So now that Comcast has its vampire fangs poised over our throats -- I'm bolting. Who needs telegraph poles when you can grab what you want off a satellite? We're already using them for everything from GPS to OnStar. So why pay a hundred a month -- or more -- to Comcast for something that used to be free? That is, COMMERCIAL TELEVISION?
No reason in the world. I can live without the golf channel, trust me. I don't have the time or the need to spend three hours watching a 2-hour movie. And if I want to watch a movie, DVDs are cheaper, they come in widescreen, and there's not a commercial interruption in the whole disk.
Oh, and I'm going to encourage local producers to start up another over-the-air channel or two, or three... We need them.
"Pay TV" was originally hyped as a superior alternative to over-the-air "Commercial TV." You would pay a monthly fee to receive quality programming, commercial-free.
That's right. The big selling point for pay TV was -- no commercials. Commercial TV was being received by antenna, over the air, free of charge, but with those pesky commercials -- including the three networks, Fox, and local PBS programming (which substituted pledge drives for commercials). Pay TV sold itself to us by promising the following: To eliminate the need for commercial interruptions in exchange for our subscription fee. One way, the sponsors paid for the programs; the other way, we paid for the programs in our monthly subscription.
When cable first came to town they told the city government they needed extra money, just during the set-up phase, while the cable was laid. But the price never came back down. Then the cable company claimed they needed extra money for a while longer, in order to lay fiber optic cable. Again the price never came back down. Meanwhile, more and more channels turned up on pay TV with commercials. At first, it was just the "superstations," commercial channels riding free on the cable signal. But then came commercials on cable's own product --Not just commercials -- MORE commercials. REALLY BAD, LOW CLASS, ANNOYING commercials. Worst of all perhaps, channels that used to be commercial-free started interrupting their programs with commercials too.
A funny disconnect occurred -- Cable companies gradually began keeping ALL the fees you gave them for themselves, and started letting -- you guessed it -- SPONSORS pay for the programs. Just like the rabbit ear days. God help us. Meanwhile, that basic fee krept up, from about twenty bucks to fifty bucks a month. That's a car payment for some folks.
Now, of course, cable is a sinkhole of commercials, a ghetto of interruptions, a junkyard of hard breaks -- with rare exceptions like Turner Classic Movies. They're hoping we've forgotten where we came from. I have not.
What's even worse is that the baseline product from cable isn't keeping up with progress. The basic cable you may be paying for isn't even square with technology. Signals are available in digital, but unless you're paying Comcast extra, you've still got analog. Cell phones went all-digital years ago, of course, but cable is behind the times. Your new TV set will shortly have to have a digital signal, and its receiver will no longer be robust enough to receive over-the-air signals -- but basic cable's digital signal will still be priced as an option. In a few years, the FCC says all television broadcasts must be HDTV -- yet cable will, I guarantee you, want you to pay a surcharge for that new HD signal as an "option," even when it's the national standard and there is no more analog or low-res digital to be had.
Keep in mind that hard-wiring went out the first time with the telegraph. A wire hanging from a tree or buried in the ground is NOT the most modern way to transfer data. And now that cell phones are in, land line telephony is going downhill. With the rise of the direct link satellite dish (which really replaces the old rooftop antenna in a satisfactory way), cable is now well on its way to extinction.
Cable could have wired every TV set in the country by now, but, strange as it may seem, they don't want to. If you ask your cable representative why their utility now costs as much as your gas bill, and has more accessory charges than the sticker on an American car, they will inform you that despite the hundred bucks a month you're paying, they are NOT a new utility; they are a luxury option. Yes, your TV has become a non-essential, folks.
If you ask them how, with an attitude like that, they manage to provide service to places like Appalachia, they will tell you that isn't what they are in business for.
They will even insult you (I know firsthand) by saying that if you don't like their prices, "you can always go back to rabbit ears." Hmm. I wonder if the city fathers who contracted for them to wire our town know about this option to go back to rabbit ears.
Yes, we all thought that cable was the modern replacement for the old antenna. When our city contracted with Comcast to string wire throughout the town -- twice -- we sure THOUGHT it was a utility -- a means to upgrade our television signal-- a grid, like the power, gas or phone company. But no.
So now that Comcast has its vampire fangs poised over our throats -- I'm bolting. Who needs telegraph poles when you can grab what you want off a satellite? We're already using them for everything from GPS to OnStar. So why pay a hundred a month -- or more -- to Comcast for something that used to be free? That is, COMMERCIAL TELEVISION?
No reason in the world. I can live without the golf channel, trust me. I don't have the time or the need to spend three hours watching a 2-hour movie. And if I want to watch a movie, DVDs are cheaper, they come in widescreen, and there's not a commercial interruption in the whole disk.
Oh, and I'm going to encourage local producers to start up another over-the-air channel or two, or three... We need them.
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