I was watching MSNBC yesterday morning when I saw Obama holding a news conference. He was standing behind a lectern that was labeled "Office of the President Elect." There is only one small problem there: The election of the President has not occurred yet. The popular vote that was held at the beginning of the month was to select delegates that will elect the President, but the actual election will not be until next month.
One might think that I am picking nits by saying that, but Obama is the one who is ordering that people build things like lecterns labeled with a title that does not exist. Sure, the President-elect has an office, but the President-elect has no Constitutional Authority, and even if it did, Obama is not yet the President-elect.
So why is he doing this? Is he attempting to take over early? I find his behavior to be extremely narcissistic. While I still feel that neither McCain or Obama would make good Presidents, I think that Obama will sorely disappoint many of his supporters.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I got a 100% on the quiz you find here by answering all 33 questions correctly. If you do not score at least a 75% on this test, I don't see where you know enough about politics to have an opinion.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
National Ammo Day
November 19 is National Ammo Day.
It is a nationwide BUYcott of ammunition. You buy ammunition. 100 Rounds a person.
The goals of Ammo Day:
The goal of National Ammo Day is to empty the ammunition from the shelves of your local gun store, sporting goods, or hardware store and put that ammunition in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Make your support of the Second Amendment known--by voting with your dollars!
There are an estimated 75 MILLION gun owners in the United States of America. If each gun owner or Second Amendment supporter buys 100 rounds of ammunition, that’s 7.5 BILLION rounds in the hands of law-abiding citizens!
You know what to do: Buy 100 rounds (or equivalent for hand-loaders).
If you cannot purchase ammo:
- Write a letter to your Representatives to let them know you support the Second Amendment, and would not support taxation schemes and gimmicks that limit or restrict a person’s ability buy ammo.
- Join or contribute to a gun rights organization.
- Number of firearms in America: 228,000,000
- Number of firearm owning households: At least 50,600,000
- Projected firearm owning households in America: 60-85 million
- Number of guns used in crimes: 450,000
- Percentage of guns used in crimes: 0.09%
Over 50 million law-abiding, gun owning households committed NO crime today… but collectively, we stop 2.5 million crimes per year… 6,849 a day!
Fact: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes are prevented just by showing a gun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually fired. That is right- guns do not need to be fired in order to stop a crime, and they rarely are. This is why statistics that use self defense shootings as a base, suggesting that guns are ineffective in deterring crime, are incorrect.
Law abiding gun owners should keep up the good work and keep your ammo supply stocked!
The gun/ammunition manufacturers have been taking the brunt of all the frivolous lawsuits, trying to put these folks out of business. Well, not if we can help it! And we CAN help it by buying ammunition on November 19!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Bailout the Automakers?
When we are in the free market, goods and services tend to be paid what they are worth to others, that is, what you can sell something for is determined by what that thing is worth to those who would buy it, and that worth largely depends on the supply and demand law. If you have something that is a one of a kind, but everyone wants one, then the value is high. If you are selling something that is readily available, but almost no one desires one, then the value is low. This is why you can't sell your lawn clippings for very high amounts of money. Of course, all of this depends on a market that is truly a free market, and not one that is being manipulated.
That is why the Auto makers are being forced into bankruptcy. Manipulation. The union auto workers are asking for wages that are so high as to make their employers unable to compete. I want to get it out right now, I want fair wages and benefits for all workers, and I am a union worker in my own field, so it is not like I am anti-union.
Making cars has become an automated process, and with every process that becomes automated, we assume that quality will go up, and the size of the work force goes down, but the high tech jobs created in maintaining the new technology are more lucrative. That is the advantage to the employer and employee in automating the assembly line. The current UAW contract has a protection clause in it that allows GM to automate the assembly line, but here’s the catch: they still have to pay the worker whose job was automated full pay and benefits. You cannot run a business profitably with contracts like that, and now the Automakers want us, the American taxpayers, to foot the bill for this folly.
Fork lift drivers in the UAW make up to $100,000 a year. If you were to tell me that they made $40,000 plus benefits, and I might not bat an eye, but $100,000? What’s wrong with that picture? In addition, GM’s “non-productive” payroll is creeping up to an unsustainable number and at some point paying people that don’t produce will put you out of business. The free market would not pay an uneducated, unskilled worker that kind of coin. The unions in their greed are forcing their employers out of business, and now they and their employers are expecting the taxpayer to bail them out, all the while trying to scapegoat CEO salaries.
That is why the Auto makers are being forced into bankruptcy. Manipulation. The union auto workers are asking for wages that are so high as to make their employers unable to compete. I want to get it out right now, I want fair wages and benefits for all workers, and I am a union worker in my own field, so it is not like I am anti-union.
Making cars has become an automated process, and with every process that becomes automated, we assume that quality will go up, and the size of the work force goes down, but the high tech jobs created in maintaining the new technology are more lucrative. That is the advantage to the employer and employee in automating the assembly line. The current UAW contract has a protection clause in it that allows GM to automate the assembly line, but here’s the catch: they still have to pay the worker whose job was automated full pay and benefits. You cannot run a business profitably with contracts like that, and now the Automakers want us, the American taxpayers, to foot the bill for this folly.
Fork lift drivers in the UAW make up to $100,000 a year. If you were to tell me that they made $40,000 plus benefits, and I might not bat an eye, but $100,000? What’s wrong with that picture? In addition, GM’s “non-productive” payroll is creeping up to an unsustainable number and at some point paying people that don’t produce will put you out of business. The free market would not pay an uneducated, unskilled worker that kind of coin. The unions in their greed are forcing their employers out of business, and now they and their employers are expecting the taxpayer to bail them out, all the while trying to scapegoat CEO salaries.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Formerly Great Britain
Well, well, well. Proving that our founding fathers were correct when they wrote the Bill of Rights, Great Britain followed a National Gun Ban (passed in 1997) with a national knife ban, and now the British Government has announced that they will begin censoring the press, in order to protect national security.
Australia banned guns in 1996. Since that time, gun crime has skyrocketed by over 45%, thus proving that gun control does not work in reducing crime. Just last month, the Australian government announced that they will begin censoring the internet.
This seems to follow a pattern. Every dictatorship that has ever existed on this planet has counted on a few regulations to enable their governance of the masses (in no particular order):
1 Deny the masses a means to communicate
2 Deny the governed a means of protest or organization
3 Round up the rabble-rousers and toss them in jail (or even kill them)
4 Deny your subjects the means of resistance (weapons)
5 Chill protest by placing government agents in the homes of likely troublemakers
Is it any wonder that each of these points is covered under the Bill of Rights? Can you think of any ways in which governments today are implementing the above policies? Of course, it is always done to protect you from (child porn, drugs, terrorism, crime, etc.) and is purely for your own good.
Weapons are always among the first to go, soon to be followed by speech and press freedoms. First, you take the means to resist, then the ability to complain and protest, and then the ability to resist is severely curtailed.
Australia banned guns in 1996. Since that time, gun crime has skyrocketed by over 45%, thus proving that gun control does not work in reducing crime. Just last month, the Australian government announced that they will begin censoring the internet.
This seems to follow a pattern. Every dictatorship that has ever existed on this planet has counted on a few regulations to enable their governance of the masses (in no particular order):
1 Deny the masses a means to communicate
2 Deny the governed a means of protest or organization
3 Round up the rabble-rousers and toss them in jail (or even kill them)
4 Deny your subjects the means of resistance (weapons)
5 Chill protest by placing government agents in the homes of likely troublemakers
Is it any wonder that each of these points is covered under the Bill of Rights? Can you think of any ways in which governments today are implementing the above policies? Of course, it is always done to protect you from (child porn, drugs, terrorism, crime, etc.) and is purely for your own good.
Weapons are always among the first to go, soon to be followed by speech and press freedoms. First, you take the means to resist, then the ability to complain and protest, and then the ability to resist is severely curtailed.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Change and hope
I have received some emails regarding my last post, accusing me of being an Obama supporter. Far from it, and if you dig into my blog you will see that I despise both of the current political parties. Every year, one party or the other makes promises that they will make our lives better by restricting our freedoms. As a result, we lose freedoms and liberties, while gaining no real improvement. Let me show you:
1 We have been engaged in a "War on Poverty" since 1964. The poverty level has remained near 12% ever since the United States abolished the gold standard in 1973, with the current level being 12.7%. It is important to note that the method the Government is using to calculate the poverty line only takes inflation into account, instead of the more accurate model, which compares the percentage of the cost of living to household income. Using this method, the current cost of living has risen from 30% of individual income in 1965 to 50% of household income in 2003. Where it used to take one income to support a family, it now takes two. This means that the effective poverty rate, when expressed as a real percentage of household income, has more than doubled since the “War on Poverty” began.
The reason this has happened is that a country cannot tax itself into prosperity. The average American spends 40% of his productive life as a slave to the collective, and that is not enough. We as a nation then borrow even more. All of this accomplishes nothing.
2 We have been engaged in a "War on Drugs" for the better part of 40 years. What has this gotten us? No-knock warrants, property forfeiture, midnight raids, and police seizing property of citizens without trial. We have the highest level of incarceration of any advanced country, yet drugs are cheaper and easier to get than ever before. Odds are that every American reading this is within a 15 minute drive of at least one drug dealer.
3 20,000 Gun laws have resulted in the criminalization of machine guns, the carrying of weapons, mail order weapons, weapons that look scary, and weapons that are accurate over long ranges, yet gun crime still happens. Criminals still get guns. Criminals still break the law. Honest citizens are now left without the most effective tools for self defense-
Politicians do what politicians do. What do they do? Pander to whomever they can to get elected. Some pander to one side, while others pander to the other side, all the while sacrificing your rights on the alter of their careers.
Remain ever vigilant.
1 We have been engaged in a "War on Poverty" since 1964. The poverty level has remained near 12% ever since the United States abolished the gold standard in 1973, with the current level being 12.7%. It is important to note that the method the Government is using to calculate the poverty line only takes inflation into account, instead of the more accurate model, which compares the percentage of the cost of living to household income. Using this method, the current cost of living has risen from 30% of individual income in 1965 to 50% of household income in 2003. Where it used to take one income to support a family, it now takes two. This means that the effective poverty rate, when expressed as a real percentage of household income, has more than doubled since the “War on Poverty” began.
The reason this has happened is that a country cannot tax itself into prosperity. The average American spends 40% of his productive life as a slave to the collective, and that is not enough. We as a nation then borrow even more. All of this accomplishes nothing.
2 We have been engaged in a "War on Drugs" for the better part of 40 years. What has this gotten us? No-knock warrants, property forfeiture, midnight raids, and police seizing property of citizens without trial. We have the highest level of incarceration of any advanced country, yet drugs are cheaper and easier to get than ever before. Odds are that every American reading this is within a 15 minute drive of at least one drug dealer.
3 20,000 Gun laws have resulted in the criminalization of machine guns, the carrying of weapons, mail order weapons, weapons that look scary, and weapons that are accurate over long ranges, yet gun crime still happens. Criminals still get guns. Criminals still break the law. Honest citizens are now left without the most effective tools for self defense-
Politicians do what politicians do. What do they do? Pander to whomever they can to get elected. Some pander to one side, while others pander to the other side, all the while sacrificing your rights on the alter of their careers.
Remain ever vigilant.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
I was out of the country
I was out of the country for over a week, and I voted by absentee ballot. Upon my return, we had a new President-elect. A few thoughts on the election:
1 Sure, we elected our first black President. This does not prove that we have overcome racism. Voting for a man because he is black while ignoring his stance on the issues is just as racist as NOT voting for a man because he is black while igoring his stance on the issues, yet 95% of blacks in this country did just that.
2 Anyone under the age of 30 who is complaining about Bush being the worst President ever likely has no idea what they are talking about. After all, if you are under 30, you only know 2 Presidents. (You were only 14 when Clinton entered office. What is your frame of reference?)
3 Have you read that Obama wants to have compulsory community service for all junior high, high school, and college students. On his official page (change.gov) he spells out plans for mandatory community service- 50 hours a year for junior high and high school, and 100 hours a year for college students. Since I found it, he has changed the page, but the original can be found on Google cache here.
How long until they get spiffy new uniforms, and are encouraged to inform on their parents?
1 Sure, we elected our first black President. This does not prove that we have overcome racism. Voting for a man because he is black while ignoring his stance on the issues is just as racist as NOT voting for a man because he is black while igoring his stance on the issues, yet 95% of blacks in this country did just that.
2 Anyone under the age of 30 who is complaining about Bush being the worst President ever likely has no idea what they are talking about. After all, if you are under 30, you only know 2 Presidents. (You were only 14 when Clinton entered office. What is your frame of reference?)
3 Have you read that Obama wants to have compulsory community service for all junior high, high school, and college students. On his official page (change.gov) he spells out plans for mandatory community service- 50 hours a year for junior high and high school, and 100 hours a year for college students. Since I found it, he has changed the page, but the original can be found on Google cache here.
How long until they get spiffy new uniforms, and are encouraged to inform on their parents?
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