Like, Totally Political, Dude!: emotional response

Showing posts with label emotional response. Show all posts

GW Bush, mass panic gave us Patriot Act, let's curtail it now

In context of the time when it was passed, the Patriot Act was a forgivable overreaction, perhaps. But today, it's just more big government that we cannot afford.

Sometimes, scary things happen in politics. Here's an example: far right web sites agree with the wildly leftist (and silly) MoveOn.org on something. They agree that we need to END THE PATRIOT ACT.

Thank goodness some polar political opposites can agree on something, huh? The left and right can't even manage to agree on which death-lusting terrorists are worth ridding off: The fringe left wants to provide jobs, food and education to some terrorists, while the fringe right believes everyone who is Muslim is a terrorist. But, we can agree that nosing in on Americans, not merely inconveniencing them at airports (TSA), but listening on without lawful purpose (Patriot Act, potentially), is bad.

Of course, I dislike the Patriot Act because there's clear principles being shoved out of the way, and they were given a clear voice in the U.S. Constitution. That matters. Some who I would generally disagree with on political matters seem concerned that black extremists (but they think of them as merely put-upon poor people), Occupy Wall Street dweebs, pederasts (simply gay people), or potheads (pot is no worse than alcohol, so it should be at every kitchen bench) might be among those snared by officials who are supposedly looking for terrorists. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the whole of the Bill of Rights, are just a convenient table to stand on while they're fighting the Progressive-Statist power-grab fight. (Yeah, I'm not a fan of Obama Democrats, if you didn't guess.)

I think it's simple: the USA Patriot Act needs to go. As least, it needs generous curtailing. Tell your US Representative and your US Senator, and tell anyone to do the same. Here's a link to save you some time in reaching your reps.

But don't bother with Senate boss Mitch McConnell (R - KY), who is all for it, it seems. Not much of a Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is proving to be in the era of Obama statism. He plays right along. (As does House Speaker John Boerner of Ohio.) Radio and nonfiction book great, Mark Levin, has bashed McConnell as never before, in recent weeks (one time and another; and then some).

If the Patriot Act is extended as it looks like it will be -- a mistake -- it's still going to require a vote another day. Make it stop. The Patriot Act is GW Bush's contribution, along with DHS, TSA, and a massive military debt, to the nanny state, to his legacy as BIG GOVERNMENT REPUBLICAN. He was not a complete modern American conservative, he was a religious and social conservative only. He isn't a bad man, but he was, fiscally, a very expensive president. He is not solely to blame, of course, but his presidency will keep that reputation into the future telling of it in history books, I believe. You cannot blame him alone, as plenty of citizens were all for the Patriot Act back in the day. They were afraid.

Frightened people are not good at making rational decision, or making up sensible rules. You've watched a horror movie or two, right? Scared people are bad at making decisions --- VERY BAD! The Patriot Act proves it, I think. In context of the time when it was passed, the Patriot Act was a forgivable overreaction, perhaps. But today, it's just more big government that we cannot afford (I mean "afford" in every sense of the word that comes to mind). It's not a Prohibition Act for security, because that would look like a totalitarian police state; but perhaps it was as bipartisan and as reactionary as Prohibition.

We must fix the damage added in GW Bush's time along with Obama's. I am very comfortable pointing out that Obama has done nothing but add to the problem of a massive and ever-growing federal debt and bureaucracy. But I refuse to be partisan in my disgust with big government.

This comes with burdens that have been added for decades by an ever-growing federal government that has weakened the states, and the citizens, and hurt liberty for every person.

WAKE UP. Stop big government.

We went from the GREATEST generation during World War Two, to the MOST SELFISH GENERATION. Well, to be nice, let's call it the most distracted generation -- that of the 1950s-1980s. Now we're ringing in the STATIST GENERATION, as a result.

It's not too late, but it's time to change tack. Because, as so many FINALLY recognized in the economic upset of 2007-2009, things have gotten out of hand. Either government stays in control, or we get some control of it.

WAKE UP. Obama and other far left so-called liberal Democrats (they're statists, not liberals, dammit) have taken a bad thing -- the Great Recession -- and extended it. It is high time to stop it.

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

WHAT'S FAIR: Minimum Skills Earning Minimum Wages

Are you worth $30,000 a year?

For those fast food employees, and their nannies in public office, thinking they deserve $15 an hour, or more, let's do some math.

> At $15 an hour, someone slinging burgers would make $31,200 annually.
> An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378.
> An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually.

So you're telling me, Woody Likefrieswithat , that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting the rights of YOUR unskilled butt!?

Here's the deal, Frank Andbeans: you are working in a job designed for a teenager in high school or working his way through trade school or college. It's a job for someone who is learning how to work. Have you thoroughly learned how to work? These jobs are designed for those looking to earn enough for shared rent, beer, and some food and gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy young pals.

If you have CHOSEN this basic means of making a living as your lifelong profession, you have not planned very well. Time to accept the consequences or to firm up, work your way out of the lower rungs, and rely on yourself, not count on foul promises of a few rise from low wages to high with little or no stops to learn skills that deserve a higher wage. It is a tough lesson, but you either learn it, or you stay where you are. The ones misleading you into believing you deserve higher pay for the same minimum role in life might sound like your hero, but they are only your big talking "better." They are fooling you. Wake up!

Here's what is fair to everyone: If you don't want minimum wage, don't settle on your minimum skills, don't put forward minimum effort, be the example of a great employee that can move past the minimum job. And please don't expect someone else to pave your way, without you advancing your skills, for a smooth ride to $30k and better in earnings. That's how it might work in your dreams, but in real life, a solid person seeks rewards for effort, not for whining.

I revised this considerably. A version of this, no doubt a chain email, was sent to me by a retired person. He understands what working means. No one promised him a cake walk to a better life.

- J Ruse

Sen. Bernie Sanders says: hands off my beloved Social Security, you vicious, anti-government nuts!

WASHINGTON - DECEMBER 16: Sen. Bernie Sanders...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) comments on what he sees as right-wing "hatred" of Soc Sec. Hatred of it is going a bit far, except maybe some far-flung kooks.

Opinion: We can't allow deep benefit cuts, including a steep rise in the retirement age. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41628.html

Some of it (note: the links within it are mine):

"The White House deficit commission is reportedly considering deep benefit cuts for Social Security, including a steep rise in the retirement age. We cannot let that happen.

"The deficit and our $13 trillion national debt are serious problems that must be addressed. But we can -- and must -- address them without punishing America's workers, senior citizens, the disabled, widows and orphans.

"First, let's be clear: Despite all the right-wing rhetoric, Social Security is not going bankrupt. That's a lie!

"The truth is that the Social Security Trust Fund has run surpluses for the last quarter century. Today's $2.5 trillion cushion is projected to grow to $4 trillion in 2023. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, experts in this area, say Social Security will be able to pay every nickel owed to every eligible beneficiary until 2039.

"Got that? In case you don't, let me repeat it. The people who have studied this issue most thoroughly and have no political bias report that Social Security will be able to pay out all benefits to every eligible beneficiary for the next 29 years.

"It is true that by 2039, if nothing is changed, Social Security will be able to pay out only about 80 percent of benefits. That is why it is important that Congress act soon to make sure Social Security is as strong in the future as it is today.

"The hatred of Social Security from the right-wing, anti-government crowd is based on the fact that the government program has been enormously successful in accomplishing its mission. For 75 years, in good times and bad, Social Security has provided financial security for tens of millions of Americans. ..."

(use link above to read the whole piece)

Disliking how Soc Sec's Trust Fund is borrowed from by a greedy government, and the balance of pay-ins versus pay-outs, is what is creating worries, as far as I'm aware. Pretty simple that is more money goes out than goes in, it's going to dry up! I don't recall hearing anyone suggest it was going to run out next year, but in 2039? The estimates have varied. Who said banish it? I think younger people just don't trust government with their retirement account.

Sanders' crude calling of people "anti-government" leaves out a vital adjective. Anarchists and crooks are anti-government; right wingers who are neither of those are against a BIG, dominating, bossy, liberty-sucking federal government. They are not against government.

Senator, Tea Party people, as far as I am aware and as far as I am informed, are merely against a massive, costly, too-powerful Big Brother government full of people who twist facts -- such as what they feel about Soc Sec. If that is not clear, senator, then you have a scant excuse for being a representative of any people.

Senator, by the looks of this rant of yours, you are an agitator and extremist, not your right wing antagonists. Judging from the deviant language you used, in the opinion piece, about those who favor an affordable and liable government over a constantly growing, taxing beast, you're way off-center, to say the least.

Your comments about Soc Sec history of success -- obvious stuff, isn't it? -- aside, your coloring of the right is juvenile, done with crayons, not informed nore sensible, as with fine art oil paint.

Shame, Vermont, for keeping this wacky man in power. He is way off-color.

- jR

Obama is JUST a narcissist. Like Hitler was JUST a Nazi.

Barack Obama at the University of Nevada, Las ...

Barack Obama - Image via Wikipedia

I don't care what your politics: if you think Obama is brilliant, humble, sincere, honest, appreciative of his office, deserving of a Nobel and songs sung to him by schoolchildren, and that he is not a pure political operator bent on turning America in a hard left direction... you JUST DON'T GET IT.

He is unquestionably a narcissist. He adores himself, and there were people in Chicago politics who loved him for it. They, in their own words, "protected" him from risky issues, on his way to the Senate, and to the White House. Protected.

His narcissism is immediately evident in his lack of conventional humility in his speeches: "I" "I" and "I" everywhere with this president. It is also evident in his

While Obama was not raised in a wealthy family, he sure seems to have ... a golden stick in his butt. (Excuse the imagery.) I have not seen such infantile attacks on news media, or opposition -- EVER -- from a top leader, certainly not another president. (You understand that unless, like Sean Penn and plenty of others who've enjoyed USA liberties yet understand few of them, you count Castro and his kind as respectable.) It would be less disturbing if this behavior was not calculated, but these verbal attacks are part of a plan, not mood-driven one-offs. It is a part of radical activism, and he's invited it into the White House. (Almost as much as the former president of the SEIU, Andy Stern.)

With the divisiveness in our politics knocked up to a whole new level with him and Mme. Speaker Pelosi leading the spurning of clarity for ideology, ticked off that everyone won't simply let him (and Pelosi and that ilk) run us like some elected monarchy, I stand back and think that God's grace will be the only thing to spare us from the twaddle and naivete. Just gone from irritating, to mystifying, to amusing. Not a happy amusing, mind you, a shameful one. It would be funny, were it not a real life story, and were it not my president swaggering about so proud of himself, compelled to realize the unproven idea of the America he wants me to live in.

I applaud him (I do!) for bringing issues, including healthcare and the external reputation of American arrogance, to the forefront. It is how he's handling those and other issues, which is clumsy, that sets me off. His rhetoric is good, his actions aren't. The actions count more.

So I am counting on people acting to limit the power held by him and his fellow far-leftists, come the elections of November 2010. This country deserves hot debate, but not to be a high-tax, big government, welfare-heavy, centralized nation. It is the United States, after all, not the State, of America.

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Are nuclear weapons deserving of a Nobel Prize? Obama vowed to earn his, the Bomb already has

It's refreshing to see that, over at the oft-slobbering news rag TIME, someone can manage to offer thoughts that are based on reality, not wishful thinking, in the always-vital area of nuclear proliferation. (The emphases below are mine.)

From TIME magazine, 'Why the Nobel Peace Prize Should Go to Nuclear Weapons':

As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right. But if the Nobel committee truly cares about peace, they will think a little harder about actually trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you'll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.
During the 31 years leading up to the first atomic bomb, the world without nuclear weapons engaged in two global wars resulting in the deaths of an estimated 78 million to 95 million people, uniformed and civilian. "

Somewhere above 78 million people died in two world wars, within 31 years. Since 1945, how are we doing? Better, I'd say.

Is it impossible for anyone to see that so long as nukes are CONTROLLED, thus, not in the hands of those who will use them simply to advance their religious or power-hungry zealotry, that the THREAT of them in the world actually makes it a safer place? What exactly is the educational background of the dunces who think the US is a bigger threat with nuclear weapons than another country? Only the powerful, sociopathic zealots who are now kept -- barely -- in check by our having them.

Amazingly, there are calls for more centralized governing, even in what started out as what you could call the individualism center of the planet, the United States. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Bigger government is corrupt -- absolutely. Especially in the still-kicking power center of the world, the United States.

Please, wake up, or take your voice out of the argument, thanks, if you think some hands-holding, rainbows-without-storms, birds-chirping, floating cars fantasy is going to happen in your lifetime. Not going to come out of human effort alone. It's a nice sentiment. Sadly, it always reminds me of the outset of the original Battlestar Galactica, when the human powers-that-be insist, despite advice otherwise, that they can live peacefully with their aggressive enemy. Also, it reminds me of the cliche, but not irrelevant, historic blunder of UK PM Chamberlain who signed (with France) an agreement with Adolf Hitler that gave part of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Hitler invaded Poland only months later.

Only a stubborn cynic refuses to hope for a time of peace, but only a perfect fool believes they will be living in one sometime soon.

The world is getting more complex at the same time it is shrinking. We are in the midst of a shaping global economy that differs from the one that existed even 25 years ago. The requirement needs to be that the real troublemakers -- the centralized control dictators/theocracies, the extreme zealots, the terrorism-supporting factions -- prove to the truly democracy-oriented that they are willing to play far nicer. It is not to be the other way around. The US and its less imposing allies don't owe these people anything. But some leaders disagree. In fact, Obama seems to think the US was on a track of empire-building up to and until he became president. That's interesting from a man who uses the word "I" far more than "we".

A nuclear-free world is the fantasy of goofballs and academic arguments, yet, in the States, we now have a platitude-rich president who joins that crowd as a true believer, by his words.

Holocaust-denying, genocidal, mass-dog-killing, political-foe-assassinating, gross-poverty-concealing, terrorist-supporting, and/or Third World-resource-grifting, and other far-flung governments centered on abuses, not embarrassed by its exposure, are not interested in getting along with us. We are spoiled, misinformed, TV comedy show informed go-alongs, to them. Even those of us disgusted by the spoiled, misinformed, TV comedy show informed go-alongs. Their idea of peace is a world without your spoiled asses in it, or indoctrinated into their way of thinking.

They aren't interested in giving their people the freedoms the spoiled brats -- the super rich AND the car-driving, jeans-wearing, mobile texters -- in the First World enjoy. They are fighting for their ideals to win out, and for at-home survival. If America has its nuclear arsenal to lean on, like some bartender leaning on his 12-gauge letting the rough drunks know he means business, we might as well invite all the openness that cultural pluralism offers, invite the combustible mix of legalized recreational pot, a trust system for violent convicts, sharia law, and the wife-killing machismo of Brazil. Why not? If we cannot live by the ideas that exist, why not just live by whatever feels like it'll work, for a year, a month, a week? Why not make it a cage fight of bad social practices? Openness to the point of life-meaninglessness. In the end, the ones with some self-control and the most discipline will win. Is that you?

You best hope that living in a world like The Road Warrior is as fun to live as it is (at least for some) to watch.

Read on at the link: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929553,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

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-- AirFarceOne (follow on twitter)

Congressional leaders spit fire though Limbaugh gets the headlines

Politico provided this story, which I found on the CBS site, since CBS News (at least the Evening News portion) cannot find any reason to deride Democrats who haven't viciously assaulted small children with hot pokers (or equivalent). This must be a big "oops" for little Miss Couric's rabidly anti-GOP, pro-liberalism, pro-Obama, pro-Keynesian agenda.

Reid, Pelosi Swearing Match Over Omnibus - CBS News

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) and his deputy, Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.) were called to Pelosi’s office late Thursday night and ultimately prevailed in their argument that Democrats should try to salvage the bill, which includes critical spending increases for vital agencies. But the heated, sometimes profane, exchanges were described as “ugly” by Democrats on both sides of the Capitol. Staff, kicked out in the hall, could hear the yelling, and Pelosi herself seemed a little abashed the next day, joking that nothing her leadership could say to her now would match the night before.

The speaker’s anger was directed primarily at Senate Republicans, who withheld their support even when they had substantial interests in the measure. Pelosi feels that Republicans are gaming the Democrats, who have to be tougher in turn by forcing them to live with the consequences of what she sees as obstruction.

The speaker’s scorched earth alternative, killing the omnibus, was too much for some in her own leadership. But Pelosi’s anger is shared by many House Democrats along with the fear that the Senate debate is being dragged out by Republicans as part of a concerted campaign to pummel Obama even as the young president tries to keep the nation focused on his economic agenda and budget going forward.

With funding running out Friday, Pelosi finally called her members back to Washington to pass the five day extension on a 328-58 vote. Ironically enough, this came after a 218-160 vote in which Democrats killed a Republican alternative that would have cut about $17 billion from the omnibus and come closer to the stripped down alternative the speaker herself had been threatening.

This was not a topic for discussion on the Sunday morning talk shows, though, while the fake news story of Rush Limbaugh being the sould of the Republican Party was on perhaps every single one of them. What is wrong with people?

- jR