Time tells the Tale

Two weeks ago this Saturday, my mother died at the ripe old age of 67.  She should have been relatively healthily retired rather than dead, but she spent her life drinking heavily and smoking even more.  What she did not realize was the effect time has on poor decisions.  When she was 25 and smoked a cigarette, nothing happened.  When she was 45 and smoked a cigarette, she got a cough.  When she was 65 and smoked a cigarette, it drove her a day closer to death.

Time, more than anything else, reveals the quality of our decisions.  This principle applies to every human endeavor.  And it is amazingly revealing when it comes to the policies of the Obama administration.  Now that the economy has ground nearly to a halt, I believe it is time we look at what has brought us to this point.  After nearly 3 ½ years, it should be clear that the world is in such a precarious position mostly due to the policies of Obama, Bernanke, and Little Timmy Geithner.

Greece is probably gone from the EU, and I predict that it is highly likely that two other nations will also be forced to leave the Euro behind.  Portugal almost for sure, and probably Spain or Italy as well.  Even Ireland, nearly fully recovered from their previous debt debacle is coming under pressure again.  Obviously, sovereign nations create their own debt crises, but the failure of the Obama administration to strengthen the American economy has only amplified the issues facing Europe and the rest of the world.

Portugal and Greece are by their own decisions lost causes.  But Italy could very likely have been salvaged, and Spain almost certainly so after electing a very conservative government.  But Europe has suffered from an American economy that is not able to support the previous levels of European imports, or even maintain a helpful level of travel and tourism that could have provided a least a little shot in the arm to some of the struggling countries such as Spain.

Almost from the moment Obama was elected, I was among the chorus of voices that warned about the destructive nature of leftist policies that were being implemented, the results of which we are seeing play out today.  At first, there was little impact of those policies, not even inflation, as well as little benefit.  But oh, how times have changed!

The printing of money has definitely caused the increase in consumer prices now.  This is best seen in food and gasoline prices, which despite being labeled as “volatile” but will never again go as low as they were in 2008 because the price increases are due to a weak dollar and not some gigantic spike in demand.

That is where Keynesian economics has gotten the formula wrong; an economic recovery occurs because of the money in people’s pockets.  The problem right now is that no one has any money, a direct result of following Keynesian economic policy.  But it need not have been this way.

There are 3 parts to the Obama administration’s error; the stimulus, the “Quantitative Easing”, and the racking up of government debt.

First, the stimulus.  According to USA Today, the average salary of a generic government worker is $96,481 (average of federal and state averages) while in the public sector the average worker receives $61,051.  Let’s assume that 50% to 100% of the stimulus was used to create jobs (fanciful I know, but humor me).  In the private sector, this is enough to create between 9,100,273 to 14,381,418 jobs.  But by paying the exorbitant amounts received by government employees, only 4,550,118 to 7,190,709 jobs would have been created.

In reality, the Obama administration has only created 4.3 million jobs since the bottom of the recession, leaving them somewhere between 250,000 to over 10 million jobs short of what would have been created with the same money in the private sector.  And that does not include getting nothing at all out of the other 4 + trillion in deficit spending over the last few years.

The borrowing and printing of the five trillion has had two other negative effects not counted on by the left and those who support liberal economic policies.  Let’s review the scope of the damage to see what has made the borrowing and printing of the 5 trillion so damaging.  It all goes back to the amount of money in people’s pockets.

If Obama had been even moderately reasonable in his economic policy, there is no reason why he could not have limited the federal deficit to $300 billion a year.  And even if he had spent the equivalent of all 4 years of that already, the deficit would only be up $1.2 billion.  That would have left $3.8 billion of extra money in the market.  If we assume $800 billion of this was printed, $3 trillion still would have been left to investors.

Assuming $1 trillion of this money came from overseas investors, American investors would still have been left with $2 trillion in cash to put back in the economy.  This money would have been focused in the areas where we are hurting the most economically.  Investors could have purchased thousands of the homes still underwater, easing the housing crunch considerably more by now.  And, they would have also provided somewhat of a source for small business investing, which would have helped buoy job growth.  And I am not just guessing here--these are traditional uses of a good percentage of investor monies.  Don’t believe what you see on TV, not everyone puts all their money into the stock market.

The government may have made short sales easier, but that is still not the same thing as actually buying short sales.  Instead, all of these trillions investor money was sucked up by the government, mostly to be wasted.  How bad is it?  Here in the Phoenix area, the housing market has been propped up mostly by investors from…Canada.

Consumers can’t help, because the printing of the $800 billion has raised prices across the board, regardless of claims to the contrary.  For most of the 2000’s I would not spend over $2 for a box of cereal, now I have to spend $3 or eat cheap Corn Flake knockoffs.  Truth is, the weak dollar has guaranteed we will never see $2 gas or cereal ever again.

This keeps consumers from helping in the recovery, because it is the money they have left after paying bills and buying necessities that consumers use to buy all the other things in the economy that spurs growth.  Inflation, even if the government does not want to recognize it, has hamstrung consumer spending.  Like I said, the problem is no one has any money - not investors, not consumers, not small businesses.  And this is a problem.

Instead of being in a period of economic growth, we have borrowed and spent trillions of dollars without any return.  We could have been well into a solid recovery at this point and once again the economic engine that supports the rest of the world, but the Obama administration blew it.  If the $2 trillion dollars the government sucked out of private investor's pockets had been put into hiring people in the public sector, spread over the last 4 years, it would have created 8,189,874 permanent jobs.

Think about that.

Siding with the hoodies.

I am so blessed to live in the wonderful state of Arizona.  Anytime I want, I can simply throw my pistol into a backpack and take it nearly everywhere I want.  Or, if I prefer, I can strap on a holster and openly carry it everywhere I go.  Only government buildings and businesses with no weapons allowed signs are off-limits.  I have carried openly into gas stations, Wal-Marts, and grocery stores.  I love having my gun with me.  And I have been welcome almost everywhere I have gone with it.

But then, Arizona has had a very long history of being lenient with allowing guns.  I do not think there was ever a time when open carry was illegal here.  That has bred a certain amount of maturity in the citizens for handling weapons well.  When concealed carry was made legal without a permit, leftists said that this would make the state into a shooting gallery.  In reality, nothing changed.  While there are still rare accidents, swimming pools are a larger threat to young children than guns are (check the statistics).

So let's talk about my carrying my gun for a moment.  To me, the gun on my hip or in my bag has three levels of use.  The first level is preventative; when I open carry, I forewarn others I have it on me.  But let's say that I am carrying concealed or that someone is high on PCP and decides to take their chances.

Now, my gun has a more foreboding use.  I can (given the circumstances) simply take it out and let you know I will use it if I have to.  But of course, this is not designed to get anyone shot--I simply want us to part ways so that I can go on about my day.  And unless I am in the parking lot of the grocery store, I would eventually give ground to end the confrontation.

The third level, actually firing my weapon at the perpetrator, is one I hope never to have to do.  It is the last resort.  It will only happen when I am assaulted, despite my best efforts to dissuade the other party.  I am prepared to do so, but I do not want to.  If I was the other party, I would want as much of a grace period from the person defending themselves to think through what I was doing.  And, you never know if the person you are defending yourself will turn their life around one day.  If you take their life, they will never get the chance to do so, ergo, actually pulling the trigger must be for absolute last resort, so to speak.  Only if I or another person in my presence is being assaulted or charged do I actually fire (yes, I can use my weapon to protect others as well, I would assume).

And this is why I believe both Zimmerman and the Sanford police department has it all wrong.  If you are going to allow citizens to carry weapons in public then there must be some balance.  Otherwise, normally sincere and upstanding people can begin to lead towards bullying.  That is what I think really happened here.  The media is overplaying and misplaying the facts of the case, but are still partially right.

Ultimately, a stand your ground law is not meant as an aggressive tool.  In fact, the implication of the law should be this; If you are the aggressor in a physical confrontation with another person, you lose.  And if you manage to get your ass shot in the process and die, sorry about your luck.  This is the same reason why I believe it was correct for Joe Horn to be cleared.  Now apply that same idea here, and you will get a different outcome.

Had Zimmerman simply stayed in his car and watched Treyvon Martin come and go, even if he followed him from a long distance in his car, there would have been no confrontation, no shooting, and no death of the young man.  Zimmerman would have watched Martin go to the store then return home.  But he did not.  He aggressively pursued Martin, and in doing so became the aggressor.

When he became the aggressor, he moved to the wrong side of the equation, because Treyvon Martin also had the right to stand his ground against aggressors, and that right is not lessened because he was black.  I do not believe this attack was racially motivated; it is clear from the 9-1-1 calls Zimmerman did not know what race Martin was when he first saw him.  And frankly, it is immaterial.  Once Zimmerman became the aggressor in the situation, he loses.  Period.

Therefore, I support those who want to see justice in this case.  Clearly, Zimmerman was in the wrong.  His aggressive actions were unwarranted unless Martin had been in an altercation with another person or being destructive of the property of others.  And even then, it is unlikely that Zimmerman would have needed to approach Martin close enough for a physical confrontation.  There is simply no way in this case that Zimmerman did not interfere with Martin's rights to go about his business.  He should have more carefully considered, like I have, what it means to carry a weapon.  But he did not, and now a young man is dead due to his carelessness, for which he should be held responsible.

Do the right thing and prosecute him, please.

American oil is the answer--IF.

I am a very tired man.  Left on my own, I would write mostly about faith and music and things that really interest me.  Instead, I am writing this stupid blog about politics, because a large number of my fellow Americans are communist ideologues.  They care not for the suffering of the American people nor the destruction of the American economy--as long as they can get rid of gasoline.

That's what those on the left really want--to get rid of gasoline, regardless of the cost, because their religion of global warming (what you believe in when you don't have the intelligence to believe in God) compels them to.  And so we have a war on oil taking place in America by the left, and they have been winning easily.  They have choked off the Alaska oil pipeline and the Obama administration has worked hard to limit the domestic production of oil on public lands.  All of the increase has occurred on privately owned land, which is exploding in places like North Dakota.

And yet, leftist critics have decried the fact that prices have soared and are still high.  They point out that the "price is set on the world market" and that there is little that we can do to affect the price of oil.  They expect this to be the end of the argument.  But it's not.

First of all, the increase we have seen in production has not been enough to meet the increase in demand worldwide.  But as normal, leftists can't do math or understand economics.  Supply has to increase to the point that the supply is enough higher to weaken the future value of the commodity.  When leftists complain about "speculators" they are really talking about commodities traders who believe that with the current supply and demand, the market will bear the price of about $4 to $6 a gallon for gas in America, and appreciably higher in other nations.

So now for a question; if that is true for oil, then why doesn't shares of Apple cost $2,000?  The answer to that is to be found in the fact that Apple is insulated from over-speculation by the fact that the shares have to be bought on an American stock exchange, and here the price of the stock is only worth $500 or so right now.  And we should do the same thing for oil.  In fact, we do this for almost every commodity you can imagine.  And if we are smart, we can turn this to our advantage.

Japanese stocks have been depressed for decades, but because American companies have prospered during most of that time and because our stocks are generally isolated from any other specific nation's problems, out stock prices have generally done much better.  We can do the same with oil by making the market buy and sell American oil products on American exchanges.  This will work to isolate American produced oil from production from other nations.

The market will settle on a midpoint between the higher costs overseas and the value on the American market.  At a minimum, the price of domestically produced oil should be lowered by the cost of transportation to and from foreign markets.  And as American producers buy the American oil, increases in supply should lead to lower costs domestically.

In other oil producing nations, ways have been found to lower oil prices.  We can do the same without disrupting the market if we are willing to be wise about it.  But we can't do it under leftist leadership.  It's against their religion.

The Left's response to the death of Andrew Breitbart.

I am just as shocked as everyone else to hear about the death of Andrew Breitbart.  Millions of conservatives will mourn the loss of a very important figure in our movement.  But, not everyone is mourning right now.  Many are celebrating.  For many liberals, this is a day of celebration.  Here is a short list of examples coming from the left:

Michelle Malkin

The Washington Examiner

Kind words from the Daily Kos

But when words are not enough, there is video...
 CNN focuses on the Sherrod issue.

This guys' a gamblin' man.

Happiness pervades the libtard universe.

This guy is going to do an extra 8-ball today to celebrate.

Rejoicing over Breitbart.

Glad to know Liberals keep it classy.

Charity at any Price.

You know how I do this: I always hold my fire on a subject until I am sure about the facts and the response I wish to give.  And here, I have done it yet again.  But now that I have had the chance to stop and consider the issue, there are a few things I wish to say about the current situation brewing between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration.  I hope I at least give you some serious insight to consider on the subject.

So let me set this dire time for the Catholic Church into a little tighter focus for you.  Let us return to a particular date; May 10, 1940.  That was the day that began the real shockwaves of the Second World War.  That was the day when both the German invasion of the West began as well as the day Chamberlain resigned and Churchill replaced him as Prime Minister.  That day is very indicative of the situation in which the Catholics find themselves today in its sudden struggle against Obamacare in many ways.  But the biggest one is the previous history of accepting, much like Chamberlain did with Hitler, the idea of peace at any price.  Only for the Catholic hierarchy, the motto has been "Charity at any Price."

This is unfortunate, yet a predictable situation.  It is the natural result of the Church, both Catholic and Mainline Protestant ones, trying to protect itself from loss of power.  The problem is, this response has not succeeded, but rather worked to make all Church organizations more susceptible to it's enemies.  That the Church has left itself to dance with the Devil may just now be dawning on Catholics, but for those of us with a little clearer vision it has been apparent for quite a while.

The historical nonsense usually taught by the socialist professors of the University is that the Papacy held incredible power during the Middle Ages, and that the Church has continued it's oppressive ways into the current age.  This idea is not just silly, but outright laughable.  The Church, like the rest of society after the fall of Rome in 476, but especially after it was sacked by Totila in 546, faced a world in which there were few to no strong governments, even locally.  The Church responded in large part by working with as many parties as possible to ensure that what governments existed would provide the Church protection in exchange for legitimacy.

This proved fruitful, and the highest achievement of this strategy was in the crowning of Charlemagne in 800.  Unfortunately, it did not last long.  Internally, the rulers that developed in the west constantly challenged the authority of the Church to provide legitimacy, culminating in the Avignon Papacy, also called the "Babylonian Captivity" of 1309 to 1378.  England eventually broke completely free as Protestant, and to a large extent became an indirect competitor.  The reformation brought forth the first competition in the spiritual realm, to which the Catholics responded with the Inquisition.

But as the nations of the world began to enter the modern era, the Church changed tactics.  As individualism became more widespread, the American and French revolutions pointed to a change in strategic gravity.  Starting in the 1700's, the Catholic Church moved towards endearing popular support by backing the popular revolutionary movements of the time.  Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla of Mexico became an example of the way the Church could garner popular support through supporting independence.

But then the Church made a strategic error.  It moved beyond general popular movements to a partially unspoken support for socialism.  In Central America this became "Liberation Theology" while in Europe it became a de facto acceptance of Socialism as a buffer against the atheism and anti-religious doctrines of communism.  It had the added benefit of allowing the Church to support the idea of public Charity, even if it is through the State.  What the Church did not count on was that the cost of this strategy would outweigh the benefits.

First, liberalism is an enemy of faith in all forms, and is ideologically uninterested in any real alliance with any people of faith.  It only uses such alliances to it's own gain.  That has been true for both the Protestant and Catholic Churches worldwide and will one day prove to be true for Muslims as well.  Liberalism is a doctrine of Ideological Superiority, to which all other beliefs are to be subject.

So when the Catholic Church unleashed secular forces in the West, the new Godlessness quickly emptied the pews of Europe.  And just as the Church was laid prostrate in Europe, it is now being attacked by the same people in the form of Obama in America now.  When the Church decided to accept the idea of Charity at any price to maintain its popularity, it did not count on the fact that this would be the exact price to be paid for it.

Just like England in 1940, the Catholic Church did not see the storm coming until the clouds actually broke on it.  It is both a sign of treachery on part of Obama and a sign of the critical shortsightedness of the Church that they were blindsided by the demands of the current administration.  It is difficult to understand who the Church thought these people were after all these years when they supported Obamacare.  Apparently, they have learned nothing from decades of experience with leftists.  And while the initial response has been strong, it remains to be seen who will win this struggle.  For over a year, until the invasion of Russia, Britain held on by a fingernail.  Whether the Catholic Church can hold on that strongly remains to be seen.  The future looks very cloudy.

Perhaps dancing with the Devil is a bad idea after all.

The Imperial Left

Should anyone yet have any doubt about the nature of the Obama administration and the left in general, such questions can now be put to rest.  The conflagration began over the Obama administration's assistance that the Catholic Institutions of America would be forced to provide insurance to all employees covering abortion and other contraceptive services.  The Catholic Church responded with a letter that was read in almost every American Church.

But wait... there's more.  The 9th Circuit Court, that nasty little group Newt Gingrich keeps mentioning getting rid of, decided to undo the will of the people over gay marriage.  Suddenly, America seems much less free that it used to be.  The left are openly acting as the imperial power that they really are.

I am not talking here about empiricism, but rather the imperium of ancient Rome.  The term literally means "power to command" over others.  In ancient Rome the imperium was a magistrate, but with the absolute power to enforce the law in his political sphere, only limited by those of higher level of power.  This imperialistic, fascist-style social control is the dream of the left.

Liberals see themselves as having the right to military type authority over the citizens of the country.  We see this over and over, even today in the examples of Chavez and other similar rulers.  For the American left democracy is not about freedom and voting but about the right to force society to adhere to it's precepts.  That idea is the heartbeat of the OWS movement.  Left to their own devices, leftists would have American society just as regimented as the ranks at any Nuremberg rally.

In this, leftists agree more with the Muslim desire for a worldwide Caliphate than they do with the freedom associated with the rights of the individual, and certainly they do not stand for the rights of the majority when those ideas do not match their own.  To the leftist, the State, and the power of the proper ruler is all that matters.  That is why they can on one hand deny the rightful power of one President (Bush) but on the other uphold the power of another (Obama) to impose humanist values on the Church--just like they wish to do on each of us.

The next election will be less about the economy and more about freedom than any election in history.  The result will determine whether the American people reassert their freedom and control over the state or whether they begin down the grimy and hopeless road of social regimentation.

You have been warned.

Romney is a disaster.

I know there are hundreds of documentaries, books and articles on the 1930's and the great depression.  But there is one subject that no one has ever studied as far as I know, and I would love to see it done.  I want to know what weakness in the American psyche allowed the American people to lock conservative ideas out of the public square for twenty years.  What drove the American people to cling to poverty, despair and failed public policy for two decades?  From 1932 until 1952, except for a two-year stretch in the Senate, Republicans were completely out of power.

I believe that we are on the verge of a much longer drought.  I believe that if Republicans do not play their cards right, we will be out of power for multiple generations this time, if not forever.  96% of blacks, 54% of young white voters, and 67% of Hispanics voted for Obama in 2008.  The story behind this coalition is powerful; minorities have convinced young white Americans to "quit being prejudiced" by agreeing with them that Republicans are evil.

This will make winning elections ever more difficult as time goes by and fewer and fewer voters are white or conservative.  Even in the upcoming elections the math is slowly shifting away from conservatives:  US Embassy review of voters

Conservatives have bucked the trend by proving to be consistently competent and correct.  From Reagan to Gingrich to the first Bush term, conservatives did more than "win the argument" by effectively and successfully administering the government.  Leftist arguments that conservative ideas were racist and harmful fell largely on deaf ears.  Those kinds of arguments do not work well when the recipient has a decent job and their children are doing well in school.

But this new coalition needs to be confronted with the evidence for conservative ideas again.  If we do not start to unravel it from around the edges all will be lost.  We need a competent, intelligent conservative administration again to begin to undercut the argument of the new Democratic coalition and begin to bust it up.  Unfortunately, Mitt Romney is not that man.  He is not a conservative and cannot turn the economy around.

Much is made of Romney's recent gaffes, but they directly are not really what matters.  What matters is that they reflect Romney's real beliefs.  Those beliefs would make the Romney administration a disaster, and cement the new Democratic coalition and help seal conservatives out of national politics for a very long time.  What Romney policies?  These ones:

1.  Romney does not understand taxes.

Obama declared during the State of the Union address that he wants to raise taxes to 30%, claiming it to be a matter of "fairness" (whatever that means).  Fortunately, fairness will not create jobs or strengthen the economy.  But competition will.  The Republican argument must be that we need our tax rates to be competitive with the rest of the world.  If we want to draw investment and jobs, we should start by matching the tax rates of out competitors.  The Perry/Gingrich idea of a flat tax and lower top rate for EVERYONE is the right way to go, but Romney lacks the understanding/courage to cut taxes based on sound economic principles.  Result?  We remain economically weakened.

2.  Romney doesn't understand trade and international money issues.

Romney's big idea here is to get America into a trade war with China through tariffs.  This is certainly a failing policy.  It would be easier and more workable to use my idea of requiring all Chinese imports to be paid at a rate of 3 dollars to every yuan, and threaten to remove them from most favored nation status.  That would force the Chinese to the bargaining table, and allow us to settle many of our differences.  Romney's idea would drive down exports, lower GPA, and increase unemployment.  Result: a faltering economic policy that will be easy to criticize, and paves the way for leftists to set up a 1930's -style economic policy.  Do I need to say that's a bad thing?


3.  Romney doesn't understand limited government.

The worst part of Romneycare is the worst part of Obamacare: the disregard for the rights of citizens.  The Tea Party is not just about balancing the budget, but about the excessive and oppressive scope of government.  The ridiculous amount of deficit spending currently underway is a symptom of a political class that no longer believes the citizen is sovereign.  Now, the political class is supporting the idea that government is sovereign over the citizen.  Romney, clearly cut from this same cloth, will do little to reign in the scope of government, which is just as important as the size outright.  The gun control bill he willingly signed is an open example of how little he respects the rights of citizens.  Result: government will still be out of control after his four years in office, and ready for democrats to expand further.

So Romney really will be the last Republican, solidifying the new Democratic coalition against conservatives.  They will not remember the party of Reagan and Gingrich, but the party of Bush second term, McCain, and Romney.  The charges of incompetence will stick more every day, and any opportunity to prove to the new generation that conservative ideas work will be lost.

That's what is really at stake if we elect Romney.