Circus of Irony
Is it just me or was it painful to watch Congress grill Akio Toyoda? While there is no question that there were serious problems within the Toyota Corporation and are still problems within the US Department of Transportation, I cannot help thinking that Mr. Toyoda has more honor in his pinkie finger than one could find in the array of self-serving, thieving, and entirely corrupt politicians sitting in judgment against him. Coming from a culture that prides itself on its code of honor, we can barely imagine the great amount of self-recrimination and loss of public prestige required of Mr. Toyoda to appear before the legislative body of another nation and apologize for his company's shortcomings. If Mr. Toyoda is aware of the state of American politics then it must have come as a double blow to him to have to apologize to the House of Reprehensibles; a body composed of men and women who, faced with a similar situation, would most likely lie, obfuscate, and blame others for their own sins. Worse yet, how can this body sit in fair judgment of Mr. Toyoda or any CEO of any other car company so long as they have a vested interest in an American car company. They might as well have forced Mr. Toyoda to face judgment from the board of GM...oh wait, they did.
More Propaganda Please!
One aspect of watching the Olympics on NBC is that we 'get' to see a lot of advertisements from its parent company: GE - General Evil. I know that sounds rude and I don't want to diminish the good that GE does or ignore inventions that they have created which benefit all of us. With the ascension of "Senator Palpatine" Immelt to GE's CEO though the patriarch of American innovation has taken a potentially sinister turn.
I can see the benefit of having all of your medical information available to any doctor in the nation at the touch of a few keystrokes. As someone who travels a lot, it would be quite comforting in an emergency to know that the local doctor can call up other medical needs if I and anyone traveling with me was unable to tell him/her. But think of the tremendous potential for abuse having an online library of every American's medical history available creates. Doctor/patient confidentiality would become a thing of the past. Unscrupulous hackers could sell information to potential employers who then use it to make hiring/layoff decisions. Or they could use it to blackmail you. This pales in comparison to how the government would abuse it were they to institute nationalized healthcare. Do you think a chronically ill blue-collar worker is going to get priority over a policeman or fireman if care is rationed? Will a rural deputy be put on the liver transplant list above a Congressman?
Then there is GE's smart grid. This technology claims to be for optimizing power distribution across the electrical grid. It sounds like a good idea. But the technology already exists to use the smart grid to regulate how much power you get (all that remains is to place the infrastructure). If GE and then Emperor Immelt decide you have too many lights on, they could dim them or even shut off power to the ones they don't think you should have on. This is far worse than your father following you around the house turning off lights every time you leave a room. The spectre of government interference looms over this as well. As elections grow more contentious do you want to risk living in a losing party state or county when vindictive political hacks can shut off the power? Will you have true freedom to speak out against government policy if your house can be targeted because you are against Card Check?
In a previous blog I've already pointed this out but it needs repeating. Whenever you see a GE commercial, remember that they were instrumental in lobbying against the incandescent light bulb which will be illegal in a few years (2012 I believe). They have the lion's share of the market on the much more expensive and mercury laden CFLs. In addition, GE recently closed an incandescent bulb factory in the US putting its workers on the street then opening a CFL factory in RED China to reduce production costs. This isn't about saving energy. It is about GE lowering costs, increasing profits with silent monopolies, and funding the Democrat party. And you think oil companies and the insurance industry are evil...
Scott Brown loses Tea Party Mojo?
A lot of Republicans and Tea Party types are upset by the recent votes from Scott Brown on the $15 Billion pork/stimulus/'jobs' bill that recently went through the Senate. I am not. As I've said before, Senator Brown is not a conservative; he is a Massachusetts Republican which makes him moderate or slightly liberal when compared to the vast majority of the rest of the country. Their indignation at Brown not being quite what they expected mirrors the complete meltdown on the left as the cult of Obama begins to fly apart. The left has always been suckered in by personality cults. They still worship at the image of JFK in spite of his reality. They voted in Bill Clinton because he could 'feel their pain' even though he was and is an obvious chauvinist - borderline abuser. Obama offered them 'hope and change' which they bought into with almost sexual ecstasy (cold shudder through the body) but only a year later he is revealed to them as sound and fury without substance.
Cults of personality are dangerous at any level but especially so when politics are involved. Demagogues and power mongers rely on personality cults to attain that power over others. This is how men like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and other ruthless dictators of little or no personal achievement enslaved so many. Obama is not a Hitler or Stalin (at least that we can tell) but he is a demagogue. He has reached this nation's highest office with little personal accomplishment to commend himself to the position other than his ability to give a good speech - which, if you haven't noticed, seems to have disappeared completely.
Those who are angry or disappointed by Senator Brown and/or President Obama have only themselves to blame. When you place you faith only in men (and by that I mean all members of humankind not just those with the XY chromosome combination) they will fail you at some point because they are flawed beings themselves. This is part of the reason why over seventy percent of us still claim to believe in God. This is also what prompted George Washington to remind us that we are 'a nation of laws not of men'. Faith in the principles of the Founders and the laws of nature's God will keep us off the path of self-destruction. Faith in men can only lead to perdition and the rise of men who enslave us 'for our own good'.
The readiness of people to follow a Barrack Obama or Scott Brown without knowing anything about them signals a dangerous trend to me. The rise of Obama indicates that many people are looking outside of themselves for solutions to their problems. The rapid rise of Scott Brown and suggestions that he run for president in 2012 show how fast idols can rise or fall and how much people are looking for someone to lead them. People who are willing to be led are not free. In the Old Testament, God gave the 12 tribes of Israel the world's first representative republic and freedom. Within a generation they begged and demanded he give them a king. He gave them what they wanted but took their freedom from them in exchange. Many in America appear to be begging for a leader/king to solve their problems. I don't know about you but I'm not ready to exchange my freedom.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Hatin' on Old Hickory
Recently I have been trying to fill the American History gap in my expertise. Actually, gap probably isn't an accurate term especially when compared to most American adults. I find that I can only take in so much of it before becoming frustrated with the major players and/or the political spin provided by 'historians' like socialist Howard Zinn.
The more I learn about President Andrew Jackson the less I like him. Don't get me wrong here. I respect his contributions as a general and his most important victory at New Orleans which ensured that neither Britain nor France would be able to significantly slow or stop our expansion across the Mississippi. Ironically, that battle occurred after the peace treaty (to a war neither nation wanted) was signed but before news of it could cross the Atlantic.
Like any other president, Jackson had his own personal shortcomings. Personality traits that made him a good general would not serve him - or the country - well as president. He was ill-tempered and ready to 'defend his honor' against any sleight; real or perceived. He ruled like a petty dictator as president and went through cabinet members like modern Congresses go through money. In addition to two Vice Presidents (and serving for over a year without one) he burned through four Secretaries of State, three Navy Secretaries and Attorney's General, two War Secretaries, and (not surprisingly) five Treasury Secretaries.
Before he was President, Jackson and his wife also entertained some of the early nation's most inglorious bastards. James Wilkinson was a self-serving man who became an aide to Benedict Arnold and was briefly tainted by Arnold's betrayal but lack of evidence saved his skin. Wilkinson skillfully managed to reach the rank of Brigadier General without ever actually being involved in major combat. He was involved in a conspiracy to replace Washington with Horatio Gates during the Revolution. While a general in the US Army, he was employed as an agent for Spain though for the money the Spanish Crown received little in return. Wilkinson also attached himself to America's second worst traitor: Aaron Burr.
Another of Jackson's shady associates was the aforementioned Aaron Burr. Burr is most infamous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The resulting hatred of Burr was enough for Jefferson to drop him as Vice President in his second term. Burr maintained popularity in the South where he was entertained in the Tennessee home of Andrew Jackson before and while on his campaign to create his own personal empire in the Louisiana territory and modern Texas. To Jackson's credit, lack of patriotism was not one of his failings and when Burr's machinations were discovered, Jackson repudiated Burr ever after.
It may seem silly on the face of it, but perhaps the biggest reason I dislike our seventh president is because he destroyed the financial system set up by my favorite Founder and our first Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Hamilton (associating with Hamilton's killer does not help his case). We can debate pretty much until eternity about the merits and flaws of the Hamiltonian system and the Bank of the United States but Andrew Jackson did not care about or take time to think about that. He killed the Bank of the US solely because he hated its Federalist director. Other Democrats provided him with 'legitimate' reasons for getting rid of the Bank including potential foreign domination (unlikely) and too much concentration of wealth but those were their reasons; not his.
Shallow historians and Jacksonian apologists like to trumpet the fact that Jackson was the only president who had the US out of debt. The reality though was that because of his impetuous destruction of the Bank of the US, the nation had no mechanism with which to borrow money. After the failure of the government under the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton recognized the need for a national government that could borrow money from time to time and wisely put in place a system to do just that. He also believed that the nation should only incur debts that would be paid off by the generation that created them since it was unjust to leave those debts to future generations (Oh for any politician that exemplifies Hamilton today!). On the face of it, having no national debt sounds like a good idea but by ending the Hamiltonian system and replacing it with nothing Jackson set up the nation for periodic economic crashes and general financial instability throughout the 19th century. Jackson's successor, Martin van Buren would suffer greatly for this as a severe depression resulting from the vacuum left by the Bank of the US set in; the first of many in a boom and bust cycle that would last a century.
In the end, I suppose it is ironic that Hamilton and Jackson both appear on our currency considering one carelessly tossed aside the stable financial system created by the other. Sadly few of us know little more about these men than as the faces on the ten and twenty dollar bills. For a good introduction to American History I recommend A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart. From Columbus to 9/11 it covers our history in a way that will dispel the lies of the left that America is basically bad.
Items of Interest
To add to Europe's woes, pilots and crews at Lufthansa - Germany's main airline - are on strike creating travel chaos on the continent. Yesterday British Airways pilots decided to strike for ten days which will not only make European travel a living Hell but will also cause worldwide travel problems. In this economy, one has to wonder how some people are unable to clearly think that having a job regardless of wages and benefits is better than the alternative. In the US there are currently six people available for every open position. If I was an out-of-work jet pilot I'd probably be giving BA or Lufthansa a call.
The death of AGW (Anthropromorohic Global Warming) is big news everywhere except in the American media. British papers and blogs are on fire and are skewering the American press for ignoring the issue. The London Telegraph, one of my major news sources, has almost daily updates on the scandal. Even the liberal UK Guardian is wise enough to place scientific honesty over political bias. But not in America where politics trumps all. The MSM is, of course, hoping to keep Americans as ignorant of this as possible in order to push the radical 'green' agenda before the general public finds out that there has been no warming since 1995, the Medieval Warm period actually was warmer, the hockey stick graph is a fraud, and most damning to the enviro-wacko movement the sea levels are not rising. They also hope to keep us in the dark just long enough to get Cap and Trade through Congress. But don't worry, the media will tell you that they aren't biased.
Speaking of Cap and Trade did you know that it was dreamed up in the offices of Enron? Had they pushed it through in the 1990s its likely we'd be paying energy costs several orders of magnitude larger than we are and fat cats under the big E would be making trillions. After Enron's collapse, certain members of the left/green movement (Algore) realized how much money they would be able to make abusing Cap and Trade for their movement and it has been co-opted by their useful idiots in the press and on the street. So the difference here really boils down to who gets to pocket the money. We need to ensure that Cap and Trade fails for the left just as it did for the unscrupulous investors at the top of Enron's pyramid.
The more I learn about President Andrew Jackson the less I like him. Don't get me wrong here. I respect his contributions as a general and his most important victory at New Orleans which ensured that neither Britain nor France would be able to significantly slow or stop our expansion across the Mississippi. Ironically, that battle occurred after the peace treaty (to a war neither nation wanted) was signed but before news of it could cross the Atlantic.
Like any other president, Jackson had his own personal shortcomings. Personality traits that made him a good general would not serve him - or the country - well as president. He was ill-tempered and ready to 'defend his honor' against any sleight; real or perceived. He ruled like a petty dictator as president and went through cabinet members like modern Congresses go through money. In addition to two Vice Presidents (and serving for over a year without one) he burned through four Secretaries of State, three Navy Secretaries and Attorney's General, two War Secretaries, and (not surprisingly) five Treasury Secretaries.
Before he was President, Jackson and his wife also entertained some of the early nation's most inglorious bastards. James Wilkinson was a self-serving man who became an aide to Benedict Arnold and was briefly tainted by Arnold's betrayal but lack of evidence saved his skin. Wilkinson skillfully managed to reach the rank of Brigadier General without ever actually being involved in major combat. He was involved in a conspiracy to replace Washington with Horatio Gates during the Revolution. While a general in the US Army, he was employed as an agent for Spain though for the money the Spanish Crown received little in return. Wilkinson also attached himself to America's second worst traitor: Aaron Burr.
Another of Jackson's shady associates was the aforementioned Aaron Burr. Burr is most infamous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The resulting hatred of Burr was enough for Jefferson to drop him as Vice President in his second term. Burr maintained popularity in the South where he was entertained in the Tennessee home of Andrew Jackson before and while on his campaign to create his own personal empire in the Louisiana territory and modern Texas. To Jackson's credit, lack of patriotism was not one of his failings and when Burr's machinations were discovered, Jackson repudiated Burr ever after.
It may seem silly on the face of it, but perhaps the biggest reason I dislike our seventh president is because he destroyed the financial system set up by my favorite Founder and our first Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Hamilton (associating with Hamilton's killer does not help his case). We can debate pretty much until eternity about the merits and flaws of the Hamiltonian system and the Bank of the United States but Andrew Jackson did not care about or take time to think about that. He killed the Bank of the US solely because he hated its Federalist director. Other Democrats provided him with 'legitimate' reasons for getting rid of the Bank including potential foreign domination (unlikely) and too much concentration of wealth but those were their reasons; not his.
Shallow historians and Jacksonian apologists like to trumpet the fact that Jackson was the only president who had the US out of debt. The reality though was that because of his impetuous destruction of the Bank of the US, the nation had no mechanism with which to borrow money. After the failure of the government under the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton recognized the need for a national government that could borrow money from time to time and wisely put in place a system to do just that. He also believed that the nation should only incur debts that would be paid off by the generation that created them since it was unjust to leave those debts to future generations (Oh for any politician that exemplifies Hamilton today!). On the face of it, having no national debt sounds like a good idea but by ending the Hamiltonian system and replacing it with nothing Jackson set up the nation for periodic economic crashes and general financial instability throughout the 19th century. Jackson's successor, Martin van Buren would suffer greatly for this as a severe depression resulting from the vacuum left by the Bank of the US set in; the first of many in a boom and bust cycle that would last a century.
In the end, I suppose it is ironic that Hamilton and Jackson both appear on our currency considering one carelessly tossed aside the stable financial system created by the other. Sadly few of us know little more about these men than as the faces on the ten and twenty dollar bills. For a good introduction to American History I recommend A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart. From Columbus to 9/11 it covers our history in a way that will dispel the lies of the left that America is basically bad.
Items of Interest
To add to Europe's woes, pilots and crews at Lufthansa - Germany's main airline - are on strike creating travel chaos on the continent. Yesterday British Airways pilots decided to strike for ten days which will not only make European travel a living Hell but will also cause worldwide travel problems. In this economy, one has to wonder how some people are unable to clearly think that having a job regardless of wages and benefits is better than the alternative. In the US there are currently six people available for every open position. If I was an out-of-work jet pilot I'd probably be giving BA or Lufthansa a call.
The death of AGW (Anthropromorohic Global Warming) is big news everywhere except in the American media. British papers and blogs are on fire and are skewering the American press for ignoring the issue. The London Telegraph, one of my major news sources, has almost daily updates on the scandal. Even the liberal UK Guardian is wise enough to place scientific honesty over political bias. But not in America where politics trumps all. The MSM is, of course, hoping to keep Americans as ignorant of this as possible in order to push the radical 'green' agenda before the general public finds out that there has been no warming since 1995, the Medieval Warm period actually was warmer, the hockey stick graph is a fraud, and most damning to the enviro-wacko movement the sea levels are not rising. They also hope to keep us in the dark just long enough to get Cap and Trade through Congress. But don't worry, the media will tell you that they aren't biased.
Speaking of Cap and Trade did you know that it was dreamed up in the offices of Enron? Had they pushed it through in the 1990s its likely we'd be paying energy costs several orders of magnitude larger than we are and fat cats under the big E would be making trillions. After Enron's collapse, certain members of the left/green movement (Algore) realized how much money they would be able to make abusing Cap and Trade for their movement and it has been co-opted by their useful idiots in the press and on the street. So the difference here really boils down to who gets to pocket the money. We need to ensure that Cap and Trade fails for the left just as it did for the unscrupulous investors at the top of Enron's pyramid.
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