Trust and Integrity? Is there any left?

I suppose in view of rule number 1 you might expect that I think highly of Republicans. Rule No. 1 you might remember is: "Democrats are Liars." Rule number 2 is like it: 2) Republicans lie a lot too but often about different things. So we might be able to apply Occam's law of parsimony and combine rule one and rule two as: Politicians are liars.
What ever happened to honor and integrity? You know what I mean don't you? Keeping your word? Telling the truth? Paying your debts? Not taking out loans you know over extend you?
Now in the presence of the financial melt down in which the gubbmint which largely caused the problem is posturing that they are the solution (save me from this medicine) is asking us to trust that they will fix the problem. I find myself waiting for the other foot to fall.
It is sobering to realize that our entire economy and monetary system is built on a foundation of trust. Without trust that people will pay their bills, honor their debts, and keep their promises the whole fabric of our economic society begins to unravel. This is no surprise. It's not news. In fact one has to wonder if encouraging irresponsibility as the Democrats have done for quite a long time doesn't have a component of intentionality focused on destabilization so that gubbment can ride to the rescue. We may be in for an interesting ride. Ignore the man behind the curtain said the great Oz. I think we better start paying more attention than we do now before the whole country goes down the drain.

The Strangest Election In My Life

My life began at conception in Hawaii in 1941 where my dad was stationed on U.S.S. Detroit, a light cruiser in the harbor at Pearl Harbor. After I was conceived but before I was born my life was disrupted by the Japanese attack. My mom was evacuated to the mainland under the guns of my dad's cruiser which was one of the escort vessels that took the passenger ships with the women and children back to the mainland.
But it wasn't until the election of Dwight David Eisenhower in 1952 when I was ten that I was politically aware enough to notice politics. I followed that election with some interest, but the first time I could actually vote was the election of 1960 when Nixon squared off against Kennedy. I voted for Nixon and it has always been my conviction that Nixon won, or at least would have won had there not been so much voter fraud in Texas and Chicago. That was my introduction to the idea that elections were not fair.
In the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson race I was exposed to the politics of fear as the left characterized Goldwater as a madman. The labor unions were spreading around nasty little comic books that portrayed Goldwater as a Nazi carrying nuclear weapons and the Democrats had an ad that portrayed a nuclear explosion. This exposed me to one of the standard Democratic tactics, the demonization of their opponents with lies, distortions, innuendo, fabrications, and dirty tricks of all kinds.
Nixon managed to get elected and there was the Watergate fiasco, but all through the period we had the looney far left working for the Chinese Communists, whether knowingly or not, to defeat American interests in Indochina. They were successful and in a despicable show of cowardice refused to support our ally when after negotiating a peace treaty the North Vietnamese blatantly violated it and invaded the country. We (well mainly the Democrats) cut off even military support to our ally. That was when I realized that Democrats were congenitally despicable, dishonorable, and not to be trusted. Perhaps it was for that reason that the Nixon White House had a seige mentality and some of the staff engaged in the Watergate fiasco which brought down Nixon with a lot of help from a hostile and leftist press.
That was followed by Ford who was a care-taker president who violated his promise not to run after his term was up and ran anyway. We might have avoided Jimmy Carter and had Ronald Reagan four years earlier were it not for Ford. Jimmy Carter won and was simply the worst president in my lifetime and perhaps of all time. He's a hypocrite, claiming to be a Christian but actually being something of a leftist nincompoop. He destabilized the middle East by abandoning the Shah of Iran whose regime had been single handedly moderating extremist Islam — but Carter wasn't very smart and so began the rise of Islamic terrorism. Thanks Jimmy, you idiot!
Reagan's presidency came just in time and it's interesting that the hostages were released the day of his inauguration The Iranians knew that Reagan was not to be fooled with. Of course the Democrats and the leftist press spent the entire eight years running their mouths about how stupid he was and how nothing stuck (of course the ones throwing the mud should know). The "teflon" president as he was called, was effective because he was principled and his policies contributed to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.
Bush the elder ran and won on Reagan's coat tails but he promised "No new taxes" and welshed, thinking he could make a deal with the Democrats (reaching across the aisle dontchknow) and no sooner was the tax increase sealed and the Democrats were reneaging on all their promises. Remember the principle: They are liars. They are not to be trusted.
So Bush got slammed and we got Bill Clinton whose mind rarely rises above his fly. His wife is a model of control freak and sought to socialize medicine while he mostly neglected his responsibilties while the Republican congress gave him a presidency with a good economic record.
The Bush the younger who has actually done a pretty good job except that he got us into this unpopular war (What war is popular?) and with the help of the usual crew has been demonized just as Johnson was demonized except he was demonized by his own people. Same strategy, same cast mostly, older but with the same ideology — America haters.
That brings us to the current election. We have a smooth talker who's never really done anything promising hope and change and an authentic American patriot who has always fought, perhaps not alway wisely, on principle and who has selected a woman governor who has been a fighter against special interests for his running mate. This should be a no-brainer. But you have to take into account that the media has decided that they are the ones that ought to make the choice for president and they have spun and spun and spun. If bias in the media was something that you ever doubted, doubt no more! This is the strangest election of my life and I've been through quite a few. The one very stable principle that has remained true through them all is: You can't trust Democrats. They are liars. Those that are stupid enough to take them at their word like the elder Bush will have their heads handed to them. The first principle is that they are liars. If you ever have a decision to make, refer again to the first principle.

ACORN Nonsense

Well there is the usual firestorm going on as irregularities are being uncovered. Try to imagine the outrage the Democrats would be expressing if ACORN were a Republican organization. The outrage would be nuclear, the screams of Nazis (well they are rampant no matter what, the N-word is the Democratic Liberal Apparatchiks default word for a Republican) would be deafening. Now the ACORN business is about fraudulent voter registration. Many ACORN operatives have had people register numerous times. The record seems to be about 72 for a 19 year old that's made the TV news several times as the poster boy for this activity.
The Democrats scream exaggeration or worse because the election hasn't happened yet so it can't be voter fraud. Well excuse the vocabulary. That's short for voter registration fraud which is rather obviously something that is step one in a well known Democratic two step or three step which leads to, guess what, voter fraud. Step 1) register a lot of fraudulent voters, Step 2) see how many can get away with voting multiple times on election day, Step 3) if you fail to steal the election scream that the nasty Republicans were trying to deny your voters the opportunity to vote (i.e. they were actually watching the polls and checking voter id and stuff like that).
We've seen this play out in the last two elections and the allegations of voter fraud go back far earlier, at least in my memory to the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy race which was won narrowly by Kennedy on the strength of vote fraud in Illinois and Texas according to some analysts. Nixon was advised to register a protest and call for a recount and decided not to for the good of the nation. That of course was like waving a "give me more" flag to the Democrats and they've been happy little cemetery registerers ever since.

Addiction ...

I've been astounded by this current election cycle. The dimensions of my exasperation began with the fact that Obama even being in the race was astounding. A freshman senator seemed a totally incongruous candidate. Indeed, generally senators are not terribly good candidates if for no other reason than they have no executive experience. But then he actually won the Democratic nomination. That was astounding squared. It meant that the Democrats were completely nuts. But it continued, and astounding cubed was the pass Obama gets from the media. They called Reagan the teflon president, well Obama is clearly the teflon candidate. But why is that? Why does the media give him a pass on everything? No very relevant experience, a litany of acquaintances that reads like a who's who of America haters, not achievements except a few personal ones, Harvard Law and two books on his life from someone too young to be writing two books about his life. This is just wierd! Are we addicted to hope and change but without substance? Where's the beef? was a commercial too many years ago to remember, but the question is still relevant.

Teetering on the Brink

I've been having an extended email exchange today with one of the local wingnuts on the left. Since he thinks I'm a wingnut on the right we are just reciprocal. The original topic was the polarization of today's politics. I'm not exactly thrilled with the McCain candidacy, but I'm quite concerned about Obama since I find his connections disturbing whether they are to huge economic contributors as in Fannie and Freddie or with the lunatic fringe be it religious (Wright), political (Ayers), or economic (Rezko) or whatever others there may be.
The problem is that none of these suspicions and concerns have been put to bed in any convincing way, not by the media, not by the candidate. They just hang there in space generating anxiety.
The universal mantra is that there was no association or he just lived in the neighborhood, or some other form of minimization. This kind of denial might fly if there were not so many things to deny and so little evidence of accomplishment that the attendent concerns take on a great weight because they cannot be counterbalanced with achievements. When it comes to the teeter-totter Obama simply has an awful lot of baggage for someone with such little experience. So on-balance I'll take the old-guy with white hair. At least I know he is an authentic American hero and patriot and besides I like moose-burgers.

Another Debate and the same old same old ...

The notion that debate is an adequate or even helpful way to decide who to vote for seems strange to me the more debates I watch. The prepared talking points, the litanies of you voted for this or you voted for that, finger pointing and second guessing. Somehow it seem to miss the point.
I want more to know what the core values of the candidate are not whether they are polished speakers or employ the best debate trainers or whatever else factors into the process.
Tonight John McCain and Barack Obama squared off again. I don't think I learned anything I didn't know from the last debate. Frankly I don't trust Obama. I have a lot of reasons for that: 1) his lack of experience, 2) his sheer glibness, 3) his past associations with a string of, well lunatics. I'm not a big fan of Senator McCain, but I do think he has a much clearer record of sticking to his principles and he's a patriot. I still don't know who Obama is. His record is of evading reponsibility and talking his way past things. Voting "present" doesn't give me much confidence. He has exactly no legislation associated with his name. What is even a single good reason to trust him? He's the most liberal Senator in the Senate. You don't have to know anything more than that to know what kind of president he will be. More government, more taxes and no end in sight is where it goes. We ought not to go there.

Pin the Tail on the Donkey

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac ... Just the beginning! We are dealing with folks that think the solution to all problems is government, as long as they are in charge and you will pay for it.
Barack Obama is particularly scary since he's never done anything to earn any of the positions he's held except kow-tow to power brokers and corrupt money launderers and urban terrorists.
His associates read like a Who's Who of America Haters starting with the Weather Underground's Bill Ayers, the corrupt Tony Rezko, and the political shakedown artists at ACORN. Where does it end? Does this man have legitimate credentials or is it all smoke and mirrors?

Pork and the oinkers

The trough is full now and you're the poorer for it. Welcome to the United States of Failed Policies and Irresponsible Spenders. Soon enough you won't have anything and everyone can sink into oblivion. Wealth is earned not legislated. So where is this $700B bailout going to come from? Government printing presses will roll it out and pretty soon those hamburgers will cost $25 a pop. Retired? Your hardearned IRA money is soon going to be worth a lot less. But the oinkers in Washington will declare victory and vote themselves big raises. Freedom isn't free and neither is free enterprise. But socialism is on the way and we can all slop in the trough forever, except it will be empty.

Obama and the Mystery of His Appeal

The drumbeat of media bias is pervasive and dangerous to a free society. Barack Obama's many connections to people of far left and terrorist pasts is so pervasive as to suggest a fellow traveler. By contrast the Republican ticket is as American as apple pie, a war hero maverick and crusading state governor who has fought the entrenched good-old boys of her own party.
Both should receive scrutiny of course, but what we see is uncritical glorification of a freshman senator with no experience of any significant kind, simply none, contrasted with impassioned crusades to smear the war hero and the governor. Just what is going on here? It smacks more of Pravda or the Nazi propaganda machine than of a free, unfettered, and critical press. Criticism is a one way street in this campaign except for the internet. Meanwhile Obama gets a pass whether it's failing to honor the flag or speaking out of both sides of his mouth depending on his audience. His disdain for ordinary working class Americans was made evident when he was addressing the hollywood elites. The media that covers up for Obama savages Sarah Palin. It's a strange scenario and gets stranger by the minute.