Exactly!
July 19, 2012 Leave a comment
Here is Father Robert A. Sirico making it perfectly clear why capitalism is GOOD. (There is a surprise at the end of the video, too.)
Depends On You
July 14, 2012 Leave a comment
The 2012 Presidential and congressional elections will be reflections of who you are. You will be deciding whether you want to be represented as a slave under a bigger more intrusive government with its plantation inducing mentality or whether self-government and self-determination will best speak for you. The former is easy – show up and do nothing except what the master tells you to do. The latter requires blood, sweat and tears.
Let me ask you straight up: what would provide you with more self-esteem? A government welfare check for subsistence or a check handed to you by your accountant after your company succeeded and made a profit? Or equally, a check handed to you by your employer because the company you work for succeeded to make payroll for another week because of your input? The former just pays the bills (and likely buys several lottery tickets). The latter provides for yourself, your family, your grandchildren and much more.
Another question: With those same checks in hand would the person with the government welfare check be more willing to give to charity or would the person who was handed the profit-sharing dividend or a paycheck be more willing to give to charity? (A Christian would have to be the second kind of person. King David once said, “I will not offer to the Lord something that costs me nothing?”)
You don’t have to think hard about this. The answer is obvious to most right thinking people, the vision is clear, but it is hidden from those who vote for Obama and the Democrats.
Progressives and their “Lean Forward” campaign (funded with monies from foreigner George Soros) want the U.S. government to dole out cradle-to-grave entitlements thereby making Americans utterly reliant on the political ruling class and their condescending “we-the-government-know-what’s-good-for-you” pseudo-altruism. In reality, these two-armed bandits want more gambling revenue to throw at money laundering schemes like Solyndra.
Thomas Sowell in his book of articles and essays The Thomas Sowell Reader describes the Big Government vision promoted by the ruling class “anointed” …
The anointed want to eliminate stress, challenge, striving, and competition. They want the necessities of life to be supplied as “rights” – which is to say, at the taxpayer’s expense, without anyone’s being forced to work for those necessities, except of course the taxpayers.
Nothing is to be earned. “Self-esteem” is to be dispensed to school children as largess from the teacher. Adults are to have their medical care and other necessities dispensed as largess from the government. People are to be mixed by race and sex and whatever else the anointed want to take into account, in order to present whatever kind of picture the anointed think should be presented.
This is the vision of human beings as livestock to be fed by the government and herded and tended by the anointed. All the things that make us human beings are to be removed from our lives and we are to live as denatured creatures and directed by our betters. (emphasis mine)
Those things that help human beings be independent and self-reliant – whether automobiles, guns, the free market, or vouchers – provoke instant hostility from the anointed.
Below are two contrasting videos: one video depicts a life on government programs ala The Life of Julia. The other describes you as a self-governing self-determining free person. I ask you, who is more empowered? You already know the answer. Vote the answer and not what the plantation’s political ruling class is promoting via the main stream media (MSNBC‘s Lean Forward Campaign, Media Matters, etc.).
Is the future of America you holding your DMV issued health-care card and food stamps? Or is the future of America (you and me) dependent on our own self-government and our own self-determination while holding on to our self-esteem and liberty? For a while fascism’s authoritarianism feels safe and secure but that quickly changes. You soon become a slave or an automaton in the system. Liberty on the other hand is scary good. As I have said liberty requires responsibility on your part but liberty is supremely worth it.
Yet, if the Obama plantation feels safe, if you see yourself as dependent on the master for your life then go with that but please don’t vote to take others with you.
Others have made freedom and choice their life:
http://demetriuspeaks.com/2012/07/06/what-it-means-to-be-a-black-conservative/
Thomas Sowell notes in another article, “Entitlement is just a fancy word for dependence.”
The full article here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267898/dependency-and-votes-thomas-sowell
Who represents you in Washington is a reflection of you. Do you like what you see?
Democrats and the plantation:
Independence Day:
All Bets Are Off
July 7, 2012 Leave a comment
Barack Obama is “Betting On America.” That’s right. Like most Democrats (Illinois Democrats are a prime example) BHO has made America his favorite slot machine. The gambling analogy is very apropos. He wants to gamble away our earnings, our future.
People, just keep giving BHO your money (or other people’s money) and he will keep pulling the lever for you until something good comes out. Expectations are big. Hope and Change are full tilt. This is Progress for Democrats: spend more, tax more, build more casinos.
But what comes out when the lever is pulled? Excuses. Joblessness. Cronyism.
Have you heard of the person who keeps doing the same thing while hoping for a different result? Insanity accounts for the actions of BHO the politician. Insanity also accounts for the votes of those people who continue to elect Democrats: “We keep hoping something good will come out of this – that we will win big in this Grand Casino of life.” “If only we could win without putting any of our money in. That would be all the better.”
Has our good money been thrown into the government slot machine? It wasn’t your money to lose? Oh well, there’s more where that came from right? Heard at the buffet table: “The 1% need to do their fair share so we can keep playing the slots.”
Your vote matters. 2012: Vote insanity and excuses out and reality in, if not for yourself then at least for your children and grandchildren. Don’t gamble with our future.
On higher plane:
Independence Day Recast?
July 4, 2012 2 Comments
Have you seen the movie Independence Day? If you have then you would know that aliens have invaded our world. There are aliens in the air and, you might agree, there are aliens on the ground in the form of the cast.
A blurb about the movie from the IMDb website: “The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man’s best weapon is the will to survive.”
Man’s best weapon here may be to laugh off this farce. I like sci-fi. I think Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and the original The Day the Earth Stood Still directed by Robert Wise are some of the best in that genre. But this movie is epic as pathetic slap-stick sci-fi. Of course you can’t take it seriously.
Will Smith’s pre~Men~In~Black typecasting of silly No Fear bravado and Randy Quaid’s dad~is~crazy~but~somehow~his~zaniness~endears~us~to~him role adds fuel to this trash can fire. The role of President Thomas Whitemore is played by a stiff whose part would have better played better by a teleprompter. Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson portrays an MIT educated-computer expert~chess playing~environmentalist~satellite tech~you~name~it~he’s~got~the~answer~for~you~kind~of~guy who ‘triangulates’ the four corners of this going-nowhere movie.
The movie’s special effects won an Academy Award and I’ll never know why. The effects are third-rate at best. (I thought Twister should have won that year). The movie does, though, offer something for the political observer ~ a perfect realization of the Obama presidency.
The dark, foreboding and humongous space ship hovering over Washington D.C. is a perfect archetype of the Obama Administration. Out of the bottom of the ominous alien craft come lethal rays: Obamacare taxes and immigration fiats. Cities and people’s lives are instantly destroyed. America is under attack.
There is no reason given for why this is happening other than America is America and the aliens say that America must die. So it is that Eric Holder, an onerous chief alien, sits in the mother ship’s ivory tower directing America’s destruction with reserved glee.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.” At least for America as we have known it.
…The space ship is hovering….
Constance (the President’s Press Secretary): “Now what do we do?
President Thomas Whitmore: “Address the nation. There’s gonna be a lot of frightened people out there.”
Constance: “Yeah, I’m one of ’em.”
Wow! Someone save us from the dialog! Thankfully the brave and ‘wacky’ heros played by Will Smith and Randy Quaid) come to America’s aid and help bring an end to this distraction of a movie.
Using viral computer ‘implants’ and sexy aircraft maneuvering the alien ‘death’ ship is decimated but only after hundreds of minor skirmishes with the pesky alien ‘gnats’ (the larva born in Obama’s ideological intransigence or perhaps in Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly movie).
The next time you watch this movie listen to the dialog. It deserves a Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot of Mystery Science Theatre over dubbing!
We can turn a movie off when the Hollywood kitsch gets to be too much or when the credits (and debits) finally roll. But we can’t turn off government when it makes no sense. Except if you and I begin voting it out of our lives.
Do you want freedom from annihilation by Obamacare taxation? How about “Fighting for our right to live ~ to exist” without own government’s tyranny, oppression and persecution? How about freedom from government’s intrusion of our privacy and its coercive mandates? Will the middle class now go quietly into the night now that it is being taxed into oblivion?
America’s Independence began when it resisted taxation without representation. Now we have representation that doesn’t represent our best interests and that mimics King George’s taxation edicts. Let’s throw off the shackles of tyranny and vaporize the black cloud of government that overshadows us wherever we go. Vote Obama and the Dems out.
It is confirmed. There is alien life out there. They are living among us: Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Holder, Napolitano, Durbin, Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer, Elizabeth Warren…
Adventures With Paradise
June 17, 2012 Leave a comment
It was supposed to be a quiet evening dinner – just me, myself and I – Epicurious at a local food trough. But, the gods of Saturn had other plans for this mortal this Saturday.
Living alone I typically stay home at night. I make my own dinner and eat by myself, dribbling on clothes I know are predestined for the laundry. But yesterday, a beautiful sun bathed Saturday, I decided to head out of the house for a meal in early evening. This restaurant visit would be the first time I would have a dinner meal out in well over two years. Saturday breakfast at the Copper Fox is usually my big meal out.
At the Fox I down a repast big enough to choke a horse – eggs over easy, sausage, potatoes and multi-grain toast all drowned in black coffee. At that point having been sated for the rest of the week I then just eat simple throw-together meals. But last night was different. I was twitching to get out of the house. I wanted to cool my ever-burning jets and pay for someone else to make me a meal. And, my serendipity was showing.
So I gussied up. With some Ann Taylor hugging my bones and a smacking smudge of lipstick I headed out my apartment door and to my car. Pulling out of the driveway the sun, heading in the opposite direction, shot a ray of reflected light onto my face from the rear view mirror. I winced and thought, “This will have to do. I can’t grow another.” I drove over to the next town. There I knew I would find some restaurants that still served something beyond over-sized plates of Tex-mex carbohydrates with giant big gulps to wash it all down.
Once downtown I parked my car near the hundred-twenty year old county court-house and began to stroll down the makeshift-quaint First Avenue. As I had learned this suburban hamlet became historic in one day. All this happened when the city council decided it was time for their town to clone an Immigrant History. This is verifiable. The false histrionics I mean.
I once met the town’s historian (a full-time position in this small town!) at a bar about five years ago. While drinking down his bitters, gin and sweet vermouth he told me the whole spiel – the town wanted to appear folksy so it came up with an embellished history – two actual immigrant families who arrived in America from Sweden and who made their home in this town many years ago would come to define the town’s heritage. With this little tinge of history the town councilmen whitewashed the town hoping to attract crowds to its festivals, art shows and local businesses. Voila! A smorgasbord of fantasy folklore was created to charm the out-of-towners.
I was reminded of this as I walked past the town’s ‘historical’ center. I continued to walk along the brick-paved street past the faux-historical showcase of facades. Everywhere I looked there were gaggles of doe-eyed arm-in-arm couples taking advantage of the romantic spectacle that is this revisionist-town.
I walked by several restaurants, none of them appealing to my appetite, none of them worthy of my ‘thrill-of-the-moment’ twenty-bucks.
I walked on past the New-Age Gem store and its wafting cloud of incense. I passed Mama’s Gratto, a patio padded with doting couples – men doting their Miller Lites and women doting their chilled chards, both poking at a plate of shared antipasto.
I skimmed past the darkened window of Kwasimodo Sushi. Silhouettes stood out above the counter. I passed the ever-strumming ever-piped mariachi music of the Mexican restaurant and crossed the street looking both ways for food, my stomach now on high alert.
There it was directly across the street – a new restaurant right on the corner. An Italian wood-burning oven restaurant. I walked over to the front door . The menu was posted on a side window. Inside the doorway stood a sidewalk sign offering “Special – Baked Oysters.” This caught my attention. The last time I had baked oysters was during a New Orleans Madri-Gras week that should never be remembered. ‘Nawlins food though, my palette can never forget, is delectable. So in a trance-like state I ventured inside hoping to create a little culinary heaven for about one hour. Instead what I received was purgatory, a purgatory inducing purge-atory.
(Did I mention I live alone? There is a reason for that. I remain single because of George Bush. I went through a divorce while he was president. This is why I eat alone every night. This is why I never hear Dream Weaver while I’m showering. This is why I don’t eat my Italian Wedding soup looking at some dreamy-eyed Spaniard whose thirst for life is matched only by his roaring appetite for friends to enable him. And besides this, there aren’t many real men anymore. I don’t mean macho. I mean real as in solid stainless steel, not Formica veneer. We have Formica veneer in the White House right now but I live alone because of George Bush.)
As I entered the restaurant I saw a throng of waitresses standing at the end of the bar. Dressed in black from head to toe the girls were all in their early twenties. The manager appeared to be giving them their instructions for the evening. I waited at the door but there was no response from the crew so I sought a small table along a wall. I sat down on the long bench that ran the length of that wall. I sat facing the room. From there I could see that there were only three patrons in the restaurant, myself and two young women. A handful of diners were outside on the patio. It was just after five o’clock in the afternoon.
A waitress broke free from the meeting. She welcomed me as she handed me a menu. I ordered a Stella. When she came back with the drink I ordered the baked oysters.
I sat in the extremely chilled room and watched the crew scurry around the bar and in and out of the patio door. I wondered if flies would take advantage of the open invite. After a short while an older couple, a grandfather and grandmother, came in with three of their very young grandkids. They were shown a table along the wall, one table away from me. I sipped my cold beer trying to warm up.
Soon a young couple entered the restaurant. They had brought with them their four daughters. The daughters looked to be all under the age of ten. This family was seated right next to me along the wall – the four girls sat on the same bench seat. I soon learned that the youngest girl did not want to be there. She was adamant in her disapproval.
“Muh-maaaaa.” Muh-maaaaa.” The youngest one whined repeatedly, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.” as she crawled from the bench to her father and then to her mother and then back to the bench. I was hoping my food would arrive soon. I was quickly becoming de-romanticized about my evening out. The Minestrone Moderne had morphed into Kinder-Kare.
With four children of my own, all now grown, I had brought my own kids to a restaurant early in the evening just like these parents had so as to not disturb the other patrons. But that was years ago and I had forgotten about the family hours.
My baked oysters arrived after thirty minutes. They must have been fresh. The half-dozen looked just dandy sprinkled with bread crumbs, Asiago cheese and some chopped herbs and shallots. But as you know oysters are not eaten in the most delicate of ways. So right then I wanted to be home – alone with the mollusks and far from the madding crowd
After downing the first oyster in the door walks another young couple with kids. Guess where they were seated. Yep. On my left side.
To my left and to my right were antsy children, antsy children all wanting to go home or to go to MacDonald’s for supper. Both sets of parents and the grandparents eager for a Saturday night on the town ordered wine. Ah, the memories of wine’s sedative affects amidst the wails of youth’s discontent.
It certainly seemed odd to me that the three families with children were seated alongside me as the whole restaurant lay open. But then it clicked. I would naturally sit where parents of young children would sit on an early Saturday night. A lot of wine had passed under the bridge.
I finished my dinner, gulping down oysters five and six as fast I could with swigs of Stella. When I was through I pushed the plate of disgorged oyster shells forward and almost off the edge of the table. I was hoping to get the waitress’ attention. No such luck. It would be another fifteen minutes before she would make her appearance at the kitchen doorway. By now my stomach and head were both reeling from parenting’s noble strife.
When the waitress finally arrived she asked me if there was anything else I needed. I shook my head “No.” I didn’t think they would have ear plugs on the desert menu and I didn’t want to ask for a bucket, either.
The check arrived after another curious disappearance. I pulled out a wad of dollar bills hoping for enough cash so that I didn’t have to wait on her again. I was in luck.
I set the bill folder down with the cash tucked inside. I looked around for my waitress but she was nowhere to be found again. I grabbed my purse and headed out the door. Ah. I heaved a sigh of relief as the warm summer air decompressed my thoughts.
Retracing my steps through Ersatz village I found my car and drove home. Thinking that my parenthood had lost large quantities of its patience along the way I vowed that I would never go out for dinner again at night when the young and the restless were about. At least not until I become a grandparent and retrace my steps while sipping wine.
© Sally Paradise, 2012, All Rights Reserved
Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012): Igniting Our Imaginations
June 9, 2012 1 Comment
Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) 
As a high school student in the 1960s I was required to read several of Ray Bradbury’s works. Included were his novels Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes and a short story The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.
Bradbury’s writings were my introduction to the world of science fiction and fantasy. Written at the right psychic temperature, his writings set the kindling of my imagination aflame, burning holes in my scripted life prior to graduation.
It was during this time in high school that my off and on desire to write became an imperative. And with it came the urgency to feed those necessary flames with countless books. Logocentric, I was enthralled with the written and spoken word and their power to create, inform and inspire. Since those days I continue to fan those flames as I am ever fireside.
In honor of Ray Bradbury, below are plentiful excerpts from a June 8th, 2012 article by Bruce Walker of the American Thinker website titled “The Conservative Legacy of Ray Bradbury.”
Ray Bradbury is dead. His literary career spanned an incredible 73 years, and his influence was felt across the broad spectrum of American thought. Bradbury was very conscious of the fact that he grew up in almost a pre-technological society; “[w]hen I was born in 1920,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 2000, “the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.
Although he eschewed squabbling over the political issues of the day, Bradbury embraced the idea that there are grand and common themes to the human condition — and nowhere more piercingly than in his Fahrenheit 451.
Fahrenheit 451 focuses on a single, salient aspect of human life: the written word. Bradbury’s dystopia is fantastically simple. Firemen exist to burn books: the final immolation of all the collected writings of men will liberate us from our past and from the long heritage of civilization. Mass communication and particularly mass amusement have replaced the solitary acts of reading and of writing. What Bradbury saw, of course, is the world we live in today, and what he was defending was, in the purest sense of the word, conservatism. (emphasis mine)
It is a fact of modern history that conservatism is inextricably connected with the written word. The Torah and the Christian Bible, preserved so deliberately by believers over many centuries, are touchstones to conservatism. Documents like our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution prescribe the purposes and limits of government and void the ambitions of power-hungry leftists.
The solemn beauty of Chambers’ Witness or Koestler’s Darkness at Noon or Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago lay open the ghastliness of souls sold to Marx’s nightmare. The flawless spiritual rhetoric of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, the brilliant theories in Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed, and the passionate indictment of collectivism in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged use simple words to make truth clear.
…
The left lives on emotions and images. There is no leftist counterpart to Thomas Sowell or C.S. Lewis or Ayn Rand or Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Bradbury grasped the unique vitality of the written word. Bradbury once said, “Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. (emphasis mine)
Ray Bradbury:
Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. (emphasis mine)
Bradbury on Bradbury:
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleep walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.
From Wikipedia:
Bradbury was a strong supporter of public library systems, and helped to raise money to prevent the closure of several in California due to budgetary cuts. He iterated from his past that “libraries raised me”, and shunned colleges and universities, comparing his own lack of funds during the Depression with poor contemporary students. He exhibited skepticism with regard to modern technology by resisting the conversion of his work into e-books and stating that “We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.” (emphasis mine)
Ray, I agree. And thanks for igniting our imaginations.
****
Bradbury quotes sourced from Wikipedia.
Cindy Wity 
He Is Heavy, He’s My Government
July 21, 2012 Leave a comment
H/T to a blog down under, another land of the free and the brave:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/category/libertarians-dont-live-by-argument-alone/
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Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Politcal cartoon, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Writing Tagged with 2012 elections, Big Government, business, economy, government regulations, libertarians, Obama, Obamacare, politics