Pasadena Politics

Hope and Change vs A Chicken in Every Pot.

Sound bites are not the way to decide who you will elect, or, for that matter, should looks be the deciding factor.   The big warning flag people should have given everybody pause in their support of Obama was the simple phrase: “Hope and Change”.    The comment itself begs the question: what is the hope and what is the change?    The phrase is vapid; without real substance.   At least with “a Chicken in every pot”, you at least could sink your teeth into the meaning of the slogan.

State Laws Modeled on Federal Laws Violate Human Rights

Were not the Democrats talking about the USA being a “Nation of Laws”?  If you think the title is erroneous, please look here.  Basically, the Federal Government is boasting that it’s really looking out for Human Rights as the U.N. Defines them by suing a State who modeled an Immigration law on Federal law.  The point should be taken by anybody paying attention: Hillary Clinton cares more about what the U.N. thinks than about the security and integrity of the United States of America.   Something to remember next time she runs for President.

Where is the equal protection?

The First Amendment states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yet children are being taught that Evolution is the only explanation for the universe and, by consequence, that there is no god.  The problem with this is two fold: The Declaration of Independence is based on the idea that our Rights come from God, not man, and therefore are not something man has a right to define.   The second problem is that Evolution, while sounding scientific, does not offer convincing proof and only offers one viewpoint of the facts, ignoring, evening condemning any viewpoints that differ.   This violates the First Amendment by treating atheism with preference over any other religion and establishes a foundation that undermines the integrity of the Constitution and our very rights.

Thank you sir, may I have another?

It seems that the “establishment” is under the delusion that it is a drill sergeant and the rest of us are the recruits, unworthy of respect until we have been broken and our thoughts reflect their own.

Imagine two rival Football teams that have to vote for their Quarterbacks.  One team, A, puts up only one choice for Quarterback while the other team, B,has two contenders: one who has trained and put on the weight and another who read about it in books but lacks practical training and weight.    However, it is somehow agreed to that the members of one team can vote for the contender of the other team if they want instead of their own.

Now, who do you think the members of A will vote for?   Obviously, they could vote for their own Quarterback, but they already know he will win.  So naturally, members of team A will cast votes for the Quarterback of team B.  After all, they want to participate in the process, right?  So, which Quarterback will they vote for?  The one with training or the one who merely thinks he can do it?    If the choice is not obvious: which one would you vote for if you knew it would give your team a better chance to win?

Open primaries are very similar.  They are not the game itself, they are not where two teams battle it out for the victory.  They are meant as a means for each team to vote for who it thinks is the best contender; candidate, within the team.   While an Open Primary sounds great (”increases voter participation”) it misses the point: it is not for those outside the team to decide who the team members are they compete against but the team itself.   Certainly more people will come out to vote if they would otherwise have not due to a lack of competition within their own party.

The primary merely decides who will be representing the team, not the victorious team itself.  So if you are going to allow open primaries, you may as well eliminate the primary completely and save tax payers money.

The last effect this would have is simple: you could disenfranchise members of a political party by creating a situation where two candidates from the same party which, I imagine, is the ultimate goal: by professing to increase voter choices, they in truth limit voter choices.

Vote No on Proposition 14.

Anyone who places trust in government misplaces that trust.  The best job any government can do is protecting their nation from external enemies.   Those who are concerned that given power government would misuse it to abuse the rights of the governed do not have that concern without reason.

In Logic, the “Slippery Slope” Argument is considered a fallacy.   In Politics, it is to be expected that given an inch, miles will be taken.

So, with Health-care, I cannot help but think of movies such as Logan’s Run and Brazil.

What the Nation needed was reform and what it has received instead compounds the problem greatly.  Government running Health-care is antithetical to reform itself.   Bureaucracy breeds inefficiency and higher cost.  Certainly one can claim that leaving ones health care in the hands of a business full of bureaucracy is not a great thing, but at least the business has something Government cannot claim to improve service: it cannot survive without making a profit.   In order to make a profit, it has to provide services customers want.   The fewer competitors a business has, the less pressure it has to provide goods and services desired by customers at a competitive price.   Government, as I have mentioned before, is a monopoly.    Monopolies do not have competitors or, if there are a few, they are so weak that they cannot reasonably compete.   Combine bureaucracy with monopolies and you have a wasteful system that lacks any real accountability.

Regulation of industry hampers competition by creating barriers of entry.  If government runs health-care, you can be assured that private insurers will be unable to compete.   While a government’s resources are not unlimited it is able to forcibly take money in the form of taxes, fines, fees, and penalties to generate money, subsidizing their programs.   Barring a very productive population or the conquest of other nations, government eventually dries it’s resources up when sponging off of the population.

“I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people. Look at the trouble now we’re having with choice of schools. Of course parents want a say in the kind of education their children have.” – Margaret Thatcher 1976 TV interview

It is a fundamental truth.  The more you take to give to others; the more you “spread the wealth”, the less money you eventually have.   You end up with less money because the taking of it disincentivizes people and leads to less production.     After all, why should someone work hard to earn money of which most is taken away and given to someone who works less or in a commonly doable job?   If as a college graduate your net paycheck is only a few hundred dollars more a month than the non-graduate flipping burgers as MickeyDees, what point was there in putting forward the effort to excel?

Americans cannot trust government to look out for their interests.   Americans cannot be free and sucklings of Government at the same time.   Freedom and Large Government are antithetical to each other.

Here is the list of all who voted For Government run Healthcare:

Here are those Democrats who voted NO – good for them:

Adler (NJ)
Altmire
Arcuri
Barrow
Berry
Boren
Boucher
Bright
Chandler
Childers
Davis (AL)
Davis (TN)
Edwards (TX)
Herseth Sandlin
Holden
Kissell
Kratovil
Lipinski
Lynch
Marshall
Matheson
McIntyre
McMahon
Minnick
Melancon
Peterson
Ross
Shuler
Skelton
Space
Tanner
Taylor
Teague

So what happened to Stupak?  We’ll, he and other “Blue-Dogs” must have taken solace in Obama’s promise to sign an executive order to not fund Abortion.   Of course, if this is like any of his other promises, promises such as closing Gauntanamo, then serious doubt about the sincerity of his signing such an order or any will to keep such an order in play should have kept those who were anti-abortion Democrats from voting yes.

Ah well, time to vote every Yes voter out of office in the upcoming elections and conduct better jurisprudence in the future when it comes to voting for Democrats.   In other words: America most likely should never vote for a non-Conservative again.

While driving home, I heard an interesting advertisement proposing to raise money to fight against Meg Whitman for California Governor.  It made me think of several things, one of them the recent Supreme Court Decision finally allowing US Corporations to enjoy their Second Amendment Rights and the Revelations that Anthropomorphic Climate Change is Junk Science at best and blatant fraud at worst.  Now, I don’t really know which Republican candidate is best at this point as I have been busy with other issues.  But any advertisement that claims you should oppose a candidate because they are a threat to State legislation built on the Junk Science of Anthropomorphic Climate Change catches my attention and rings warning bells in my mind.

So what is this Level the Playing Field dot com?  Good question.  WhoIs was unable to tell me as they chose to be anonymous.  Not a big issue there.   Following links through the site, it seems painfully obvious that the site avoids giving you contact information for a live person as well as mentioning sponsors.   Well, thankfully SFGate gives some information about the new site: Averell “Ace” Smith who handled the California campaign for Hillary Clinton and Chris Lehane, a former Clinton spokesman are mentioned as Senior Strategists.

“Level the Playing Field is one of three independent expenditure entities created to bolster 2010 Democratic campaign efforts in California. Such efforts, by law, are not associated with or directed by the Brown campaign. But they allow organizers to sidestep campaign fundraising limits with advertising that will assist Democrats.” – SFGate point.

This leads first to warning bell number two: Campaign Finance Laws.   This website is devoted to defeating a candidate.   Campaign Laws against corporations would have had no effect on this despite the Supreme Court Ruling, yet, how do you know who is donating money and even from what country they are from?  Where is the accountability on this site?   Oh, there is a check box to indicate you are a citizen, but it does nothing to verify that you are one.   Additionally, you see that the site the Donate link goes to is for www.actblue.com, or as their banner reads: ActBlue – The online clearinghouse for Democratic action.    The Fund-raising pages show John Edwards at the Top of the Fundraising Pages.   At the bottom of the section is a “Do it for Ted! Support Martha Coakley” link.   Poor link, it must be embarrassed.

So, we know this: leveltheplayingfield.com is supported by Clinton supporters who both happen to be Democrats.  We also know that ActBlue is a Democrat fundraising clearinghouse.    We also know that the site is geared towards asking Meg hard questions, questions such as: how do you plan to cut the budget, aside from cutting state worker jobs.  Of course this is actually a critical step towards cutting the budget – but as the SacBee reporter says this would be impossible and that: “Whitman has almost no contact with reporters who know something about the budget and could ask knowledgeable questions“   The irony about this is simple: Meg has enough intelligence to know these reporters only report based on agenda.  You can’t talk to them without having what you said and did not say, mean something grossly different and convenient to their world view.

I find it rather convenient that the SacBee article came out a day before the leveltheplayingfield.com radio blurb with both making the same accusation: she won’t talk to reporters and let the public know her.   Please note that the leveltheplayingfield.com site was registered Jan 20th 2010, which suggests the site was being planned before Feb 15th and that such radio spots take some time to put together and air.

Also along the theme is the: Don’t vote for her, she has money!  To which I should say: good for her.  She obviously got it from doing a better job than any Sacramento Politician.  Certainly e-Bay is more profitable than the State of California so her experience as an executive means a heck of a lot more than Jerry Brown’s experience.   If you follow the logic they apply, you should grab the homeless guy off the street and make him Governor.    But that is idiotic, you don’t vote for someone to pull you out of a fiscal crisis who has proven to be incapable or unwise in the handling of money, you vote for someone who has demonstrated wisdom and the capability to make money.   In the particular crisis we face in California, you should vote for the person who has the best record for making a profit and if the choice is between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman (and believe me, the whole point of leveltheplayingfield dot com is promoting Jerry Brown surreptitiously and in a most circuitous manner) you want the one with the best results.

Next is warning bell number one: “…special interests who want to roll back California’s bi-partisan law fighting Global Warming…“.   Now, I am all for that.    Actually, I am all for just about anything that contradicts the idiocy of Global Warming legislation and action.  That the press in the USA is pretty quiet about the whole collapse of Anthropomorphic Global Warming gives greater credence to claims that the Media is just a propaganda arm of Liberals in America.

Anyways my fellow Californians, watch out for the advertising.  It is already clear that the Media is against Meg simply because she was a successful business woman who does not view government as savior of the people.  It is now clear that the Democrat Party is starting to hurt in the Golden State and looking for ways to bolster their candidate any way they can – well, as long as it is not corporate money I suppose it is ok?

Edit: A short article pointing out the obvious: money buys advertising which does not automatically translates into votes.   This simple logic should have been obvious in the 2008 Presidential Election: McCain did not lose for a lack of money, but because he didn’t put enough effort into the campaign and getting the message out as to why he was the better candidate.   Plus he lacked something money could not buy: an ideologically sympathetic mass media.

“We have a separation of Church and State”

What, exactly, is the separation of Church and State about?  Does it mean that Law and where Government are superior to ones individual beliefs or that ones individual beliefs are superior to the Law and Government?  Does it mean that Government and the law are defer to religious beliefs or that religion is deferred to?  When one reads the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” in the First Amendment, one cannot reasonably deduct that religion takes a back seat to Laws passed by Congress.

Yet Coakley, someone who took the oath of office which includes no small promise to defend the Constitution, seems to have no clue what the Constitution talks about.   Such ignorance of the document upon which the USA was founded is inexcusable for someone attempting to represent their State.    But this is perhaps a sign of how entrenched the idea that the “Separation of Church and State” (which is an idea outside the Constitution not even found in the Federalist Papers but in a letter) means that Religion is shut out and disenfranchised rather than the State being shut out of influencing or managing Religion.   The gross perverting of the Constitution to mean something contrary to what the Founders intended had not been a slow process or even a new process.

It is a process that does not hold our Freedoms or our Liberties in high esteem yet it will unflinchingly hide behind those same freedoms and liberties in order to tear them down for everyone else.   It is as dishonest as it is hypocritical.

Here we have Coakley stating that because of the separation of Church and State, Catholic Doctors cannot decline to offer contraception and they should find other employment.  Our Nation happened to have been founded by people who fled from statists like Coakley.    The Constitution and Bill of Rights were formulated to combat them as well.     May Steve Brown beat Coakley hands down.

In true scientific inquiry data is collected from observation and experimentation resulting in the formulation and reformulation of hypothesis.  All data obtained from experimentation and observation is collected and taken into account.  None of it is tossed aside merely for the fact that it disproves or causes difficulty for the theory or preconceived belief.  In fact, those data elements are critical, for they allow accurate tuning of the theory and the methodology itself; not in order to obtain pre-ordained results, but accurately understand the questions that drive true science: what and why.  All science starts with out to solve a question and, in order to stamp out preconceived ideas; beliefs, it relies on repeated tests and observations as well as peer review.

The current problem with much of today’s scientific community appears to be that genuine scientific inquiry has been sacrificed on an alter of ideology.  But the worst part is the complicity of most of the major news organizations and politicians.  This is unfortunate in that genuine scientists will feel even greater pressure to not dissent against the teachings of the Roman Cath… no sorry: the likes of Al Gore and East Anglia.   This is unfortunate because science has been cheapened to “cooking the books” to please whomever will give you a grant.   I wonder if Enron should sue the press for not covering for them the way they are covering for “Climate-Gate” which will cost more money and more livelihoods than any failing of Enron could ever dream.

The issue is not a little ‘opps’.  The issue is not merely bad science but fraudulent science.  Nor is it like the genuine scientific debate that revolved around Geo-centricity vs. Helios-centricity until the Roman Catholic Church got involved.  It is much like the fraudulent effort of Ernst Haeckel to support his theory about Recapitulation in the embryonic stages.  Only this time, instead of being tossed out the theory has been embraced and any who dissent with real scientific evidence are silenced (ie: no publication of dissenting research).

Al Gore, a one-time Presidential candidate, after weeks of silence could only state “I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old.  These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.”   Naturally, this is important to Al Gore since his livelihood depends on the notion of Man Made Global Warming.

Report here, here, and here.  Oh… and if you deny Anthropogenic Global Warming, you may want to see a shrink.

Complete list of the House members who voted for Health Care and it’s subsequent and logical tethering of freedoms.   Will update in the future with information concerning their districts and those running against them.

Obama is sure to sign it if it makes it through the Senate.

Prepare for a rapid erosion of your rights.

They really need to take it back.  A Third Party will be useless.  Moderates will not save the Republican Party but Conservatives will.  The principles of Limited Government are what this Nation needs, not an expansive Government as the larger a Government is, the fewer rights and freedoms you have.

This last week with the Owens-Hoffman-Scozzafava race in New York’s 23rd we see a prime example of why Obama is in the White House.   Hoffman did not lose because he was a conservative.   He lost because the Republican leadership chose a Liberal (who then dropped from the race a few days before the election and endorsed the Democrat opponent).   One has to ask the only logical question possible: Why does the Republican Leadership insist on shooting itself in the foot with people like Scozzafava?   Did they learn nothing from the McCain campaign?

Perhaps instead of blaming Palin they should have done some soul searching and really looked at why McCain lost to Obama.    It is quite simple actually: why vote for the wannabe Democrat when you can vote for the real one?   The past 10 years Republicans have been morphing into Liberals and giving it the quaint name: Moderate.    I honestly cannot blame people for voting for Obama when the choice is rewarding Republican leadership for choosing a path of Liberalism.   Sure, if they really thought about it, they would have seen Obama as an extreme Liberal and either voted for McCain or sat it out.  But it never hurts to have the majority of the Media sharing your same ideology of anti-Americanism, liberalism, and a disdain for limited government to obscure the details of a Candidate so that all people really know about you is “Hope and Change”.

Yeah… What’s the hope?  What kind of change?

So what the Republican Party needs is a Conservative leadership and a very clear platform that extols limited government and why it promotes freedom over liberalism.