Illegal drugs

I'm hearing people talking about how drugs should be legalized, and how laws
against drugs are causing people "damage" because they're being caught up in
some sort of legal web. What?? If you don't want to be caught up in a
"legal web" because of drugs, DON'T USE DRUGS. Drugs are bad, drugs cause
damage to your brain and body. And, drugs are illegal. Don't do things
that are illegal and bad for you. It's common sense. Is it a miraculous
coincidence that people who use drugs also don't have common sense? You
decide.

A modest proposal

I am not a rich person, but I would like to be. I like rich people. They
work hard, they save their money, and they are successful. Rich people also
own and run the businesses that provide most of the jobs in this country. I
aspire to these ideals, and I respect those who embody them. I do NOT like
people who take advantage of the system, who ask for handouts, and who want
to raise the taxes of the people who have worked hard for their success.
Taxes are not going to be raised for any legitimate purpose. They are going
to be raised because the government is a massively bloated leech that only
knows how to grow and consume more and more. In the last four years, we
have not seen a President who wants a "balanced" approach. He SAYS he wants
a "balanced" approach, but what balanced means to him is, we are going to
take money in the form of taxes away from the side that IS successful, and
we are going to give it to the other side that, for whatever reason, is NOT
successful. We are approaching a tipping point, the never-ending tax and
spend cannot continue.

Therefore, I would like to make a proposition. I call for a temporary show
of force from the wealthy and successful people in America. Show the powers
that be that it is YOUR money that keeps the economy afloat, not the heavy
hand of the government. It is not an entirely simple thing that I would
suggest, but I think if enough successful Americans participated, a SERIOUS
point would be made. It may sound ridiculous, but here is my plan.

Go to the store and buy a safe. A big, secure safe. Have it installed in
your home, in a location that can be locked down adequately. Have your
security system updated to protect this area, and install additional locks
and gates if necessary. Then, go to the bank, withdraw all of your money,
and put it into your safe. Go to the brokerage, cash in your securities,
cash the check, and put this into your safe. Cash in any bonds that you
have, and put this money into your safe. Put your credit cards into the
safe as well. Limit your purchasing to the absolute necessities, and if you
do need to buy anything, buy in the most limited quantity feasible. Now,
lock the safe and go watch TV or whatever it is you like to do to relax. Do
this for one month. While you are sitting and watching TV, if you know any
politicians, or know anyone who does know any politicians, call them up and
tell them that YOU are going to use a "balanced" approach. You are going to
keep what's yours, and let other people keep what's theirs, and you're going
to do this for a while. Now wait, I would suggest one month to start.

By doing this, you will participate in an almost instantaneous, entirely
reversible halt to the American economy. There will be no loans. There
will be no money in the banks. The trucks and trains will stop,
construction will stop, paychecks will stop, nearly everything will stop.
The government will scramble, emergency stockpiles will be tapped, there
will be utter panic from all corners of the country. Then, just as calmly
as you cashed your accounts and investments and placed the cash into your
safe, go back to the bank, go back to the brokerage, and reinvest your
money. Then pick up the phone again, call your politician friend, and let
them know that there's plenty more where that came from, and you won't
hesitate to pull your money out of the economy again if you hear any more
talk about "asking the rich to pay a little bit more".

Suddenly, almost like magic, a new respect will emerge for America's
wealthy. You will no longer be looked at as evil and greedy. You will be
looked at as the beneficent hand that feeds, and that it is at YOUR whim
that the American economy rolls along, not that of the politicians or the
greedy poor who want something for nothing. A new respect will emerge for
the power of money, YOUR money. Almost as quickly, we will hear politicians
saying things like "we need to cut spending". What a great sound THAT will
be.

America II

On the state of the election, here is a continuation of my view on that. Remember Ted Kennedy? He murdered someone, and he was then re-elected by a zealous Democratic state for decades. Based on what I saw Tuesday, I would have to guess that if there weren't term limits, Obama might be on track to do the same thing. Re-election for decades to come. Not for any particular reason, Democrats don't use reason, they use feelings. And so, by extension, I can see a future where WHOEVER they pick to run in 2016 will be elected, NOT because they have merit, but because they aren't the Republican candidate. Every four years, there will be an election, our situation will be further worsened, and the campaign will point to "how bad things are because of the Republicans" and the Democrats will continue to put in rabidly liberal candidates because they "feel" that they are the answer. At some point, the gridlock generated by having a Republican House will become their target, and we will lose our foothold there, and things will accelerate downwards.

Yesterday, I was thinking that things were going to get REALLY bad before they got better. Now, I'm not so sure about the getting better part. I think we're going to have four more years of Obama, and then eight more
years of some other Democrat, and then eight MORE years of some other Democrat. All the while, the Republican base will be shrinking as older people pass on, and as younger, more strident liberals are minted at the colleges and universities. We will keep hearing about how bad the Republicans are, how their policies got us into this mess, and the worse it gets, the stronger the argument will become that Republican policies are bad. How could they NOT be bad, they've already tagged us with the current fiscal disaster, and the situation just keeps getting worse and worse and worse, doesn't it? (of course none of this has to do with forcing banks to give home loans to people who can't afford them. And who could those people be? And WHY would we want to do that? Legislated "fairness" and "equality"?) So we'll be blamed for that too. THEY will take responsibility for trying to fix it, but it won't get fixed, because they don't know how to fix it. They won't ever grasp that the reason things are bad now is because the proper policies weren't put in place in a timely fashion.

The key to my argument is that they won't ever take responsibility for or ownership of fixing the problem, only keeping the blame squarely on the Republicans. And somehow...AMAZINGLY, somehow...they will continue to fool people into thinking that, because they're "fixing" the problem that was started by the Republicans, THEY are the ones best positioned to fix it. They will make a decades-long campaign of "hope". NOT "results", but
"hope". As we've pointed out before, liberalism is their religion, and they have faith. They don't need to see results, results aren't what they're after, just the hope of an ultimate triumphant victory over "evil", which in
this case is the Republicans. (As a side note to this, nasty campaigning will become the norm. As liberals, they don't see the moral downside to nasty campaigning. They will wage bitter campaigns that always paint the
Republican as evil, no matter what the truth is. Republicans who are "evil" in their eyes will continue to use moral arguments, but they won't have any bite, because as conservatives, we aim to stay above that level.)

Look at what happened in Detroit. Detroit is a bombed-out shell of the vibrant American center of industry and commerce it once was. It is now a dead urban jungle. And yet, while it was on the decline, and as the decline
worsened over decades, and as it hit rock bottom, the Democrats continued to elect their people to MANAGE the decline. THIS is what's coming. I'm not happy about it. I'm terrified. But this is what's coming. Because the
Democrats don't have a god, nor common sense, only "faith". Misguided, irrational faith.

This time, we will get more liberal Supreme Court justices. Next time, we will get another liberal President and more liberal Supreme Court Justices. Maybe the next time, an even more solidly liberal Senate and maybe then a
liberal House. The fervor will grow, the conservatives will despair, the electorate will shift to 60% liberal, and then 70% liberal, and the tilt will accelerate. There is apparently no way to fix the mental programming
that is going on that makes it possible. Once someone gives up on god and common sense, and they are convinced that they can vote for what makes them feel good, no amount of convincing can help them see that they need to take their medicine first. Why? Why the HELL would they do that? Doing the hard thing isn't fun!! They will keep hitting the button that makes them feel good, even though the rewards will come more and more sporadically. Eventually we'll be in ruins. But they STILL won't get it. They'll just point to the Republicans that "got us there in the first place" as the enemy.

I hope I'm wrong.

Instant Gratification

This is the only message I can get out of what happened yesterday. There's often a difference between what "feels good", and what "is good".  Sometimes, you have to delay gratification beyond the instantaneous "good
feeling" in order to realize ultimate good. Some people, many people apparently, need some sort of reminder that what FEELS good isn't necessarily what IS good, and instantaneous gratification may in fact undermine what in fact IS good.

If God represents the ultimate good, then deference to God is the process that one might use to delay gratification. If common sense points to the ultimate good, then common sense would be the method. Of course, believers who also have common sense have two methods of accomplishing this goal. But for those among us who lack God and also lack common sense, there is no method that allows for delayed gratification, and in fact, delayed gratification would be a negative, something that at it's very core contradicts the belief system they have that substitutes for and masquerades as common sense in their minds.

Having said this, I still don't know what the answer is. The same people who voted wrong in this election will be even more energized to vote wrong in the next election, because they will continue to blame the same people
and reasons for why things are as bad as they are. Their response will be to continue voting for the people who offer the most immediate form of instantaneous gratification, since that is of course the most obvious fix
for the problem, isn't it? In the meantime, more young people will come of voting age, and more of them in an accelerated fashion will have been educated via materials, methods and educators who have molded the youngest generations leading up to this point.

We are outnumbered. There are more people poking holes in our ship -- for what they believe are good reasons -- than there are people trying to fix the problem. The only thing we can do is to continue bailing as the ship
sinks. If the ship sinks, it sinks. We will have stuck to our morals and values, and we will have tried our best. Maybe we'll think of some way to bail more efficiently. Maybe the ever-worsening conditions will at some
point shock the other side to reality. Maybe history repeating itself will become apparent to them. (Although it seems to me that history isn't currently repeating itself, we are in uncharted territory. We are in the realm of the fall of the greatest national force for good in the history of the world) If we don't succeed, then we don't. But again, we will have stayed true, and we will have done our best. That's all we can do. Welcome to day one of the new America.