Enjoy.

Both national party committees spend big chunks on fancy meals, hotels, travel

So now the president is kicking into campaign mode again with a new push to help out the middle class. What he’s proposing is bigger child tax credit, some changes in how student loans are repaid and some credits for taking care of the elderly. Which in reality means he’s trying to by us off, but what he’s missing is that none of this crap matters. It’s completely inconsequential to the majority of the population and the only reason he’s offering this carrot on a stick is to give the appearance that he’s doing something great, when really, it just is not going to make a difference whatsoever in most of our lives.

If you want to help us Mr. President, here’s what the middle class really needs.

JOBS.

That’s all we need. The middle class doesn’t want handouts or charity. We want to work. We want to be left alone to make a living for ourselves without the interference of some out-of-touch greedy politicians sticking their nose in our business. And you’re not going to create jobs by making everyone a government employee. You create jobs by making it easy for people to start and do business. And how do you make it easy? Get out of our way.

Once upon a time you could have a business and employ other people without a truckload of fees and taxes and red tape, and without the fear of getting sued for having your bathroom mirror two inches too high or killing a field mouse and end up losing everything you worked for.

And once upon a time you could actually build things in America without fear that some sweatshop in a third world country who employs what basically amounts to slave labor will undercut you to death because they don’t have to play by the same rules you do and they have access to your market while they lock you out of theirs.

I could go on and on, and this is really a giant rant, which I don’t like to do, but honestly, it’s not a crazy concept to figure out. Government should do a few things: protect us from our enemies; maintain our infrastructure; and ensure that everyone plays fair according to the Constitution. After that, get the frick out of our way and let us do what we do best; Work our American butts off and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

We have a new President. And for the first time in our country’s short history, he’s not an old white guy. And that’s significant, let’s not play that down. 150 years ago, black people were bought and sold like cattle in this country. Now we have a black president. I think that says something about this country. Despite our problems, we’ve grown up quite a bit in some ways. So congratulations Mr. Obama.

Now that the election is decided, let’s move on. To those who are moving to Canada now that a Democrat is in the White House, go! I don’t want to hear your belly aching. And to those who think that all of your problems will suddenly vanish now that Obama is in office, don’t get discouraged when life doesn’t change all that much for you. And that’s all I’m going to say about this election.

Some things don’t.

So switching gears here, I just wanted to announce that my lovely wife Michelle and I have now been married for 20 years. Pretty amazing these days, and especially given the way we met.

Michelle and I didn’t even like each other when we first met. I knocked on her door one day looking for her brother who was a guitarist I was jamming with. I had my drums in the back of the truck and it was starting to rain. She didn’t even answer the door, she just yelled through it to go away. I told her that a few grand worth of drums were going to be ruined if she didn’t open the door and let me wait for her brother to come home. She basically said “so what”. Luckily her brother walked up right then. I had already decided that his sister was a bi@*#.

But over the next year or so we got to know each other as friends. I kept my distance since I had a rule of not getting involved with my buddies sisters, and this worked to our advantage because it allowed us to get to know each other, which I had generally not done with girls I dated. I was a long haired, rock & roller, and my life at that time was all about the party. And party we did. Thinking back to those days, I’m honestly surprised I’m here to write this.

It’s amazing how God can work though, even when we are actively avoiding Him. He brought the right person into my life at just the right time. Like I said, I was partying like crazy and lost my job right before we got married. Our only option was to move away and start over. My parents offered us a spare bedroom until we got back on our feet.

I’m still blown away that Michelle stuck around. I mean she marries this crazy guy with no job who then tells her she has to move out of town to live with his parents because he can’t support her. She must have been out of her freaking mind! But as I think back, it was a precise set of circumstances, that I believe God setup for us, that changed our lives forever. Within a few months time we were both substance free, working new jobs, with our own place. A completely fresh start in life, together.

And of course it hasn’t all been peachy since then, we’ve had our hard times. Marriage has it’s seasons and there’s challenges that come with every season. So there’s no great secret or custom set of rules to follow for a long marriage. What I will say though is that the times that were roughest, were solved by moving myself back toward Christ and not trying to “fix” Michelle. I think that’s the biggest mistake I see people make is trying to manipulate their partner to match themselves. The problem with that approach is first, it’s impossible, and second, your perceived “needs” evolve over time. You’d need Gumby as your mate to make that work!

But the purpose of marriage and the value of relationships never changes. These things were created by God and so they don’t change with the times. So by focusing on moving ourselves to be more like Christ, I think we’ve found that we can better meet each others real needs.

So anyway, I just want to say to my wife of 20 years,  I love you babe.

Now I’m not going to boast about how much my wife and I give to charity, because that’s not what this post is about. But I will say that we, and a lot of other regular folks I know, have given more in the past few months than Biden has given in the last 10 years. Obama didn’t do much better until he started on the campaign trail and even now I wouldn’t classify him as an extremely generous guy, especially for all his talk about helping the disadvantaged.

So my question is this… where is this compassion that Democrats always speak of?

It seems to me the only time the Democratic party is compassionate, it’s with MY tax money. What do you think?

What bothers me most though is the partisanship that permeates our political system, our news media, and even our own opinions. Despite the fact that the Republicans have owned the White House for 20 of the last 28 years, and the Democrats who have been promising “change” for decades, we are royally screwed right now. And yet we still take sides and point the finger at the other party. It almost seems to me that being a member of a party and being able blame somebody else when things go wrong is the more important than actually fixing things.

And it’s not going to get better. Our morality is crumbling, and you can see it in the rotten, petty, spiteful tone of these campaigns. You can see it in wall street types who would sell thier own mothers for quick profit. You can see it in the soccer mom who drives a car $30,000 more expensive than what she can afford because she has to look good for the neighbors. And you can see it in the politicians on both sides who sell out to whatever lobby puts the most cash in their pockets.

I’m not usually this pessimistic, but honestly I think this time around you could pretty much flip a coin for your vote and not be any worse off.

One thing I do know though, is that with the biggest financial crisis in our history being tied to two government sanctioned organizations… don’t even talk to me about the government running our health care. The Libertarian Party looks a tad more inviting today.

Being in the technology field I saw this same type of hysteria during the Year 2000 Bug Scare. This was a real, but manageable issue that really only affected software that depended on the date being correct. So mainly financial, payroll, those types of systems were at real risk of malfunctioning. Nobody can convince me that heart monitors were going to fail, planes fall from the sky, or defense networks fire all their missiles. However, the media saw a hot story to boost ratings, latched onto this, and they blew it into a full blown crisis.

When the people saw this, a few groups emerged. The first group, the chicken-littles, freaked out and wanted to replace everything that had a computer chip in it. The second group saw a chance to be heroes and at the same time infuse their departments, businesses and consulting firms with massive amounts of cash from the first group, and so they wanted to replace everything with a computer chip in it. Everyone else was labeled an idiot.

Of course it wasn’t the end of the world, though you’ll hear many tech people say it’s because the did such a great job. But I’m convinced that most of the work done for “Y2K”, was not done to prevent huge business losses, or to protect the public. It was done because the crisis was seen by the industry as a “blank check”.

There are so many parallels between that crisis and Global Warming it’s amazing. Scientists and governments are using it to fund programs and redistribute wealth. Companies are making huge dollars be churching out ineffective “green” versions of their products (and charging a premium for them). And everyone who disagrees is being labeled an idiot.

Nobody’s going to deny that we have an energy problem because of who owns the oil. Nobody’s going to deny that we have localized pollution problems. But to say we’ve set the entire planet off balance, or are even capable of it, is ridiculous in my opinion.

Links

MorningCoffee
OxfordMedievalist
Icecap.us

Big Deal.

Personally, I don’t care much for Robertson, or any of the major televangelists. I think the majority of them are more insterested in building and protecting their own kingdoms than furthering the Kingdom of God. I also understand why politicians want the support of Robertson and those like him. It means a lot of free publicity, and a lot of free cash and easy votes from those who will simply do what they are told by their favorite TV personality.

Having said all that, I do have to agree with Robertson that Guliani is the best we got given the choices. Yeah, yeah, he’s abortion-tolerant. That sucks. But I’m tired of right wingers basing everything on this one issue. I mean, what is a president really to do about it? The court has ruled. Sure you can appoint conservative judges, but Reagan and the Bushes appointed conservative judges and we still have legal abortions in this country. We need to start picking presidents because they are actually effective leaders, not because they can check the right boxes on the I Wanna Be a Republican Multiple Choice Exam.

I’m discouraged by all the candidates this time around to be honest. It just seems to get worse and worse every election season. Or maybe it’s because I’m getting older and have heard all this crap over and over and over again from dozens of candidates on both sides. It’s all so calculated. You know, the last time I was really excited by a candidate was when Alan Keyes ran. He’s the only guy I’ve heard speak in my voting life that seemed to me to have the same type of spirit, intelligence, faith, and integrity that many of the founding fathers, but very few since, seemed to posses. Unfortunately he never had a shot at getting elected. Black Republican President. Three words that just don’t go together in this country. It’s too bad.