Month: September 2008

Contributed by: filbert Monday, September 15 2008 @ 03:50 PM CST

I see the long-term effects of today’s 500+ drop in the DJA and all of the stock markets as being a good thing – – long term, that is.

Short term, lots of people who had nothing to do with the problem are going to get hurt.  That’s bad.  But lots of people who had a hand in engineering the mess in Wall Street got their knuckles rapped hard by reality today.

I heard something on the radio today:  Responsibility Requires Risk.  When you take the risk out of any economic endeavor, you take the responsibility out, too.  Without risk, you can behave irresponsibly and get away with it.  Of course, risk is always there–it’s just that some folks are better at shifting the risk to Somebody Else than other people.  These people tend to be a) very wealthy and b) very corrupt.  Most of them are politicians, including, today, most of the members of Congress.

Think of that the next time you want the Government to come swooping in to solve a “market failure.”

(Still not “politics.”   I didn’t name any candidates.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

Contributed by: filbert Monday, September 15 2008 @ 11:13 AM CST

FDR’s New Deal is running out of gas.  FNMA (“Fannie Mae”) and “Freddie Mac” have already gone under.  Social Security isn’t far behind.  And, LBJ’s “Great Society” Medicare program is running on financial fumes, too.

It’s past time to re-think the massive, authoritarian-era (1930’s) government intervention into massive swaths of the economy.  We know more now.  We know better–or at least we should.

(Yeah, I know I said “no politics” but this isn’t really politics.  It’s economics–and human nature.  You give people power, they WILL abuse it–no matter where, how, or when.  That was the brilliance of our Founding Fathers.  I’m not sure that either side–Republicans or Democrats–really understand that.)

Contributed by: filbert Saturday, September 13 2008 @ 02:08 PM CST

OK, it’s time.  If you’ve been reading Medary.com you’ve got a pretty good idea what I think about the Presidential election and politics in general.  The entire world will be consumed by the U.S. elections.  Since I’m at heart a contrarian, if everybody goes that way, I am going to go the other way, just to see what’s there.

So, I’m going to turn off the politics spigot, now.  You all go out there and play nice for the next couple of months, OK?  No teasing, no taunting.  (Who the hell am I kidding?)

Anyway, here at Medary.com, we’re turning to travel, food, fun, and of course simians for the next couple of months . . . at least until after Election Day.

Hang on folks, we’re goin’ on a ROAD TRIP!!!

Contributed by: filbert Saturday, September 13 2008 @ 11:47 AM CST

On the heels of the wildly offensive “Jesus was a community organizer, Pilate was a governor” quip, via Instapundit[*1] , a couple of retorts:

Hitler was a community organizer, FDR was a governor, and
Pontius Pilate was the guy who voted “present”

Careful with those stones, those walls look pretty transparent . . .

Contributed by: filbert Friday, September 12 2008 @ 07:46 PM CST

Gerard Vanderleun, writing at the American Digest:

No matter the good it once did, the Democrats today present as sick and crazed political party that is so greedy and hungry for power that it will do anything, including selling its country down the drain, to get it back.

Regardless of the race of the Democrats’ selected nominee, Martin Luther King’s dream of judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin has been transformed into a tawdry thing; a dried husk in which they wrap their skeletal remains, a hollow phrase spewed by the ascendent race hustlers of the party and lapped up by their acolytes.

Until 2004, with the exception of Guiliani’s second term as mayor, I voted the Democrat ticket in every election since 1967. In 2004, offered the Insane Clown Posse of John Kerry and John Edwards, I voted for George Bush. The spectacle of the last four years of various Democrats reaching for the gold ring did not inspire me to change my view. Only the dead enjoy parties in a crypt. Not even Roman columns improve the Charnal house atmosphere that fumes through the party today.

From the party that gave us FDR, Truman, JFK and even, yes, LBJ, the Democrats have gone through a process of gradual but inexorable devolution to the party of such weak, tepid and compromised souls as Carter, Clinton, Kerry, and now Obama – the ultimate bargainer, the race hustler with an Ivy League sheepskin. But these chestless men the Party puts up are only the shadows cast by the compromises it has made within itself. It has made many compromises over the years, taken in many “causes” each one more dubious and rotten than the last.

As a result of this unremitting ideological promiscuity, the “progressive” party has become progressively more diseased from each submissive encounter. The gangrene that has rotted the body of the party has transformed it into some transnational Dorian Gray. Strutting and noble and handsome when preening before the cameras and the crowds, but putrid and pestilential when you see it as it is in the dull light of its polluted “new morning.”

Politics is a profession founded on and fueled by hypocrisy. This we all know. But, at the same time, we also need a politics that somewhere within it has a shred of uncompromised decency, the understanding of honor, and more than a little courage. None of these qualities exists in the Democratic Party today.

Most illuminating are the comments–erudite and sad, but agreeing with Vanderleun.

Contrary to what regular readers here may think I think about this, the abandonment of the Democratic Party by its saner members is probably not a good thing, long term, for the country.  But at some point an institution gets too corrupt to redeem, I suppose.

Contributed by: filbert Friday, September 12 2008 @ 05:34 PM CST

Jonah Goldberg[*1] , via Free Republic[*2] :

Yep. The day after 9/11, as part of its “get tough” makeover,  the Obama campaign is mocking John McCain for not using a computer, without caring why he doesn’t use a computer. From the AP story[*3] about the computer illiterate ad:

“Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,” [Obama spokesman Dan] Pfeiffer said. “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.”

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by “extraordinary.” The reason he doesn’t send email is that he can’t use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. From the Boston Globe[*4] (March 4, 2000):

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan – Ted Williams is his hero – but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

Emphasis is Goldberg’s.

So . . . the reason McCain doesn’t use e-mail is because the North Vietnamese maimed and tortured him to the point that he physically can’t.  And this is somehow worthy of dismissive quotes from Obama spokesmen, and even of an Obama campaign advertisement.

You know, I really want to get past politics-blogging, at least for a little while . . . really, I do.

But apparently Obama is “for the troops”–that is unless one of them happens to stand between Obama and political power.  Then it’s classic Chicago machine gutter politics as usual.  Change, folks.  Change.  And Hope, too.

Contributed by: filbert Friday, September 12 2008 @ 01:58 PM CST

One or more of the above will be tried by the Democrats as they become more and more desperate, approaching Election Day:

1:  Democrats will accuse McCain of either having Alzheimer’s and/or of taking the Alzheimer’s drug Aricept.  Forged documents will be presented to support this smear.  It will get wide, uncritical play in the mainstream media.

2:  Palin’s firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan will be pushed ever harder as a “scandal,” despite a) her absolute right as Governor to dismiss him at any time, for cause or not; b) the facts of the case, which clearly show that State Trooper Mike Wooten was an out-of-control officer and should have been terminated rather than protected by Monegan, and c) the Alaska Legislature committee investigating the matter is rife with strident Obama supporters, making any kind of unbiased investigation impossible.  There is no “there” there, but that seldom stops the Democrat/Media complex from ginning up a scandal where none exists.  The only scandal I see is that Palin didn’t fire Monegan’s ass sooner than she did.

3:  They will find something innocuous in either McCain’s or Palin’s finances, and whip it up into another “scandal.”

4:  They will find some floozy in Alaska who claims to have had sex with Palin’s husband Todd.

God only knows what else the Democrats will dredge up or gin up to try to smear McCain/Palin.  But the panic is palpable on the Democrat side now.

Contributed by: filbert Thursday, September 11 2008 @ 12:03 PM CST

Let’s stop for a minute and remember what happened.

For years, Islamic extremists raged throughout most of the world, raping, beheading, and terrorizing people from Indonesia to Algeria.  We did nothing.

One of them, Osama bin Laden, declared war on the U.S.  We did nothing.

They set off bombs in the parking garages underneath the World Trade Center in New York.  We did next to nothing.

They brazenly attacked a U.S. warship, the U.S.S. Cole.  We did next to nothing.

They sent men to enroll in pilot schools in the U.S, never planning to finish their studies.  We let them.

They took over four airliners and flew two of them into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon.  The fourth was reportedly destined for the U.S. Capitol.  Congress was in session that day.  Due to the heroic efforts of ordinary Americans on that fourth airliner, it never made it to Washington, D.C.

The Islamic extremists said that they wanted to recreate the Islamic Caliphate, as it had existed at the time of the Crusades.  They wanted Baghdad to be the capitol.  They ultimately wanted to spread the Caliphate across the entire Earth.

They are the enemies of civilization.  They are barbarians.

We did something.  We attacked their stronghold in Afghanistan, and drove them into the dark recesses of the world.

We then lanced the festering boil on the world that was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq–a country which for years thumbed its nose at the United Nations, at sanctions, at negotiations.  A country that had a history of using poison gas on its neighbors–and on its own citizens.

During the course of our lancing that boil, the very Islamic extremists who plotted all of those attacks culminating with the airliner attacks on 9/11/01 said that Iraq was their next battle against us.  Iraq was where they would defeat us, and begin to create their Caliphate. They began taking over that country.  At first, we let them.

Then we opposed them.  We re-remembered how to fight a counter-insurgency.  We started fighting smart, not just fighting strong.

Then we won.

That pretty much brings us up to today.