A Few Good Men

September 26, 2010 Leave a comment

Sunday, September 26, 2010: The Chicago Tribune column by John Kass

John Kass meets the Rev. Isaac Hayes for breakfast. Hayes is Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Opponent in the race for the U.S. house.

John Kass writes: “We sat down for breakfast late last week at the Billy Goat. And if Jackson wants to sit down with me for a tasty Spiros Special breakfast sandwich and talk-without lawyers and spinners-he’s welcome.
I asked Hayes: How difficult is it being an African America conservative in a district where the Jackson family machine is so dominant?
“It’s difficult if you’re not willing to speak up about what you believe,” Hayes said. “If you’re weak, you wouldn’t want to do it. It’s my opinion that black conservatives have to have strong character. The easy smear is when you’re called a traitor to your race. That happens a lot.
But look at what’s happened to the black community over the decades. Look at the family. Look at the lack of economic opportunity,” he said. “These problems are in part because of liberal Democrats policies. But people like me get smeared as race traitors for not being liberal Democrats? That’s ironic. But that’s not why the media is interested in me.”
John Kass: Reporters are now interested in Hayes because Jackson-a child of privilege who has always been about as deep as a teaspoon-has been weakened.” …
(The column goes on to say that Jackson is weakened on two fronts: the corruption front and the blond front.)
John Kass: “It started with social issues,” he (Hayes) said of his conversion to conservatism. “I’m pro-life, and I believe marriage should be between one man and one woman. But as you think in terms of family, and what weakens it, you start thinking in terms of economic and education policy.” Hayes argues for education vouchers to free children trapped in dysfunctional inner-city schools and tax cuts to stimulate jobs. Clearly, such talks threaten big government Democrats whose power depends on keeping low-income Africa Americans as dependent clients.
”You ask how I became conservative?” Hayes said, “You minister to a 14- year old boy in jail, and he’s telling you that he has to get out so he can take care of his child. We’ve got to fundamentally change what’s going on in the cities. And it starts when African-Americans stop giving away their votes.”

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First Lady Swap

September 18, 2010 Leave a comment

From ABC.com: “Families are swapping wives right now for a whole new season of Wife Swap on ABC.”

Here is a wife swap I’d like to see: Michelle Obama with Sarah Palin!

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Citizen Czar

September 17, 2010 1 Comment

Recently Obama appointed Elizabeth Warren as a special advisor to oversee the newly created highly powerful consumer financial protection bureau. In doing so Obama bypasses Congress, our elected representatives. He is able to do this because the position is called “advisory” and it is not the directorship of the bureau. Like the appointment of the other Obama’s Czars, Obama’s sidestepping of Congress tells me that Ms. Warren will represent Obama’s interests and not the consumer’s interest. She is given this position in order to protect Obama politically. She will use hand slapping and the handicapping of Wall Street in order to make Obama look good. She is a frequent critic of Wall Street. We need someone to protect us from Obama’s appointees

In lieu of corrupt representation, it is high time that We the People appoint someone who represents us: a Citizen Czar. There needs to be someone who represents the Constitution and its intent of liberty for all (not government takes all).

The Citizen Czar would act to:

Restrict government encroachment for the sake of the People;

Restrain taxation for the sake of the people;

Promote natural marriage and healthy family relationships for the sake of the people;

Promote what is good, honest, just and honorable. Promote liberty with discipline. For the people.

Defend the non-politician from a politician’s BS. Citizen Czar will fine liars.

Distribute copies of the Constitution to every legal citizen;

Protect citizens from executive office appointed Czars, including the protection of our children from Safe-Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.

Ensure the display of the American flag in every classroom.

Ensure that the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag is said every morning in the classroom.

Promote charter and private schools and disassemble public education and the Department of Education.

Protect the ‘yet-to-be born’ American citizen from destruction.

Encourage, foster and present public forum debates on public issues.

Stop the redistribution of wealth; Support small business and entrepreneurship.

Work to see men honored and to see women loved.

Promote civility, citizenship and character (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) for We the People.

…this is big task for any one person. I suggest a Citizen Czar and a Citizen Czarina, a husband and wife team.

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Smart Money Talks, Greed Walks

September 16, 2010 Leave a comment

Milton Friedman, an American economist and Nobel Prize Winner, talks about greed.

The redistribution of wealth touted by Obama and progressives is actually a government distribution of the greed and envy that some people hold towards others who they consider are better off.

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White House, Black Thoughts

September 16, 2010 Leave a comment

It’s time for some house cleaning! It’s time for them to get the hell out!

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Stolen Goods

September 15, 2010 Leave a comment

The American economist and academic, Walter Williams, talks about redistribution of wealth:

“A right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different; it does impose an obligation on another. If one person has a right to something he didn’t produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That’s because, since there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.”

“No human should be coerced by the state to bear the medical expense, or any other expense, for his fellow man. In other words, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another is morally offensive.”

“For the most part, income is a result of one’s productivity and the value that people place on that productivity.”

“One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one’s fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving and pleasing him.”

“People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”

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This Shall Not Pass

September 14, 2010 Leave a comment

One negative effect of a redistribution of wealth, a class warfare mantra currently voiced by Obama, is that wealth given to someone who has not earned it creates a means for the recipient to disregard the situation that brought the recipient to a place of need.  The factors that created the need may be outside one’s control (becoming a widow or an orphan or a natural disaster) but most likely the factors are based on choices made by the recipient or their forebears.  Having economic need increases the sensitivity to the choices made and can help the person in need make the necessary corrections in their life.

A redistribution of wealth can also blot out the effects of sin passed down from generation to generation.  Being fully present to the context of your life can bring about an understanding of one’s spiritual poverty and then, perhaps, to a place of redemption and spiritual reward. A redistribution of wealth can numb the recipient to a needed spiritual ‘goading’. Because of this and many other substantial moral reasons (e.g., “Thou shall not steal.”), redistribution of wealth is not an ideal economic policy for humanity. Everyone wants to avoid pain but it is pain which redistributes a wealth of information to the bearer.

The founding fathers never envisioned this type of economic policy, economic policy which is punitive to some and palliative to others.  Equal opportunity is the baseline premise of our country, not envy and whining.  And. a man’s property is sacred.  Here is what some of the founding fathers wrote about redistribution of wealth:

 “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”     John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”   Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”   Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”    Thomas Jefferson

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”   Thomas Jefferson

With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”   James Madison in a letter to James Robertson

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”   Benjamin Franklin

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”   Benjamin Franklin

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”   John Adams

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”   James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

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Being Vanity Fair?

September 10, 2010 Leave a comment

I read Vanity Fair magazine (VF) because it contains articles that interest me: art, fashion, finances, society, culture, short biographies and general hob-nobbing. I understood from the beginning that VF is left leaning magazine. The readers of VF may believe that conservatism is too staid, too un-Pop-culture-ish and too unchanging and therefore too uninteresting for their tastes. (I prefer The New Criterion magazine. It better suits my conservative palette anyway. According to The New Criterion’s opening editorial The New Criterion magazine was created to combat “the insidious assault on the mind that was one of the most repulsive features of the radical movement of the sixties.” The New ‘arrow’ hits the old mark.)
Before getting on the train yesterday, I purchased a copy of the October 2010 issue of Vanity Fair. Therein, Graydon Carter in his Editor’s Letter, titled America the Angry wrote:
“…We are now defined more by what we don’t like than what we do like. And the list of what we don’t like is getting longer.” He goes to list his observations of what he believes everyone must hate. He then he says “We even have a cable network devoted to solely to anger and hate: it’s called Fox News. In the same letter, Carter goes on to talk about Rupert Murdoch (the owner of Fox News) and about Murdoch’s‘war’ with the very liberal New York Times owned by Sulzberger family.
I am unabashedly a conservative with a libertarian streak. I listen to Fox News daily. I listen to Fox Business network and Neal Cavuto. I listen to the Fox newscasts and I listen to the opinion shows. I listen to Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Greta van Sustern and Judge Napolitano on a regular basis. I have never heard anything that could be construed as hate. Never. Carter’s words are slanderous and uniformed in nature.
I have listened to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck become angry at what is happening to America. America is being sold a bill of Progressive ‘goods’ that will destroy our country from the inside. The progressive bill of goods is packaged as high brow good will offered to the lower classes. I am angry about this, too. America is about equal opportunity and not about equal outcomes. America is about “One Nation Under God”, not about One Nation Under Socialism.
Being angry and hating are two separate things in the regular world. What I see on Fox News is anything but hate. Apparently Mr. Carter (and many others in the main stream media) had never watched Fox news. Fox News is the largest cable news channel out there. Perhaps there is some envy coupled with anger and hatred being projected on to Fox news. I don’t doubt it.
Featured in the same Vanity Fair issue is a typical ‘thrown-from-the-left’ pejorative punch at Sarah Palin: 

Sarah Palin: The Sound and The Fury (Smears, lies and Big Speaking Fees, Inside Sarah Palin Inc.) written by Michael Joseph Gross. The article is petty. What else could you expect?  Nothing comes from nothing.

I am always astounded when the left’s bigotry and smugness is hailed as intellectualism.

Vanity Fair, if you want to write about hate and anger then look to the left. There you will see the black liberation salvation messenger Jeremiah Wright. Look at the NAACP. Look at the Black Panthers. Look at MSMBC and Chris Matthews. Look at Rachel Maddow. Look at the angry homosexuals spewing their hate on those they denounce as “homophobic”. If you seek you will find.
At this point in time, the left has moved so far to the left that they stand on nothing and for nothing. Bloated satire keeps them afloat, but only for the moment. The Sound and the Fury of Vanity dissipates quickly from a hot air balloon.

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A Turn For The Worse

September 9, 2010 Leave a comment

This morning on my way to the office I was walking toward the corner of Wabash and Monroe when I noticed a milk truck pass me. The sign on the back of the milk truck: “Let me be your milkman.” At the next corner, the milk truck started to make a right turn onto Wabash off of Monroe. Mid turn a Traffic Management person yelled “Stop” at the driver. The truck’s passenger side window was open so the driver heard the command and stopped the truck. Between the truck’s passenger side and the traffic woman stood a steel I-beam supporting the elevated tracks for the Loop EL train. The traffic woman and the truck’s driver talked back and forth through the open window. I approached the corner where they were talking and then I walked past the truck, across Wabash. As I did I heard the truck move forward behind me. I heard the traffic lady yelling stridently and the sound of metal and glass crashing to the ground.

I turned around when I heard the crunching, grating, snapping sound. The truck driver had broken off the passenger side rear view mirror during his right turn. He completely disregarded the traffic woman’s directions. The driver, an African-American man about thirty years old jumped out of the truck to look at the damage. At this point, I reached my building and went in.

Having considered this for even a moment, I see this incident as analogous to the Obama administration: consider the milk truck, the milk man, the words, “Let me be your milk man.”; consider the wreckage, the deafness to common sense direction, the defiance of continuing to drive forward without caring about the consequences. This incident is a metaphor of the progressive folly being imposed on us by the current administration.

In Obama world, the world of the great progressive thinkers, the circumstances would be at fault. The truck driver is a victim. The beam, the existing structure would be to blame for what happened. The I-beam would be considered as unyielding, stubborn, Republican, pre-existing and therefore someone else’s fault. The I-beam would probably be even considered racist in nature for not submitting to such a right turn. Or, the incident could just as easily be considered a class warfare issue: someone in the universe has more money than the person driving the truck. The rich should pay for the mirror.

This is the world we live in today: progressivism is now shown to be a moving forward at all costs despite common wisdom. The past (the rear view mirror) is not to be taken into account. All of this while making sure that someone or something else is to blame for what happens along the way.

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William F. Buckley Jr

September 8, 2010 Leave a comment

I always enjoyed listening to the scintillating repartee provided by the American public affairs show Firing Line hosted by William F. Buckley Jr .

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