Given what has transpired since I last posted I was practically salivating at the prospect of going on yet another diatribe about this countries downward spiral towards totalitarian socialism under the lead of comrade Obama. But despite all the great blog fodder that’s come out Washington lately, I’m compelled to take a break from beating that long since dead horse. At this point Old Lefty (that’s my dead horse) is actually starting to tenderize and smell quite pungent. So I feel some Glade Plug-Ins, a week or so in a well vented room, and a reprieve from the lashings are long overdue. Instead I’d like to focus on the inherent hypocrisy in some of the social engineering policies put forth by politicians.
The most recent and most egregious example of this hypocrisy is the cigarette and chewing tobacco tax hike that President Obama signed into law which goes into effect this Wednesday (4/1/09). The tax on a pack of cigarettes will leap from 39 cents to $1.01. Chewing tobacco will be taxed 50 cents a pound, up from 19.5 cents. Smokers and dippers, I know what you’re thinking, or at the very least hoping. But alas, this not an April fool’s prank, this is the real deal. Just to clear the air, no pun intended, I would like to state that I myself used to smoke cigarettes (about a pack a day for five years) until one day my left lung partially collapsed and I elected to cease that self destructive habit. That being said, I am all for an individual’s right to put just about whatever they want into their own body so long as I don’t have to pay for their medical expenses. The real reason I am so riled up by this tax hike is that it is so blatantly hypocritical. On the one hand, proponents of the sky high taxes argue that tobacco use decreases as the tax increases. This is probably true, and even if it isn’t, I’m not interested in arguing whether or not the relationship between high tobacco tax and low tobacco use is causation or correlation. What I am interested in arguing is that politicians like to proudly expound on how they’re doing this to save the public’s health while hiding the fact there is an obvious ulterior motive in the form of increased tax revenues for the government. So while trying to get everyone to stop using tobacco (something that would destroy another industry and cause yet another surge in unemployment) they have to be “secretly” ecstatic about the possibility of a stable population of nicotine addicts, and in actuality, it would suit them just fine if the number of tobacco users grew. In a sense they are really no different from a tobacco company with the major exception that they enjoy the luxury of being able to tell you they’re saving you while being at best indifferent to whether or not you smoke yourself into a tracheotomy.
Another great example of this is New York Governor David Patterson’s proposal of an 18 percent tax on non-diet soft drinks as included in his budget proposal last December. Again, this was done under the guise of protecting citizens from themselves. In this case it was to curb obesity in children by artificially placing the less desirable soft drinks into a higher price point. However, his budget proposal went on to suggest that the amount of revenues that would be generated from such a tax levying would actually increase from 2009-2010 to 2010-2011 (see Steven Milloy’s Junk Science Column from 12/24/08 for more information and a good laugh). So Governor Patterson wasn’t just secretly hoping that all the portly tots of New York kept suckling away at the sugary teat of Mistress Fanta Von Sunkist, he was actually counting on it. Here we see yet another politician lives the impossible dream of both having and eating their proverbial cake (I hope it’s at least sugar free cake in this case).
What really gets me irate about these scenarios is that I subscribe to the notion that the government has no business levying punitive taxes on anything in an effort to push society away from what they’ve deemed undesirable or unacceptable. If I at least thought for a millisecond that their hearts were in the right place I might at lease dissent in a more cuddly fashion. But this nonsense about telling people how they should live and then profiting off it when they don’t is reprehensible. At least the companies that sell and distribute the products that the government finds questionable have a single and well known agenda. They want you to use their product and they even have to tell you what’s in it and in some cases warn you not to use it while the politicians play two face and never get called on it.
What’s scarier still is the presentation of yet another slippery slope. It’s all so easy to agree with them when you don’t smoke or imbibe sugary soft drinks and they tell you that they’re doing to render the nation cancer and obesity free. Of course you agree and with their stated intent, and gladly support them in their “noble” crusade against society’s ills. But what happens when they come after something you do use, something you use responsibly and in moderation. It could be anything. Is it so farfetched to picture a politician at a dais spouting save the nation from itself rhetoric in regards to cheese? Cheese is very fattening and quite bad for you according to most doctors so shouldn’t it be taxed higher to discourage you from potentially fattening yourself up like Hansel and/or Gretel? The government is not in the business of giving back any of the money, rights, or control that it’s been “given” so be very careful what let you them do in the name of the greater good.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Circle The Band Wagons
First off, I’d like to apologize to all five of my devoted readers for neglecting my responsibilities as a blogger this month. I don’t want to make excuses but March truly came in like the proverbial lion for me not just in the weather but at work as well so I’ve been trying to relax as much as possible. In any event, I’m sorry, and I will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now on with the show.
Today I’d like to layout the four distinct groups of citizens who voted for Barak Obama. I understand that writing on this topic may come off as too late to be relevant, but I promise my overall point is a current one.
I really want to address this subject for two reasons. One reason is to show how diverse this voting bloc was, and the other is to point out the one faction within that I have nothing but disdain for and is still causing me grief to this day. Now please don’t let that last remark dissuade you from reading on, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by those I let off the hook. I will attempt to describe each group via an interpretation of the “Hope and Change” slogan that was so readily swallowed by the masses. And without further ado, here’s the list:
1) Radical Leftists: This is the group that defined “Hope and Change” as “The hope Obama dismantles every capitalist or free market aspect of our economy in the name of fairness or wealth redistribution (socialism).” They also thought of this motto in terms of “The hope that every conservative or Judeo-Christian value left in our society is quelled by policies that embrace a sense of moral relativism where no one is truly accountable for their wrong doings (except for capitalist swine of course).” The far left of this country banked on these “hopes and changes” in addition to many more that can be found in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and just about any Noam Chomsky book. They found themselves drunk on the notion that the tide had finally turned. Now you might think that this is the group of Obama supporters whom I detest. You are dead wrong. I can no more faults these individuals for supporting Barak Obama then I could condemn geese from replacing every picturesque grassy surface they find with a thick layer of green, black, and white shit. The support of the radical left should’ve been fully expected, and if anything, given his sometimes moderate campaign rhetoric, one should praise the far left for sustaining their fervor for a candidate that some misguided individuals actually thought was more of a centrist (see group 3 for details on this bunch of schmucks).
2) Run of the Mill Liberals: This group defined “Hope and Change” as “The hope that a President Obama would undo the previous administrations policies and replace them with ones that were more in tune with the basic liberal mindset. This is not as severe as the radical leftists’ desire to invoke socialism, moral relativism, and the national denouncement of any God immediately and permanently. The standard liberal is content to have a “sensible” mix of the Carter and Clinton years. They’re down with welfare, a weak national defense, plenty of government spending, and sky high taxes. That being said, they draw the line at the nationalization of banks and other corporations. They also shun the idea that capitalism and the free market needs to be completely abandoned in the interest of the common good. These folks should not be held to task for feeling this way or for voting the way they did. Again, it was completely expected that these citizens would vote this way just as it was with the far leftists. They are liberal in their values and politics so it makes perfect sense that they would vote for the most liberal candidate in history, even if they thought that some of his ideas and or policies would be a little further left then they’d normally be comfortable with.
3) Moderate Suckers: These people had good intentions. They kept up with the election and the issues and picked what they most likely considered the lesser of two evils. Their “hope” was that they would truly see an end to “politics as usual.” Their “change” was that we might actually move away from the all the partisan nonsense and become a land of the people again. Unfortunately, they were duped and that’s why I’m referring to them as suckers. Their eyes must still be itching furiously from all the wool that was pulled over them. I mean we’re talking bushels and bushels of wool here. There’s probably a sheep farmer out there somewhere that thanks to the Obama campaign and its surrogates (CNN, NBC, The New York Times, etc.) will be the last one impacted by this economy. In truth one would have to be drinking the Kool-Aid hard to believe that Barak Obama is more moderate than John McCain. According to the National Journal, Barak Obama was literally the most liberal senator in 2007 based on his voting record. Now in the interest of fairness I would like to point out that McCain missed more than half the votes that were rated by the National Journal in 2007 so he wasn’t even ranked that year. But, I must also point out that John McCain wasn’t even in the top 40 of the most conservative senators in 2006 while Obama still ranked 10th overall that year. And in 2005, when McCain had also not reached the top 40 most conservative senators, Obama was rated the 16th most liberal senator. Now I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure that going from 16th place to the top 10 in one year, and then becoming the most liberal senator is certainly not the path that of a moderate. So did anyone with any level of credibility have any business describing Barak Obama as a moderate Democrat? Of course not. Should it have been crystal sparkling clear that John McCain was a considerably more moderate as a Republican? You bet your sweet ass it should have. And anyone who was convinced otherwise and then voted accordingly is, unfortunately, a sucker.
4) Know Nothing Band Wagoneers: To this group “hope” was simply the desire to not be left out of the in-crowd. The only “change” that was necessary for these nitwits, was for them to appear to be informed for once. These are the individuals who voted for Obama for every reason under the sun other than his experience, his associations (good or bad), and his stated policy plans. These folks have almost no concept of history, economics, or politics to help them shape any valid opinions on policies and candidates so they had to hop on one of many band wagons and be told what to think about Barak Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. These citizens had never or infrequently voted before due to disinterest or apathy, that was until they were convinced that it was their duty to vote regardless of the aforementioned fact that they had little to no honest knowledge of the issues. Now this convincing was not done by ACORN or the like trying to get every possible voter (regardless of their knowledge or eligibility) to register and pull the lever for Obama. No, these morons convinced themselves that they had to take a ride on the Obama express because they saw so many O’s all around them on people's chests and car bumpers that at first they thought they were having that dream again where all the Cheerios they ate as a child were coming back to get them, but then they soon realized that it wasn’t a recurring nightmare that was unfolding around them. It was instead the greatest opportunity ever to appear to be involved, informed, and dare I say, cool. These are the same schmucks that buy Che Guevara shirts at Hot Topic for $25.00 because members of Rage Against the Machine and the coolest kid in eighth grade did the same. Meanwhile, they have no idea who the man was, what he stood for, and what he did (groups 1 and 2 probably think he’s great, but at least they read up on the guy). Now as I was saying, the band wagons were numerous and as a result parking was often limited at Obama rallies. The lamest of the band wagons that were eagerly booking passage throughout the campaign had to be the college students. Despite their so called “education” they tend to know next to nothing about history, economics, or current events. Their liberal indoctrinating professors and naïve indoctrinated peers see to that. Meanwhile, they had no qualms with telling every individual with an open ear and an empty mind how the world should be and how their anointed one was going to, in the words of Jean-Luc Piccard, “make it so.” These people bought bumper stickers, shirts, hats, plates, coins, socks, beer cozies, shower curtains, lingerie, toilet seat covers, bird feeders, venetian blinds, and even dragon repellant so long as it had the visage of Barak Obama on it. These overly enthusiastic sycophants made up a large portion of the Barak Obama voting bloc. Now I guess a win is a win, but I sure would prefer a President who actually persuaded every individual who voted for him or her rather than President who won thanks to a bunch of fools wearing “yes we can” tee shirts tipping the scales. I don’t know about you, but my polling place looked more like the line outside a Guns-N-Roses concert than a bunch of informed citizens waiting to elect a President. At one point I wasn’t sure if the woman in front of me was there to vote or get Slash to sign her left breast. In an effort to wrap it up on this group I’d just like to say that it’s really sad if you’d cherish the candidate's autograph on your hat more than you’d appreciate the substance of any of his or hers policy positions.
So it should it be clear now which group I have contempt for and which groups I let slide. To bring this to the present and add a dash of that relevance I promised you I’d like to address Obama’s approval rating. President Obama currently enjoys a 61% approval rating according to Gallup which is not far off from Bush’s approval rating at approximately the same time in his Presidency. What that really breaks down to in my opinion is the following.
The extremists on either side of the aisle tend to give high marks to the person they wanted in office regardless of his or her performance forever because they’re simply in too deep.
The tamer party affiliated individuals will probably give high marks regardless of actual results for at least the first the 100 days, but more like the entire first year or two.
The moderates and independents will do their best to be objective and not overly judgmental for the first 100 days and perhaps a bit beyond, but will sour quickly when they realize that they’re a member of group 3 and have zero chance of seeing the actualization of what they were promised. Group 3 (Moderate Suckers) is truly the most tragic in that they continue to believe in candidate after candidate when they promise to govern from the center and are systematically let down almost every time. The only time they’re happy is when they’re duped yet again into thinking they’ve been enjoying centrism (see Bill Clinton) when they really haven’t. I suppose these people are just too optimistic.
My concern is that for the first time ever we seem to have a massive amount of people that are part of group 4 (Know Nothing Band Wagoneers). These people will pollute the polling data as they continue to pretend they know what’s going on when they actually retreated right back to the vacuum from whence they came the second the inauguration was over like the many Red Sox fans that magically materialized outside of New England when they finally broke the “curse” and won the World Series again. I don’t want these ignoramuses padding the polls as Obama’s Presidency meanders on. Call me crazy, but I don’t have a problem with political disinterest or apathy if it’s only replaced by citizens who end up blindly accepting and adhering to whatever they’ve been spoon fed by radicals and ideologues no matter what side they prop up.
Sometimes I wonder if I should punt all of my politics and beliefs and just break down and buy a “yes we did” bumper sticker so everyone stuck behind me in rush hour traffic will think that I played a part in saving the world. Then I wonder how many Nazis were recruited in Hitler’s Germany because they thought the same thing. Now before you go bananas on me, I’m not saying that Obama is Hitler or that his under informed supporters are Nazis. All I’m suggesting is that when people decide to just go with the flow without figuring things out on their own when it pertains to something as important as their elected officials it can have disastrous effects.
Today I’d like to layout the four distinct groups of citizens who voted for Barak Obama. I understand that writing on this topic may come off as too late to be relevant, but I promise my overall point is a current one.
I really want to address this subject for two reasons. One reason is to show how diverse this voting bloc was, and the other is to point out the one faction within that I have nothing but disdain for and is still causing me grief to this day. Now please don’t let that last remark dissuade you from reading on, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by those I let off the hook. I will attempt to describe each group via an interpretation of the “Hope and Change” slogan that was so readily swallowed by the masses. And without further ado, here’s the list:
1) Radical Leftists: This is the group that defined “Hope and Change” as “The hope Obama dismantles every capitalist or free market aspect of our economy in the name of fairness or wealth redistribution (socialism).” They also thought of this motto in terms of “The hope that every conservative or Judeo-Christian value left in our society is quelled by policies that embrace a sense of moral relativism where no one is truly accountable for their wrong doings (except for capitalist swine of course).” The far left of this country banked on these “hopes and changes” in addition to many more that can be found in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and just about any Noam Chomsky book. They found themselves drunk on the notion that the tide had finally turned. Now you might think that this is the group of Obama supporters whom I detest. You are dead wrong. I can no more faults these individuals for supporting Barak Obama then I could condemn geese from replacing every picturesque grassy surface they find with a thick layer of green, black, and white shit. The support of the radical left should’ve been fully expected, and if anything, given his sometimes moderate campaign rhetoric, one should praise the far left for sustaining their fervor for a candidate that some misguided individuals actually thought was more of a centrist (see group 3 for details on this bunch of schmucks).
2) Run of the Mill Liberals: This group defined “Hope and Change” as “The hope that a President Obama would undo the previous administrations policies and replace them with ones that were more in tune with the basic liberal mindset. This is not as severe as the radical leftists’ desire to invoke socialism, moral relativism, and the national denouncement of any God immediately and permanently. The standard liberal is content to have a “sensible” mix of the Carter and Clinton years. They’re down with welfare, a weak national defense, plenty of government spending, and sky high taxes. That being said, they draw the line at the nationalization of banks and other corporations. They also shun the idea that capitalism and the free market needs to be completely abandoned in the interest of the common good. These folks should not be held to task for feeling this way or for voting the way they did. Again, it was completely expected that these citizens would vote this way just as it was with the far leftists. They are liberal in their values and politics so it makes perfect sense that they would vote for the most liberal candidate in history, even if they thought that some of his ideas and or policies would be a little further left then they’d normally be comfortable with.
3) Moderate Suckers: These people had good intentions. They kept up with the election and the issues and picked what they most likely considered the lesser of two evils. Their “hope” was that they would truly see an end to “politics as usual.” Their “change” was that we might actually move away from the all the partisan nonsense and become a land of the people again. Unfortunately, they were duped and that’s why I’m referring to them as suckers. Their eyes must still be itching furiously from all the wool that was pulled over them. I mean we’re talking bushels and bushels of wool here. There’s probably a sheep farmer out there somewhere that thanks to the Obama campaign and its surrogates (CNN, NBC, The New York Times, etc.) will be the last one impacted by this economy. In truth one would have to be drinking the Kool-Aid hard to believe that Barak Obama is more moderate than John McCain. According to the National Journal, Barak Obama was literally the most liberal senator in 2007 based on his voting record. Now in the interest of fairness I would like to point out that McCain missed more than half the votes that were rated by the National Journal in 2007 so he wasn’t even ranked that year. But, I must also point out that John McCain wasn’t even in the top 40 of the most conservative senators in 2006 while Obama still ranked 10th overall that year. And in 2005, when McCain had also not reached the top 40 most conservative senators, Obama was rated the 16th most liberal senator. Now I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure that going from 16th place to the top 10 in one year, and then becoming the most liberal senator is certainly not the path that of a moderate. So did anyone with any level of credibility have any business describing Barak Obama as a moderate Democrat? Of course not. Should it have been crystal sparkling clear that John McCain was a considerably more moderate as a Republican? You bet your sweet ass it should have. And anyone who was convinced otherwise and then voted accordingly is, unfortunately, a sucker.
4) Know Nothing Band Wagoneers: To this group “hope” was simply the desire to not be left out of the in-crowd. The only “change” that was necessary for these nitwits, was for them to appear to be informed for once. These are the individuals who voted for Obama for every reason under the sun other than his experience, his associations (good or bad), and his stated policy plans. These folks have almost no concept of history, economics, or politics to help them shape any valid opinions on policies and candidates so they had to hop on one of many band wagons and be told what to think about Barak Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. These citizens had never or infrequently voted before due to disinterest or apathy, that was until they were convinced that it was their duty to vote regardless of the aforementioned fact that they had little to no honest knowledge of the issues. Now this convincing was not done by ACORN or the like trying to get every possible voter (regardless of their knowledge or eligibility) to register and pull the lever for Obama. No, these morons convinced themselves that they had to take a ride on the Obama express because they saw so many O’s all around them on people's chests and car bumpers that at first they thought they were having that dream again where all the Cheerios they ate as a child were coming back to get them, but then they soon realized that it wasn’t a recurring nightmare that was unfolding around them. It was instead the greatest opportunity ever to appear to be involved, informed, and dare I say, cool. These are the same schmucks that buy Che Guevara shirts at Hot Topic for $25.00 because members of Rage Against the Machine and the coolest kid in eighth grade did the same. Meanwhile, they have no idea who the man was, what he stood for, and what he did (groups 1 and 2 probably think he’s great, but at least they read up on the guy). Now as I was saying, the band wagons were numerous and as a result parking was often limited at Obama rallies. The lamest of the band wagons that were eagerly booking passage throughout the campaign had to be the college students. Despite their so called “education” they tend to know next to nothing about history, economics, or current events. Their liberal indoctrinating professors and naïve indoctrinated peers see to that. Meanwhile, they had no qualms with telling every individual with an open ear and an empty mind how the world should be and how their anointed one was going to, in the words of Jean-Luc Piccard, “make it so.” These people bought bumper stickers, shirts, hats, plates, coins, socks, beer cozies, shower curtains, lingerie, toilet seat covers, bird feeders, venetian blinds, and even dragon repellant so long as it had the visage of Barak Obama on it. These overly enthusiastic sycophants made up a large portion of the Barak Obama voting bloc. Now I guess a win is a win, but I sure would prefer a President who actually persuaded every individual who voted for him or her rather than President who won thanks to a bunch of fools wearing “yes we can” tee shirts tipping the scales. I don’t know about you, but my polling place looked more like the line outside a Guns-N-Roses concert than a bunch of informed citizens waiting to elect a President. At one point I wasn’t sure if the woman in front of me was there to vote or get Slash to sign her left breast. In an effort to wrap it up on this group I’d just like to say that it’s really sad if you’d cherish the candidate's autograph on your hat more than you’d appreciate the substance of any of his or hers policy positions.
So it should it be clear now which group I have contempt for and which groups I let slide. To bring this to the present and add a dash of that relevance I promised you I’d like to address Obama’s approval rating. President Obama currently enjoys a 61% approval rating according to Gallup which is not far off from Bush’s approval rating at approximately the same time in his Presidency. What that really breaks down to in my opinion is the following.
The extremists on either side of the aisle tend to give high marks to the person they wanted in office regardless of his or her performance forever because they’re simply in too deep.
The tamer party affiliated individuals will probably give high marks regardless of actual results for at least the first the 100 days, but more like the entire first year or two.
The moderates and independents will do their best to be objective and not overly judgmental for the first 100 days and perhaps a bit beyond, but will sour quickly when they realize that they’re a member of group 3 and have zero chance of seeing the actualization of what they were promised. Group 3 (Moderate Suckers) is truly the most tragic in that they continue to believe in candidate after candidate when they promise to govern from the center and are systematically let down almost every time. The only time they’re happy is when they’re duped yet again into thinking they’ve been enjoying centrism (see Bill Clinton) when they really haven’t. I suppose these people are just too optimistic.
My concern is that for the first time ever we seem to have a massive amount of people that are part of group 4 (Know Nothing Band Wagoneers). These people will pollute the polling data as they continue to pretend they know what’s going on when they actually retreated right back to the vacuum from whence they came the second the inauguration was over like the many Red Sox fans that magically materialized outside of New England when they finally broke the “curse” and won the World Series again. I don’t want these ignoramuses padding the polls as Obama’s Presidency meanders on. Call me crazy, but I don’t have a problem with political disinterest or apathy if it’s only replaced by citizens who end up blindly accepting and adhering to whatever they’ve been spoon fed by radicals and ideologues no matter what side they prop up.
Sometimes I wonder if I should punt all of my politics and beliefs and just break down and buy a “yes we did” bumper sticker so everyone stuck behind me in rush hour traffic will think that I played a part in saving the world. Then I wonder how many Nazis were recruited in Hitler’s Germany because they thought the same thing. Now before you go bananas on me, I’m not saying that Obama is Hitler or that his under informed supporters are Nazis. All I’m suggesting is that when people decide to just go with the flow without figuring things out on their own when it pertains to something as important as their elected officials it can have disastrous effects.
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