This is the news. And this is the modest proposal. Main Street and everyone in it exists to serve the Wall Street money machine. The ants only win in animated kids movies.
New flash: Congress has agreed to a modest proposal!
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Monthly Archives: September 2008
Just for reference: Couric with Palin/Couric with Obama
Palin and Obama and the accusations of corruption and/or questionable association
I don’t think the word double-standard is large enough. The accusations people struggle to make about Palin don’t even compare. I wonder how many dead Chicagoans will be voting for Obama in November?
Obama as Daniel’s 3 friends/”conservatives” as idolatrous Nebuchadnezzar and proud of it
I won’t vote for Obama, but this makes me want to:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/121kclEcEKU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Do you find this video shocking? I do. I am shocked to learn there is still a statute that requires ruitual obeisance to the American flag. Didn’t the Supreme Court settle this in the flag burning controversy some years ago? Is this really the law of the land?
In any case, Obama so obviously looks like the hero in this morality show, that I can only hope this was posted by secret supporters rather than by anyone laying claim to the right wing. Ugh. How on earth can Protestants, who refuse to genuflect before the Lord’s Supper or any other object, promote this sort of civil idolatry? Arguably, this is less perverse than kissing a cross or bowing before a picture of Jesus since at least that is only a second commandment violation. But demanding ritual toward the flag is not only that, but is aimed toward something other than the true God. It is a first commandment violation. Did all those Christians in antiquity die for nothing when they refused to ritually honor Caesar’s shrine.
I can’t even begin to describe how alienated I feel from the populist opposition to liberalism. Freedom and liberty and localism have all been traded in for fevered nationalism. It is frightening.
Problems I think I see in the logic of third parties
When you are trudging along as a member of one of the two major parties, you pretty much expect to be less than fully enchanted by who the party selects to run for the Presidency or any other office. You are realistic and figure that the guy is probably better than the other one.
So, for example, pretend for the sake of argument that there were two major parties in America: the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. If Joe Voter usually votes for the candidates of The Stupid Party, the main objective will be to defeat the candidate from the Evil Party because he thinks the EP candidate is the greater threat.
But this can produce frustration. Sometimes it seems like the SP is delivering lower and lower quality candidates over time, and maybe on purpose. The EP, a Joe might easily think, is always getting worse so that the SP can keep lowering the bar.
And at some point, Joe starts wondering why he is stuck with only two alternatives. So he might look around for a Third Party.
But here is the problem, if he has renounced compromise then he has guaranteed that no third party with any hope of making significant impact can be formed. While a mainstream party is expected to make all of its members somewhat unhappy (other than the very stupid or the very ambitious who plan to make money through the party), a third party has to be perfect in order to justify its existence.
To break away from my hypothetical example to a real one: I don’t care how much I might agree with these people, no national third party that runs against immigration and wants to close our borders will ever get my support. Sure I might tolerate such evil (to some degree) in a main party that I already know I don’t really like anyway. But if you’re going to recruit me to serve a tiny alternative, it needs to be one that agrees with me on the basic requirements for civilized behavior as a nation. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25.35).
See, Joe can justify putting up with things he disagrees with if he stays with his Stupid Party, but the minute he gives up such tolerance, he is in pursuit of the Perfect Party according to his beliefs, and that means third parties stay small and insignificant, serving extremely narrow groups of people.
Ultimately, the only way third parties could make a difference is if enough of them were formed to swing votes between them and then together settle on a President who was the least offensive to all of them as a group. In other words, if we work real hard and spend a lot of money we might reach the point where we have the power… wait for it… to settle on a compromise candidate.
That’s a rather long and winding detour to get back where we already are.
But wait, says Joe to me, are you saying that I am stuck with Stupid Party candidates no matter how bad they get?
I answer Joe Voter thusly: No. But if you are going to be punished with bad candidates, why let them punish you further by wasting your time, money and energy? Don’t waste your efforts on a third party; just don’t vote. Don’t bother to show up. You already suffer enough at the hands of the Stupid-Evil monopoly, why suffer even more? Instead of wasting time and gas going to the voting booth, do something productive with your life on November fourth.
Frankly, I wonder if a lot of the third party drive comes from frustrated cheerleaders and frustrated ambition. We want to be at the center of something and wholly believe in it (or make lots of money from those who believe in it).
That, at least, is how things look to me. If I’m wrong I hope I’ll prove teachable.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings – Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn.
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas, while we followed the March of Mankind . . .
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminimian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said “If you don’t work you die.”
And the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that glitters, and Two and Two make Four –
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
(hat tip)
Some cool hand made pens
I just discovered this site. I spoke with the craft’s person and was quite impressed.
Proof that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist
He didn’t believe in the magic money god:
We are now taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that nothing can produce but nothing; that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher’s stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker, “in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread.” –Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
So strange that such an unbeliever is a “Founding Father” to children who have demanded adoption into the family the American pantheon of Bank, and Low Interest, and High Return.
Ron Paul in 2003
Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
No less an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has expressed concern that government subsidies provided to GSEs make investors underestimate the risk of investing in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [source]
Not kidding about “the virtue of selfishness”
I guess if the Nazis had allowed the killing of the unfit individually, without coercive taxation and government mandates, then it would have been defensible according to the arbitrary bloodlust articulated by the alleged “Center for the Advancement of Capitalism”:
So in the anti-abortion advocate’s eyes, a parent’s desire to raise healthy children by squelching unhealthy fetuses while the are still in the womb is little more than a pernicious quest, but it is not considered a pernicious quest to knowingly bring severely disabled children into this world. On the contrary, such a choice is held out as an great example of upstanding morality. For example, consider this recent press release from a conservative anti-abortion advocacy group which celebrated Plain’s birth announcement:
The Palin family is a wonderful example of a family who made the right choice to embrace their child and his future. Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), commends Governor Palin, saying, “She is even more beautiful inside than out. Her proud and warm announcement of the birth of their special child revealed the depth of love and faith of this extraordinary woman. May God give America more women and statesmen like her.
“Special needs children can bring out the best in people. They draw out compassion, patience, a joy for the simple things in life in people around them,” says Wright. “In some ways, we need special needs people more than they need us.”
That is, we need the mentally retarded to teach us how to better sacrifice our lives and divest ourselves of our self-interested ways more than they need us to care for them. At Noodlefood, Diana Hsieh condemns such a stand as “the worship of retardation.” Given that Palin had complete foreknowledge of her child’s severe disability yet nevertheless chose to have it, it is hard not to see her choice as anything less.
Get that? Palin is actually guilty for not aborting her child.
I’ll say this much. Reading this cainite apologetic does open my mind up to the possibility that there are indeed certain classes of people that the world would be better off without. But just in case we start prejuding all Randians, I offer counter-evidence.
Honestly, do Randians ever offer any objective limits to their selfishness? If it is wrong to be or feel obligated not to kill a child, then why wouldn’t it also be wrong to feel obligated to pay any other debt. Wouldn’t “rationality” demand that one simply do whatever one can get away with?
I remember reading Atlas Shrugged and thinking of it as heroic. That impression has not survived. Objectivism seems to have become a rationalization for pretentious cowardice.