A Visit From.....

Twas the night before Christmas & all through the house,
not a creature was stirring .... well .... except for our dwarf hamster Belle.
(I mean, she's nocturnal & all - she always seems to be training for the rodent Olympics around this time)
 
The stockings were hung in the doorway by tacks,
In hopes that they'll hold up when filled to the max.

The children were nestled, all snug in the rear seat of the minivan;
While visions of gift cards danced in their head.

With Mama Dawn on my right & my cellphone on my hip;
We'd just settled in for a long winter's trip.

When there arose from my wife such a clatter, that I slammed on the brakes to see what was the matter.

The beautiful Dawn was alarmed so I parked in a flash,
Got my cell at the ready & leaned on the dash.

Then she said with a whisper, that I heard like a clap,
The kids presents are bought, but nothing is wrapped.

The food isn't cooked, she continued to say,
And the house is a mess because I fired the maid.

With a twitch of my wrist l shifted in gear,
And floored it because Christmas soon would be here.

Faster than eagles on my course I did drive,
My family is lucky that we're all still alive.

Past Arnold & Barnhart, past Imperial & Pevely,
Then Herky & Festus, beyond Bloomsdale & Zell.

Then what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But what seemed to be a comic book hero was suddenly here.
 
She said not a word, as she looked for the tape,
I soon noticed the big "S" that was sewn on her cape.

"To the top of the Porch! To the end of the hall!
Get the kids off to bed & I will soon wrap them all."
 
As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When she meets with an obstacle, she's certain to try.

So off to the table with wrapping paper she flew,
With a sleighful of toys - and a DVD too.
 
And in a twinkling I saw gifts all under the tree,
I then ran to the kitchen to see her moving quickly.

As I shook my head & was turning around,
Amazingly now, a clean house I now found.
 
A wink of her eye and a twist of her head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

She spoke not a word, but went straight to her work,
She filled all the stockings, then looked at this jerk.
 
Removing her cape, she laid it aside,
She then rolled into bed, & laid on her side.

But I heard this refrain, as sleep ended her night,
"Merry Christmas to all & to all a goodnight!"

This has been my way to say Merry Christmas to my beautiful Dawn - the love of my life & genuine Superwife - I love you!

Journey - (it's not just a band for GLEE to cover)

Yesterday was to be my 40th birthday, but I declined the award because I didn't feel I deserved it.  I'm not sure I have 40 years worth of accomplishments to offer to the universe.  Like the song we used to sing in church, He's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be.  In other words, I'm still under construction.  But then again, aren't we all.

The only way I feel that age matters to me is in the loss of certain childhood dreams.  Like most little boys, I dreamt of playing in the pros, whether football or baseball.  Those dreams have realistically been gone for several years, but kept alive in movies such as The Natural and The Rookie (baseball) and Unnecessary Roughness and The Replacements (football) where aging men whose dreams had long been thought gone, find their moment of glory fufilled.  Today, I can no longer dream that I am a Roy Hobbs, sidetracked for a time, but still ready to find my moment on the field.  That time for me has truly passed.

With one child off to college already, I can sense that even more changes are imminent.  The road that we are on will soon come to an end and a new course will be chosen.  In truth, age has nothing to do with the journey.  As Indiana Jones once said, "It's not the years, it's the mileage".

The following is something I wrote earlier this year.  Watching the snow fall outside today, it came to mind.  I offer it again to say this - life is a journey; and on that journey, choose your passengers well.

Oh, and whatever happens on your journey - don't stop believing.

Enjoy....

In Missouri, as in what seems to be 80% of the nation, we've had a lot of snowfall.  Here in Sainte Genevieve we had a few storms that gave us a powdering to an inch or two.  But this week, we had enough snow to head for the in-laws and do some sledding.  The sun was shining and the snow had a real glaze on top; perfect for sledding. 

Two of our three children had spent the night at Nana and Papa's, so they were already out back when my wife and I arrived.  Out the back door, I walked to the top of the hill.  I saw Anna and Nate at the bottom of the hill with Finn, the little boy next door who's friends with Nate.  Papa Gary gave me the layout of the route.  Their hill slopes from two directions into a corner of their yard, fenced on one side with untamed mother nature on the other.  This can make for some odd approaches and close calls with the fence and the trees.  Papa said it was slick and fast and they had moved the disc sleds out of the rotation since they were harder to steer.   Whether because I was brave and foolhardy or I just felt my girth needed it, I grabbed a disc and said we'd see about that.  He pointed out the different paths they had taken, I picked what I thought would be the fastest and off I went.

Casual Friday Edition - 9/23/11

Calm down.  Everything is under control.  A dastardly criminal enterprise has been shut down.  Get back to your normal lives knowing all is well in America.

In case you weren't aware of it, a California couple was doing something very improper in their home; something involving a group of people.  The Fromms were cited under a municipal code in the city of San Juan Capistrano, California.  When asked for comment, Stephanie Fromm said, "How dare they tell us we can’t have whatever we want in our home".

What type of debauchery was taking place at their home?  They were holding a bible study.  I know, there goes the neighborhood.  Well, one of their neighbors, in an effort to preserve their house's value I assume, called in a complaint.  The couple have been fined $300 and must now apply for a permit to allow three or more to meet in their home to avoid further $500 fines.

The Fromms live in a neighborhood with large homes and have a corral, barn, pool and huge back lawn on their property, so parking and noise aren’t a problem. 

"There’s no singing or music,” Stephanie said. “It’s meditative.”

Well, thank God for that at least.

(h/t Gateway Pundit)

New Discovery Could Shake Scientific Consensus

Roll Over Gore: Pillar of Climate Change Challenged

Is Gore Wrong?  Galactic Cosmic Radiation Says Yes

Cern Scientists Challenge Climate Change after Cosmic Rays test

CERN scratching head over Global Cosmic Radiation

Physics Shocker!  The Sun controls cloud cover/global temperature

Climate Change Theory in a Spin as Cosmic Rays seed cloud formation

Wouldn't it have been great if the media would have been able to print accurate headlines like these just a few weeks ago following another CERN experiment (Click here for more info).  But the politics of challenging the AGW position on Climate Change is too fraught with danger for science to be allowed its proper place.

But I must say that if challenging consensus is inappropriate in Climate Change, wouldn't it seemingly be out of the question when it comes to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and his famous equation Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.  This "pillar of physics" says that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.  Even now, most scientists are in disbelief.  Notice though that no one is trying to shut down the discussion by saying the debate is over.

Yet below are the headlines declaring the results of CERN's recent experiment.  The hypocrisy in the media is beyond belief.

Roll Over Einstein: Pillar of Physics Challenged

Was Einstein Wrong? Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Says Yes

Cern scientists challenge laws of physics after 'breaking' speed ...

CERN scratching head over speed of light

Physics shocker! Neutrinos clocked faster than light

Einstein's theory in a spin as neutrinos pass speed of light

Debate Reaction

The strongest reaction of the night came when I over-anticipated a Herman Cain talking point by yelling, "CHILEAN MODEL!" a little too enthusiastically while sitting next to the beautiful Dawn.  Suffice it to say that I finished the remainder of the evening in solitude.

In small bits, one forgets that Newt Gingrich is unelectable.  I would like to see him as the VP pick, if only to see him debate Biden into the ground.

Cain is also unelectable based on foreign policy issues, but I do like his $9.99 pizza deal.

Rick Santorum seems more like the regular guy than Rick Perry, so I'm not sure where Perry's strength is anymore.  Bachmann is fading fast, while Huntsman should get his parting gift soon too.  Gary Johnson one liner was unable to overcome Gary Johnson.  I'm purposely leaving out Ron Paul.  I wish these debates would too.

Wait, you forgot Romney.  No, I didn't.  Romney is still exactly the same as he's been since 2008 - good enough to get my vote over Obama, yet has done nothing to get my vote in a primary.

In case you didn't watch, here was Johnson's big line of the night.

"My next-door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration"

I hated the format of the debate.  Too many candidates who didn't have a chance to answer each question.  It's time to thin the herd and get down to business.  How the impending collapse of our economy this week didn't come up is beyond me?

The Social Contract

Get ready for the new liberal talking point - The Social Contract.  The Social Contract outlines the relationship between a people and its government.  Our nation was founded on the Social Contract as espoused by John Locke.  He recognized a Law of Nature (moral law) that man  would live by on his own, but for man to live without fear of those who chose to act against this law, he would collectively consent to be governed.

This government would be a neutral party to protect what is outlined in our Declaration of Independence as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of which property rights were a foundation.  This goverment "derives it's power from the consent of the governed".

Locke argued that government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the government of their right of self-preservation. The government thus acts as an impartial, objective agent of the people, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executioner--the condition that takes place in the absence of government.

Locke was the foremost authority on political philosophy with the majority of America's founders.

But when the left begin to speak of a social contract, don't be fooled.  They do not refer to Locke, but to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Whereas Locke's theory was about personal freedom and a government designed first and foremost to protect that freedom, Rousseau emphasized the collective over the individual.

[The social contract] can be reduced to the following terms: Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

Rousseau envisioned the government as the seat of power, rather than the individual.  He thought that man often had "to be forced to be free" in that popular sovereignty was to decide what is good for the whole.

The Bill of Rights, is a direct repudiation of Rousseau's Social Contract and an embrace of Locke's.

So if you hear someone such as Paul Krugman or Elizabeth Warren say that the Social Contract means that one's property and/or it's proceeds, belong to society, the state or anyone other than the rightful owner, then understand what they are saying.  They are expressing a desire to force upon us a popular-elected socialistic state rather than the representative government, free market society our founders intended. 

They wish to wield the popular will of the masses against the minority, the Bill of Rights be damned.  Today it is class warfare against the rich.  Tomorrow, it will be the young against the elderly under Obamacare.  Before one smugly exclaims "take from the wealthy", be sure to reflect upon how the Bill of Rights may one day be your sole refuge against the state when it turns its eye upon you.

Only under Rousseau's Social Contract could the state ever believe that it has the right to fine an individual for holding a quiet, orderly Bible study on that individual's own property. 

Unfortunately, we currently have a president who agrees with them and is actively working to stir the masses for his own political gain.  Taxes to pay for the roads and the military may flow from Locke.  But taxes to take from one and give to another is not Locke.  Its not Jefferson or Madison either.  It's also not American.

We Need an Economic "Gamechanger"

I've done my best over the past few days to emphasize that President Obama's "tax the wealthy" plan has the potential to do great harm to our floundering economy while doing nothing to overcome our pile of debt.  The idea that increased tax rates will result in associated revenue increases is not backed up by historical data. 

Throughout the past several decades, the top tax rate has fluctuated from as high as 91% in the early '60s to 28% at the end of the '80s to our current 35%.  Yet despite the huge difference between 91% and 28%, our revenue has consistently remained around 18% of GDP. 

The changes in actual tax revenue tracks more closely to economic contraction/expansion than tax rates.  In good economic times, even with an expanding GDP, revenue as a percentage of GDP increases, whereas as revenues decrease as a percentage of GDP during recession, despite a falling GDP.  During our current economic hard times, revenue sits at about 16% of GDP, but reached 21% at the height of the '90s tech bubble.

Conclusion #1:  If you want to increase revenue, you need to expand GDP.

It's time to toss aside the class warfare talk of what's fair and just talk about what works.  Raising tax rates is not stimulative and does not correlate with increased revenues or an expanding GDP, so there is no economic value in doing so.

But something must be done.  Doing nothing is not an option.  The following chart shows us that we can't just wait for something good to happen.

The biggest problem we face is not a true lack of revenue, but an explosion in our spending.  Even aside from the temporary spending measures put into place over the past few years, our entitlement growth will continue us on an unsustainable path.  Tax revenue in this chart is displayed at the historic average of 18% of GDP.

For those who believe that simply raising taxes will bring in enough additional revenue to fix this problem, here is another chart.

As it shows, even if we assume that we could hold revenue at our highest recorded percentage to GDP, we would still be swamped by the rising red ink.  What we are left with is this - we are not on a path to recovery, we have lagging revenue with no realistic plan to increase it and even if we could magically assume record revenues, it still wouldn't be good enough to bring our deficits under control.

The fact is we are at a crossroads.  We cannot continue down the path that we are on.  The same game of small adjustments here and there will not be sufficient.  It's at moments like this, that something drastic needs to happen.  What we need is a gamechanger and it is this - dramatically cut spending to expand the economy.

I can hear the collective gasp arising from the gallery, but wait a moment before you hit that "close tab" button.  I can show evidence of how this has worked before.

Our debt currently sits at 42% of GDP, the highest it has been since WWII.  But in the early '90s, Canada's overspending had put its debt at 53% of GDP.  At that point, they began a gamechanging plan.  They cut spending very dramatially and instituted new market reforms and tax cuts.  They consistently balanced the budget.  This chart shows the results.

The Canadian economy boomed as spending was cut.  Average growth matched the highs of the mid-90s U.S. economy until the 2009 recession took its toll.  Despite a small uptick, their debt is again on a downward trajectory and sits 10% less than before they changed course.  Their dollars are now more valuable than ours as our debt levels are heading in the opposite direction.

During that same time period, Japan was following the same Keynesian spending plans that Obama is proposing.  The results were atrocious.  Economists now refer to that time period as Japan's "Lost Decade".

The Keynesian economic model has been refuted time and again.  Look at how government spending affects states.  In data compiled from 1968-2008, here is a quick summary:

• When a state's Senator ascended to the chair of one of the top-three committees, earmarks in the following year increased between 40% and 50%, and discretionary state-level Federal transfers increased about 10%.  In the median case, that represented a $200 million increase in Federal spending directed to that state.

• In response, the average firm in the median state cut its employment growth rate by 3% to 13%, reduced capital expenditures by approximately 15% or $39 million, R&D expenditures by roughly 10% or $34 million and experienced a decline in sales.  They also increased their dividend payouts by 13%, suggesting fewer investment opportunities.  These results were even more pronounced for firms within industries targeted by the Federal spending and for firms that did not have overseas operations, and therefore were more exposed to the effects of the increase in Federal spending on their home state's economy.

Co-author Professor Coval says, "Our findings suggest that they (public policymakers) should revisit their belief that Federal spending can stimulate private economic development."

Conclusion #2:  Spending cuts expand the economy while increased government spending causes contraction.

In other words, cutting into the deficit by dramatically decreasing government spending can help grow the economy, producing jobs which will increase tax revenue helping pay down the (now reduced)deficit.

As Paul Ryan has stated many times, "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem".  They say the first step to recovery is understanding that you have a problem.  Getting both parties to admit that we have a problem can lead us to the real gamechanger that we need. 

Until then, expect more nonsense about what's fair as Congress and the President fight over who will be allowed to get in the lifeboats as the unsinkable United States of American slowly takes on more water.

Where's Obama?

Remember playing Where's Waldo? 

Even my eight year old son immediately saw the problem with this picture.  It seems the president's narcissistic streak just won't allow him to simply be one of many, even if his little "hey, I'm over here" gesture completely obscures someone else in the photo.  After all, isn't everything about The One?

So, what do you think the woman in black is thinking?

Why the "Buffett Rule" Can't Work

At first glance, President Obama's new tax on the wealthy - the so-called "Buffett Rule", in honor of Billionaire investor Warren Buffett - will appear to be a good step to bringing our sky-rocketing budget deficit under control.  This year's fight over the debt ceiling only produced $38 billion in spending cuts, so it's hard to see a way forward without some new revenue.  The wealthiest Americans, primarily those who can rightfully be called millionaires, can surely spare a little change to help the country out.

Daniel Indiviglio, puts pen to paper in the Atlantic to calculate just how much it will help us to have the rich pay their "fair share", but what he found isn't what you might expect. 

His chart (see right) shows the varying amounts of additional income that can be collected from our nation's millionaires.  The red line near the top is our current year budget deficit. 

(Invidiglio uses the actual reported incomes and makes no assumptions as to how increased rates may change behavior.  In reality, the actual amount of income reported would decrease were rates increased.)

As the chart shows, raising the baseline 29.1% to a flat 35% only brings in an additional $37 billion.  In fact, even if you confiscated 100% of the yearly income for all millionaires, we would still be a trillion dollars short of closing the deficit under Obama.  We might think that the wealthy have all the money, but they don't.  They have a lot, but there just aren't enought of them.  We must remember the top 1% is outnumbered 99-1.

Indiviglio's conclusion is this -

So this Buffett Rule is a great populist proposal if the president wants to score some political points, but it has little practical value. It might provide the government a little bit of additional revenue, but unless extremely aggressive, it wouldn't make a dent in the nation's deficit problem. To do that, you'll need to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes much more broadly.

One reason this seems contrary is because of how often it is said that the wealthy are not paying their fair share.  But in truth, not only are they paying their fair share, they're paying well above it.  The top 1% earn 19% of total income but pay 37% of all taxes. 

If that is not a fair share, then I need someone to explain to me what would be.  What share of the tax burden would one consider to be a "fair share"?

Isn't it time we stopped placing blame and pointing fingers at each other?  Instead of tearing each other down, can we just get back to finding a way to grow the economy rather than government?  After all, no one ever complains about a "fair share" when there is plenty to go around.

This is not Math; it's Class Warfare

President Obama has been woefully misinformed.  That is putting yesterday's speech in the best light.  Others, and I don't blame them for saying such, accept that the president is pushing an outright lie in order to aid his re-election.  I prefer to believe that Obama is not attempting to purposefully sabotage our nation, but it is becoming more difficult to do so.

In 2009, the president said that raising taxes during a recession would be bad.  Our economy is currently on the verge of another recession.  Apparently, someone needs to mention this to the president because yesterday, Obama proposed a $1.5 trillion tax increase.  If passed, that would be detrimental to a recovery by his own admission.

This year households earning more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1% of their income in taxes.  Households earning $50,000 - $75,000 will pay 15% of their income in taxes.  The Associated Press fact check states,

On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

Despite the obvious data, President Obama continued to argue that the wealthy shouldn't get a better deal on taxes than "ordinary families".  He added, "This is not class warfare, it’s math."  Maybe he needs to grab a calculator.

The Jobs Conundrum

All across America, the cry is, "We  need more jobs!".  But in truth, a better cry is, "We need more Jobs!".  Don't look at me like I'm messing with you.  I promise that what I just said will make sense in the end.

At one of the recent Republican primary debates, the question was asked how much out of every dollar that one earns do they deserve to keep.  I can't remember what the answer at the debate was, but the correct answer is this - a person deserves to keep every bit of what they earn*.  That such a question even needs to be asked is a testament to how far removed we are from our nation's founding.

(I will avoid the issue of church tithing as a matter affecting this issue.  As my Pastor likes to say, it's all His anyway, but he lets you keep 90%.  Even with the Almighty, he offers Free Will to allow us to make that choice.)

The problem with the question is that it confuses a level of taxation with the issue of who should the money belong to.  The idea that individuals deserve the entirety of what they earn has no implication on taxes anymore than what one might spend on electricity or gasoline.  Just as a person chooses how much of their "earnings" to allocate toward electricity or gasoline, they choose how much will be allocated toward taxation. 

Obviously, the manner we go about choosing how much to pay in taxes is different on a certain level.  As voters, we collectively determine the rates of taxation, whether property, sales, payroll or income taxes, we will choose to abide.  But even once rates are determined, we still have a tremendous amount of discretion in how much we will choose to pay.

How Not to Create a Job and Spend $447 Billion Doing It

Yesterday the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual report on the state of poverty in America which stated that 46.2 million Americans were poor last year.  That translates into the fact that one in seven of us are living in poverty.

Naturally, the quickest way to lower that number is to get the private sector business environment in gear so that good jobs are available to those in this demographic.  Unfortunately, President Obama's new jobs plan appears to be mostly rehashed spending from the first stimulus law in 2009.  Look inside and you will see (not shovel-ready) infrastructure projects, additional bail-out funds to states, along with subsidies and loan guarantees to fund Green jobs.

One of the proposals in the president's plan is the payroll tax cut.  Congress could do some good by following through on this one and perhaps extending it through 2013.  It's still difficult to see how much benefit can come from a temporary cut, but by having the lower rate in place for two years it would make employers definitely consider it in hiring.  The Republicans proposed this in 2009 as an alternative to Obama's spendathon, but he and his Congressional leaders refused to listen. 

Of course paying for it is problematic.  Obama's plan to raise taxes in 2013 on the very people that he expects to do all this hiring is absolute lunacy.  His plan is pretty straight forward.  To employers he's saying, "please take some money and hire some people, then after you help me get re-elected I'll ask for all that money back".

Better would be to reform the entire tax code into a flatter, wider and simpler system eliminating the massive loopholes in our current system.  This would have the side benefit of eliminating some of the accounting drag on businesses.  A simpler tax code has the same effect as loosening regulations.  It allows more of a business's activities to be about productivity which leads to less overhead, greater profits, greater growth which of course leads to more hiring.

Infrastructure plays a large part in Obama's jobs plan.  But this has no chance of helping create jobs in the near term.  Let's take a step back and evaluate our transportation funding.  For the year 2008, transportation funding was $10.7 billion.  For 2010 funding doubled to $21.3 billion.  On top of this was the $48.1 billion that was part of Stimulus I.  So in two years we increased spending by $58 billion and the president wants to add another $50 billion, which is utter nonsense if he wants the money to be stimulative.  There are not enough good quality projects where we can spend the money already allocated.  It will be years before this new money could be matched up with any projects of value.  You just can't increase spending by ten-fold in this way and expect to see short term results.

Yes we need to work on our infrastructure.  But we need to do it in a frugal manner and while instituting a real long term plan.  There was a large outcry about the Bridge to Nowhere, but how many "bridge to nowhere"-type projects will be wrongly funded as we try to spend money as quick as we can?

As for the Green job funding, keep the name Solyndra in your memory.  You will hear much about it over the next year.  The solar panel manufacturer received over $500 million in loan guarantees from Stimulus I, but went bankrupt recently and 1,100 people lost their jobs.  The FBI raided their offices last week, but recent emails point to the White House pressuring the OMB to make the loan in 2009.  One analyst even stated that Solyndra would run out of money in September 2011.  The date Solyndra filed for bankruptcy - September 6, 2011.

Also not mentioned is that nearly half of the original $36 billion renewable energy loan program in Stimulus I has yet to be given out.  Aside from that we have the millions of dollars spent for energy efficient upgrading and weatherization that have succeeded thus far in creating one job for every $5 million spent.  Pouring anymore down those money pits would be beyond foolish.

Then the president believes we need to send even more tax dollars to states so that they can once again put off making tough decisions.  The truth is a lot of states are in bad financial shape and cuts need to be made - the sooner the better.  A temporary bailout will not eliminate the problem.  When states refuse to make the necessary cuts, the threat of increased taxes loom.  In that environment, businesses are left to worry about those kind of changes to their bottom line.  So where is this type of stimulus creating jobs?

Finally, Obama believes we need to extend unemployment benefits even further.  At the risk of angering some readers, let me say that this is ridiculous.  In what world does the president believe paying people to stay home will get more people working?  If there was any substantial effect from the recipients of government aid helping stimulate the economy, then we wouldn't be in the fix that we find ourselves. 

If it's solely to help the unemployed, then we are doing the opposite of what we should be doing.  Basic economic textbooks, along with real life experience, will tell you that unemployment payments extend unemployment.  Even worse, chronic unemployment makes each potential worker unemployable in the eyes of the men and women who hire.  This is why, even when a government program helps an employer to create jobs, only half of those jobs went to the unemployed.  Instead, employers poached workers from other companies.

Contrary to popular thinking, the solution to our problems today is to simply put into place the type of common sense reforms that will help our economy at any time.  The idea that we need temporary efforts for a temporary problem comes from a misunderstanding of how the economy works.

Last year, the Cash for Clunkers was a good example of a failed temporary policy.  It didn't create new car buyers, but it did cause people who already planned on buying a care to move up the timing of their purchase to qualify.  In the end, it was not an incentive to cause people to purchase a car and the end result was that the price of used cars went up thanks to all the quality used cars that were taken out of circulation.  In effect, the government gave a lot of money to the middle class and affluent to buy a new car and caused the poor to pay more for a used car.

Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. President.  We don't need anymore of that type of help.  Stimulus II: Economic Boogaloo and Cash for Green Clunkers just won't work.  You talked a big game about reforming Washington.  Isn't it time we tried something we know will work, like tax reform?  See Reagan, Ronald Wilson, 1981-1988 in the White House records if you need some pointers on how best to proceed.  We're getting a little bit tired of waiting for you to become the one we've been waiting for.

Where Does Your Arrow Point?

Ever wondered where your political leanings were in the greater scheme of society?  Head over to PoliticalCompass.org and take their test to see where you fall on a political compass graph.  Rather than a simple left/right line measurement, it includes an x-axis authoritarian/libertarian plotting point also.  Click here to take the test.

Here is the result of my test.

I score 5.88 to the right on the economic scale and 0.00 on the social scale.  This feels correct to me.  I've never been drawn to the big Libertarian politics.  I'm for setting good, wide boundary lines for an open playing field, but for enforcing strongly the few rules that I would put in place.

As for the economic scale, it comes as no surprise that I fall well to the right into the conservative/classical liberalism side.  In the studies that formed my opinions and thoughts, I've ready many of the same writers that influenced our Founding Fathers, so to see that my political compass points in much the same direction as theirs is not unexpected.  A few rules, strictly enforced seems to be my guiding thought.

My only gripe is this - my belief in few rules, but strictly enforced is in the middle of the social axis, then why shouldn't a belief in few rules, but strictly enforced be in the middle of the economic axis also.  I find it sad that it is not.

On-Air with the Pseudo-Intellectual Elite

When poetry represents historical scholarship, a Hollywood film is hard science and Wikipedia becomes the final arbiter of fact, one should be careful about saddling up their high horse and denouncing the intelligence of anyone.  Yet time and time again, the leftists in the media rush to rebuke conservatives as unintelligent buffoons.

In June, while speaking in Boston Sarah Palin mentioned that Paul Revere had warned the British that "they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms by ringin' those bells and by makin' sure that as he's ridin' his horse through town to send those warnin' shots and bells that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free … and we were gonna be armed."

Naturally, the liberal left began reciting the Longfellow poem and thought to themselves, "Hey, there's nothing in there about Revere warning the British or warning shots and bells."  Using all the knowledge they had garnered of Paul Revere from their childhood, they felt safe to openly mock her.  From Mediate:

CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, who was covering the story this afternoon, could barely contain her contempt as Palin described Paul Revere “sending those warning shots and bells” to tell Americans that “the British weren’t taking away our arms.” 

Palin strung together an off-the-cuff explanation of the famed Midnight Ride for those listening that seemed to involve a ton of noise, bells, gunfire, and a warning that the British were out to take away Americans’ as-yet-nonexistent Second Amendment rights, which Baldwin couldn’t help but react to with deer-in-the-headlights confusion. “History lesson from Sarah Palin on the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” she deadpanned.

I can just hear her saying, "That stupid Sarah Palin.  Revere didn't warn the British.  Duh!" 

The following is an excerpt from Brandeis University professor David Hackett Fischer's book Paul Revere's Ride entailing the events that took place following Revere's capture on the night of his famous ride:

At last the [British] officers began to feel the full import of what Paul Revere had been telling them. His words of warning took on stronger meaning when punctuated by gunfire. The sound of a single shot had suggested to them that surprise was lost. The crash of a volley appeared evidence that the country was rising against them. As they came closer to the Common they began to hear Lexington's town bell clanging rapidly. The captive Loring, picking up Revere's spirit, turned to the officers and said,"The bell's a'ringing! The town's alarmed, and you're all dead men !"

The media was so ignorant of the actual history, that they didn't even comprehend what Palin was saying.  If they had been smarter than a 5th grader, they would have remembered that Revere was captured during his ride.  Revere (and Loring) used the shots and bells to warn the British regulars it was a sign the citizens were prepared to fight.  As Palin correctly points out, the pretense for the British mission was to confiscate guns.

Another kerfuffle developed earlier this year when Michelle Bachmann hailed the "different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions" of the European settlers who formed our nation to highlight the diversity and tolerance of our founding.  She also noted that the founders, notably "men like John Quincy Adams... would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

The criticism came immediately from the talking heads that Bachmann was a "bubblehead" for believing the founders ended slavery.  But that is not what she said.  I can say that I will not rest until I've extinguished stupidity, but if stupidity should outlive me, that would not invalidate what I've said.  It just means I failed.

If only they had bothered to check their research library - I mean - Wikipedia on John Q. Adams,

...he was famous as the most prominent national leader opposing slavery....Adams vilified slavery as a terrible evil and preached total abolition.

In 1841, Adams had the case of a lifetime, representing the defendants in United States v. The Amistad Africans in the Supreme Court of the United States.   He successfully argued that the Africans....should be considered free.  [His] speech was directed not only at the justices of this Supreme Court hearing the case, but also to the broad national audience he instructed in the evils of slavery.

Adams repeatedly spoke out against the "Slave Power"...

You would think the left would have known this already.  After all, Amistad was a movie.  But when the founders and slavery are found in the same story, the Constitution's 3/5th clause is used to disparage the document and the men who wrote it.  What many don't realize is that this was an anti-slavery clause. 

All free men, no matter their race or ethnicity were held as equals in principle, if not in  practice.  The Northern founders wanted to limit the slave trade and didn't want slaves (considered property with no right to vote or citizenship) to count towards a state's population for the purposes of apportioning representatives to the new national legislature. That would have given the Southern states, whose framers were insisting on a full count, a voting advantage. (before parties, political power often came from geography)  So, the delegates to the Philadelphia convention of 1787 agreed to the three-fifths compromise.

While certain statements by Bachmann can be considered controversial, that doesn't make their substance incorrect.  Too often the media elite considers anything it finds contrary to their world view baseless, and attack it out of ignorance.

In last week's speech, President Obama made a small error when he said that Abraham Lincoln had started the Republican Party.  Unlike when a Palin or Bachmann make such a gaffe, there was no outcry against our "bubblehead-in-chief" getting history wrong.  In fact, PBS (government funded television) edited out the remark in their transcript of the speech. (nothing to see here, move along)

Also seemingly washed away was the president's 57 states, speaking Austrian and "corpse-man" gaffes along with many others.  But of course it would be wrong to expose those, because Obama is obviously so much more intelligent than conservatives that there is no reason to question it or even release his collegiate grades.

For the media, the "he's dumb" schtick only applies to politicians on the right.  Recently, the MSNBC team took offense when Texas governor Rick Perry  described Social Security as a Ponzi scheme during a Republican debate.  Chris Matthews said that was crazy talk and Lawrence O'Donnell quickly googled the term to explain a Ponzi scheme was named after Charles Ponzi, a fact that we already knew and noted that it was a criminal endeavor, which we all also knew.  

A Ponzi scheme, according to O'Donnell's research database(Wikipedia) is an

...operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors.... The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going.

And Social Security is so very different.  Why just listen to Noble prize winning economist Paul Samuelson gush about the wonders of our Social Security program in 1967.

The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in....

How is it possible? It stems from the fact that the national product is growing at a compound interest rate and can be expected to do so for as far ahead as the eye cannot see. Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real income going up at 3% per year, the taxable base on which benefits rest is always much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired…

Social Security is squarely based on what has been called the eight wonder of the world — compound interest. A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox. [Emphasis mine]

Naturally, he doesn't know what he's talking about.  Let's check back with Chris Matthews, who we last saw wondering how Perry could appeal to independents with such crazy talk about Ponzi schemes.  The next day on his own show HARDBALL, in a discussion with former Speaker Tip O'Neill, Matthews said this,

Today, lots of people fortunately make it past 65. They live into their 80s and 90s. They’re still getting checks. The system doesn’t work that way anymore. It’s not as healthy as it once was. So, how does a Republican deal with the fact it is a Ponzi scheme in the sense that the money that’s paid out every day is coming from people who paid in that day? It’s not being made somewhere.[Emphasis mine]

As Samuelson noted, Social Security's fiscal soundness is reliant on an expanding youth population.  But as Matthews explained, what we actually have now is an expanding retiree population.  In a Ponzi scheme, "once investment slows down, the scheme will begin to collapse under its own weight as the promoter starts having problems paying the promised returns ." 

An investment scheme that seems too good to be true in the beginning yet turns into a bad deal as the number of new investors (taxpayers) dwindles?  Well, maybe Perry is not quite so off base now, is he?  In fact, Governor Perry is simply a realist who knows we need a solution that can overcome the basic fallacy inherent to the program.

During the same debate Perry, in defending his stance that a scientific consensus does not necessarily equate to good science on Climate Change, mentioned that Galileo was on the outs with consensus too.  He analogized that Galileo had been outvoted in the past.

In the immediate post-debate coverage on MSNBC, Al Sharpton spoke up to show how he felt about Perry's "anti-science" stand by saying he didn't understand all this talk of "Galeo".  The viewer was left to ponder whether he was disagreeing with Perry's statement,  whether he was unaware of Galileo's history or whether he just had no idea who "Galeo" or Galileo was or why Perry mentioned him or her or whatever a "Galeo" was in the first place.

Can you imagine how hard it must be to jump into that void on a national TV and begin talking, when you have absolutely no knowledge base to speak of?  For too many in the media, Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth is as close to hard science as they get.  What they may not realize is that a British court ruled that this movie contained factual errors and could only be shown in schools with a set of guidelines.

Our psuedo-intellectual elites in the media mock conservatives as anti-science, yet they have no idea who Richard Lindzen, or Jasper Kirby or Hans Svensmark are despite the fact that they each have been a part of important research that contradicts the "consensus" on Climate Change recently.   Instead, Chris Matthews likes to ask conservatives if they believe in evolution, then laughs at whoever answers incorrectly.  For the longest time I thought Chris was doing a homage to IDIOCRACY with this bit.  The irony that a question of belief substitutes as a statement of scientific merit obviously escapes him.

Are there intelligent leftist in the media?  In my heart, I believe there are.  But for now I have no empirical evidence of it.  But despite the facts, I will continue to believe they exist on faith.  It's the least I can do for a group of people who have such utter faith that they are right, even when all evidence is to the contrary.

Of Life and Love and Death (Remembering 9/11)

Ten years ago today, at the same time as I'm writing this, United Airlines Flight 93 took off from Newark International Airport.  In four minutes, American Airlines Flight 11 will crash into the World Trade Center's north tower.  Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 will crash into the south tower.  Another 34 minutes later, American Airlines Flight 77 will crash into the western side of the Pentagon.

It was about this time that the passengers of Flight 93 became aware of what was taking place in New York City.  It was then they understood that the hijackers were not taking their plane to an airport.  They faced a choice whether to sit idly by and allow themselves to be used as an instrument of death or to act and become an instrument of death by their own choosing.

Having made their choice, the passengers began the mission with two words that make the heart of this American beat proudly, "Let's roll."  At that same moment, units of the NYPD and NYFD were on the scene of the WTC doing their heroic best to evacuate the building.

Twenty minutes later the south tower would begin to collapse.  As people fought for life and death to escape the WTC, a life and death struggle was taking place in the skies.  A few minutes later, Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed coal strip mine near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, just twenty minutes short of Washington, D.C.

As the passengers of Flight 93 finished one suicide mission, others raced into the north tower on another.  Twenty-five minutes later, the north tower collapsed on them.  Efforts continued amidst the ashes and wreckage for survivors.

On that day, the lives of 2,977 were taken from us.  All were civilians, with the exception of 55 military personnel at the Pentagon.  Sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives - we were all brothers and sisters.

For me, it is impossible to properly memorialize or commemorate this occasion.  I will not write one of those  "Where was I?" remembrances because in this story I don't matter.  This isn't about me.

This is about the passengers of Flight 93 without whom the White House or the Capitol may not still be standing today.  It's about the Pentagon workers, the fireman, police and bystanders who sacrificed themselves with no thought for their own life.

This is a story of life and love and death.  This is a story of America. 

While the enemy embarked on an organized suicide mission to reign death from the skies, unknown Americans with no guidance or direction, spontaneously offered their life to save the life of another. 

"Greater love has no one than this,

that one lay down his life for his friends" 

John 15:13 (NASB)

In what could have been written off as a day of defeat for America, we can celebrate the life and love of those who were lost to us that day.  Humble men and women who fought to their dying breath for an America that will never be lost as long as we continue to  produce men and women such as them.

CASSIE (9/11) version *

written by Lacey Mosley with alternate lyrics by Sam Ritter

The nation watched in horror

as our peaceful world was shaken

No answer apparent, why life

and love was taken.

But, "WE BELIEVE IN GOD"

was written in the ashes.

The Son gave to them a peace

beyond understanding passes.

They didn't love their lives so much

as to shrink from death.

Inspired in their footsteps

we will march ahead.

Don't be shocked that people died.

Be surprised you're still alive.

All heads are bowed in silent reverence.

The floor is wet with tears of sorrowful remembrance.

The altar is filled with hearts of repentance.

Perfect love kills all fear, rejoice in this deliverance.

They didn't love their lives so much

as to shrink from death.

Inspired in their footsteps

we will march ahead.

Don't be shocked that people died.

Be surprised you're still alive.

*  In 2003, the band Flyleaf released the song Cassie, which was the writer, Lacey Mosley's view of the Columbine massacre.  Cassie refers to Cassie Bernall, the girl who was supposedly asked whether she believed in God and who was shot after answering affirmatively.  Much of the song could have easily been written of 9/11, so I wrote a few alternate lyrics and the beautiful Dawn will sing this at church today.