Peacekeeping vs. Peacemaking

I'm all for peacemaking™ - Colt.  Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and Teddy Roosevelt all agreed.  "God made men, but Sam Colt made men equal!"  Everyone needs a peacemaker, but peacekeeping is like burning your money to cook your beans.  It looks like it's working, but there are much better ways to eat hot beans.

The future is all proxy war!  Get your enemies to fight each other.  India and Pakistan, Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas...  When America calls you a "friend" it means you are not on the bottom of the enemy list (North Korea, Iran, Libya, France, etc.), and you are entitled to BUY weapons from us to fight our less friendly friends.  That's right; no more of this "aid" sent to weaker countries.  They all have a GDP and if they want to survive, they will pay for it (like education in this country).  We'll even give you a loan at the current interest rates (thanks Fed!) that you can pay with your credit card when you get back on your feet.  We are not a charity.  We are not the world police.  We are not saving the planet from the bad guys.

Israel may have decided that one Israeli life is worth between 10 and 20 Palestinians, but we don't do that in America.  No boots on the ground.  We send one troop and lose one more life to fight Communism or Fascism or Terrorism and it just becomes another Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan.  From now on, it's just cruise missiles and drones.  When a war costs too much it will just be too much money.  We won't stick around and clean up either.  You can buy those services too.

"And in anger our lips shall form the truth." - Paladin (quoting Herodotus)

Evil is as Evil does

Why vote for the bad guy?  About as close as we can get to the angry guy in the wheelchair that takes Uncle Billy's money, Mr. Potter is most likely going to be our next president (again).  If you're a stinking liberal blue pill snowflake, you may be wondering how anyone could vote for this guy.  Here is a list of reasons and more than half of the voters this season will jump right on the wagon (again):

1) Piss off a democrat! Can you imagine any choice (even Sarah Palin) that would upset them more?

2) "I'm mostly evil so he's probably my best choice."  Even if you just cheat on your taxes a little bit, he's the guy that's going to make that look ok.  A bad example is the best example and he's got it in spades.

3) He has a "business" flavor to him even if he is not a good business man.  Won't this be good for the market?  My 401k needs to double twice for me to retire.

4) The wall: Someone needs to finish that, right?

5) Taxes, Welfare, Education, Health Care, Labor Unions and the Environment: Who is most likely to destroy and eliminate all of these things?

6) Social Issues: This needs to be a long paragraph that keeps democrats reading and distracted while we loot the store and bugger off to a remote island paradise (with no hurricanes).  We really don't care about social issues.

7) Immigration: Strawberry pickers, $2.50 an hour yard workers and au pairs that we can marry when we need a trade-in are ok.  Refugees can pass right on through to Canada (they have free health care).

8) Affirmative action, capital punishment, guns and drugs...

9) LGBTQ+XYZ - What's that?

Mama said there's only so much fortune a man really needs...  the rest is showing off.  Wait until you see the next Mar-a-Lago!

Kiste von Fahrvergnügen

I hear people say health care is a right and education including college is a right, but if my government fixes every broken person, there's no incentive to stop making these defective people that can't learn and use up all the health care.  If Volkswagon made broken cars and we had to buy them good or bad, they would keep making junk cars that polluted the environment and they would tell us they are fine and that even the bad cars have a right to be on the roads.  If someone is really sick, isn't it best to just put them out of their misery and not prolong their suffering with medicine?  If a person contributes nothing to society we should let them go.  Did FDR really need four terms in office?  Did Beethoven really do anything worthwhile after the 5th?  Wouldn't it be better to come up with some kind of mercy pod disintegration chamber?

There's a whole segment of society devoted to taking care of old sick people and animals that could do something useful if we would just get rid of the detritus.  Imagine what we could do if these people had real jobs like banker or actor or tanning booth operator?  Then we could concentrate on getting rid of the ugly and obese.

Life is like a box of chocolates.  It ends sooner for fat people.

Martin Lucre King

We should privatize civil rights and make it a government profit center.  How many Donald Trumps has the ACLU created without even trying?  The late night DUI lawyers could make tremendously more money playing to a larger demographic;  HAVE YOU BEEN BEATEN UP OR SHOT BY THE POLICE BECAUSE OF YOUR COLOR?  HAVE YOU BEEN FIRED BECAUSE YOU'RE A MAN DRESSED LIKE A WOMAN?  DID YOU GO TO JAIL FOR TAX FRAUD CLAIMING YOUR THREE CATS AS SPOUSES?  WE CAN HELP YOU!

As soon as we put money in the mix, it becomes a control system that self-regulates.  If too many people get shot or fired, there is an investigation to make sure it's not bogus or frivolous and when those people are fired, they can sue.  You've heard of perpetual motion machines, but this is an example where civil rights could fuel jobs and the economy for the foreseeable future.  It's obvious that sexism, hatred, bigotry and racism aren't going away any time soon.  Why not use it to fuel the economy?  By 2050 we could get 60% of our economy switched over to fear, greed and hatred and eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels.

First you get the fear.  Then you get the hatred.  Then you get the lawyers.  Then you get the money.  (Then you get the women, and more lawyers for the sexism and then more money, in perpetuity, ad infinitum, ad naseum, etc.)

Great Gulag Wall

People say, "they can fly over the wall" or "they'll swim around the wall" or "they're digging under the wall" without understanding that we can negotiate with illegals that can afford a plane ticket or with the ingenuity to dig a tunnel. We don't want the ones that are lazy enough to just walk across through the desert.  The wall isn't even about making us safer.  It's pride and ego.  Look at the Great Wall of China.  It's over 5000 miles long.  It's only about 2000 miles from San Diego to Brownsville so we should be able to make it three times as high and twice as wide.  We can build a three lane highway/racetrack on it and every 500 miles add a ThunderDome where we have daily matches to allow new contestants to enter the country.  Two men enter, one man gets a green card.

Since we have a new "reality show in chief" president, we could make the border entry into a game show like Survivor or Family Feud.  Frito Bandito could be the sponsor since stereotypes are cool again and we could get Marty Robbins to sing the theme song.  George Lopez will play Richard Dawson and come out singing Besame Mucho.  Winners can mow my lawn for $2.50 an hour and the new tax to send money back to your family in Mexico will help build and maintain the wall.  Good fences make good neighbors!

Oye como va? The future's so bright I gotta wear a giant sombrero.

False Consensus

Those of us who are real Republicans know that people are by nature bad. We're driven to selfish means of survival, excess and animus. It takes a very stable thoughtful mind to avoid these instinctual drives. Fear and lust will drive a man to do horrible things and he may come back down and look at the result of his amok time with disgust and despair, but it's pure humanity in its primal hysteric. Is there anything more human than revenge? Those of us at the top of the food chain are beholden to societal rules because if you're caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you get it cut off, but if you steal a billion, you are confined to your luxury mansion where you were hiding anyway.  We are civilized as long as we are privileged.

The underprivileged need something else. By creating a cult of fear that pushes people to charity with rewards or punishment in an afterlife, we can get these hard-working hungry lemmings to help some of us live happier lives. There's not enough stuff to make all of us happy anyway so why should we all be miserable? If we can give them something to hope for in the next life, maybe their misery and suffering will have some internal meaning. We're creating heroes and keeping the peace.

We're all sociopathic by nature, but some of us hide it better than others.  Empathy is like lust; it doesn't last long and it only distracts us from the important stuff.

Marriage Penalty

The creation of the institute of marriage seemed like a good idea. Imagine having kids (as a mom or a dad) without a contract. Dads have to decide which schools they attend or how much to beat them when they're bad? How do moms ever get a date again or the dead-beat "still looking for a job" dad to help support the family? Other than children and the tax break, there isn't a good reason to create a contract between two people. If there is an economic inequality it only invites the party with less to take something from the party with more and leave. If there's no contract, the lesser party is beholden to the greater party and must spend the money before leaving.

With love in the equation, money won't be a factor at first, but a time will come when the money is either too scarce or too abundant to be overshadowed by true love and the love will melt away like that crunchy coating on a Krispy Kreme donut that turned soggy in your car. At this point, one of you will be kicking yourself for signing the stupid contract that even your parents warned you about, and the other will be maxing out credit cards and hiding secret bank accounts. It's not like you really have a choice. Just like free will, entering marriage of your own volition is an illusion. Who stays married for 50 happy years? Boring people that would have been just as happy as asexual companions looking for cats in human form that need minimal attention.

I Can Has Cheezburger? - Only if you're willing to consider a threesome.

Health Care Less

The problem making something free is all the jerks that take advantage. There are several reasons they gobble it up; 1) Just in case I need it in the future, 2) I'm paying for it through taxes so I might as well take what I'm paying for, 3) It's not fair that someone else gets it without me getting one too, 4) If I wait until I need it, they might all be gone, or 5) If I take them all early, nobody that really needs one can get one (ha ha). These reasons are all asshole reasons but there is one real American reason that would prevent a system of free stuff from ever working. If I can get these services free and mark them up to people who will pay for them, then I can make a tidy profit and create a good business. Or even if I'm selling a competing product, it makes sense for me to absorb the free stuff, destroy it, or at least make it look bad.

The middle man is in everything. At first there were ticket scalpers and now there's Ticketmaster and StubHub. Car (or any product) salesmen are just there to squeeze the most extra money out of you they can. If someone says you would make a good salesman, it means you're a total asshole. It's the same with health insurance. When there's a service that nobody can afford (health care), you pay monthly an amount that depends on the chances you might use the service. It's a smoothing function that makes the healthy people pay for the sick unless they're willing to gamble they won't get sick. Force everyone to pay and you might as well get rid of the insurance companies. Why don't insurance companies like this idea? We've already created an industry on people gambling whether they will get sick or not. If we fix it to give sick people the best care possible, millions of people will lose their jobs, but at least they'll have health care. They shouldn't be allowed to make people buy health insurance just like the hospitals should be allowed to make all the people without health insurance pay before you pump. You opted out of health insurance so we're going to have to let you die.

If we get rid of all the useless jobs, how will stupid people have an opportunity to get rich too?  There's always the lottery.

Selfish Virtues

Why is conservatism so tightly linked with free market capitalism? Economic policy is not supposed to involve empathy, but our core philosophy must justify conspicuous consumption juxtaposed with our preachy austere convictions. This sounds like a difficult problem to tackle, but like the Bible, if you line-item-veto the parts that don't apply to you it's not difficult to piece together a doctrine of selfishness that includes a strict ethic of conservatism. Isn't the drive for survival really a drive to fulfill our primal needs (food, warmth, sex, football)? A balanced life is not static. You dip into the cookie jar and then you say a few hail Mary's to atone.

It's the same with capitalism. We play hard until we're so caught up in the game we commit personal fouls. Then we atone by giving back some of the yards we gained. This may include a short stint in jail depending on the transgression, but redemption is always possible (except in TX, GA, VA and NH). If we're forced to be compassionate by an ethic (or a government), it's no longer empathy. A selfless act is a self destructive act so if we all sacrifice ourselves we end up with useless watch chains or a set of combs without any hair. Regulating the economy would be like having God as a referee. How is it free will if you can't step over the line?

Bowling with bumpers is for the weak.

Surplus Value

The art explosion during the renaissance was caused by too many people with nothing better to do. The same thing causes war and the decline of empires. If you're hungry, you aren't thinking about art or any extracurricular activities. It's the same with money. If you have too much you can afford to get yourself in trouble. We all want that kind of trouble as an individual, but as a country why should we self-destruct like that? As long as there's a crisis in banking, energy, housing, environment, natural disaster, immigration, threat of evil, unemployment, national debt, disease, homosexuality, etc., we're not going to march on Washington and demand affordable health care or marriage between a man and his cats (deductions).

Why can't people see that we shouldn't have a surplus? If we get out of debt we must be prepared to discipline ourselves with other ascetic goals. Look how we created a religion around giving everything away, turning the other cheek and loving everyone, but turned it into the most selfish, destructive and vengeful movement the world has ever seen. Fear and greed are the only true motivators. We only want to put on our nice person mask when someone is watching. I wouldn't pee in the shower if anyone else was in there (unless asked). Why are these concepts so difficult to grasp?

Hungry people discourage illegal immigration.

Big Balkan Tent

Hypocrisy, like many other weapons is what makes the conservative movement great. All you have to do is agree with us on one or two unimportant social issues and you are an advertised member of the group, but when a critic points to some negative habit or characteristic in the party (e.g. polygamy, bigamy, racism, bigotism, fascism, greed, etc.) we suggest it's the red headed step-child of the group (Mormons, militias, token black guy, tea party, Donald Trump, etc.). They're all welcome because we can throw them under the bus and most of the time they throw themselves under the bus. Our mascot is a martyr.

Look at the Tea Party. How could a group of old white guys with enough discretionary time to whine about taxes have a slogan "No taxation without representation"? What more representation do we want? For a while I thought maybe the emotionally disturbed and the learning disabled were not properly featured, but we got both with Bush Jr. so we're all happy now. My point is that this contradiction doesn't bother us. We use it to distract you on the one hand from the real subject. Secondly it puts you at ease because we look foolish and non-threatening. And lastly, your reaction makes you look like an elite snob to everybody including yourself (guilt is a festering thing).

If you destroy us it will only make us stronger.

Blood Libel

With this post title, you may have come here looking for a different subject, but co-opting ethnic and cultural hot button terms is something we know works. From doomsaying the nuclear holocaust, warning of godless Islamofascists and bemoaning the current state of political apartheid. We're always willing to hijack controversial historical events to both patronize the affected and conflate our own issues with prepackaged emotions. For example; to get to the promised land we're going to need a governmental reformation or renaissance combined with a liberal diaspora or exodus and we'll let health care be their Waterloo. By dropping a couple of overloaded events, a word paints a thousand pictures.

Iconic emotional manipulation saves time and makes talking point crusades easier to remember. Who needs a tsunami of boring platform issues when aligning yourself with the targets of an inquisition or ethnic cleansing will bring everyone to your side without any knowledge of your position. Thankfully, most people don't know what a blood libel is because if they knew Ms. Palin was equating our position with the wrongly accused Jewish people using the blood of children in ritualistic ceremonies, their heads might explode. Between the outrage of using a blatant fear-mongering emotionally charged example and the association of our righteous political posture with the condemned Judaic tradition, their reactions would be mixed. The beauty of commandeering and compromising these idioms over and over is that they become associated with our cause instead of the original. We can systematically co-opt culture and spread like a black death pogrom. That might be a little harsh. Maybe it's more like global warming.

We all know that matso doesn't contain (unkosher) kid's blood. They have to use ground puppy bones.

Tort Remedies

So frivolous litigation is less than one percent of health care costs and removing all of them would change our health insurance fees by about 22 cents per month. I keep hearing this, but you're not saying there's no problem. It's just not the biggest problem. Plane crashes cause less than one percent of deaths worldwide, but it's enough to scare people onto trains and buses. Perhaps we would have more doctors and more competition if they weren't scared of the guy claiming that sponge wasn't in there before. How do we know it wasn't a magic trick gone horribly wrong? Where did the sponge go? Nobody knows.

Maybe we need to rethink our core values here. Our whole judicial system is based on Blackstone's "better ten guilty go free than one innocent man be wronged", but is that really best for society? It's the same deal God made with Abraham, if 10 good people were found in Sodom then he wouldn't destroy it (guess they only found 9). Maybe it's better that a couple of innocents be scooped up with the bad people to keep the rest of us safe. If we throw out anything that looks frivolous to protect the corporations, businesses will thrive and they'll start hiring again with this trickle down theory. One step better, we could start putting people in jail for frivolous lawsuits and scare away some minor real claims and then we're really taking a chunk out of health care costs because they won't have to be as "careful". Just like everything else, you get what you pay for so there would be special premium health care services with guaranteed quality for those willing to pay. It's the American way.

If planes didn't crash, who would get on a train?

Unaccountable Churches

Some will tell you our founding fathers thought an injection of religion into government would be bad medicine. Perhaps Richie Sambora was related to them and they were just worried government would get addicted to that monkey on our back. I'm okay with protecting my church from the greedy fingers of the law, but you can't have it both ways; If you want the government to share in the profits of the huge organized money making venture, you're going to have to accept a few commandments in court rooms and prayers in kindergarten. Some of those kids really need to pray anyway.

How could a small company compete today if it's not faith-based? The only alternative is the defense industry, corrections or homeland security. We've outsourced all the smart jobs, so it has to be either organized crime or extremely soft metrics. Look at Katrina; everyone talks about how bad it was, but do we know how much worse it could have been? Until we have another hurricane in New Orleans within 5 years of a major terrorist attack while we're fighting two wars, we'll never know and we set the bar pretty low for improvement the next time around. Now you want to tax the charities too? Like a potion that can cure all your diseases, all you (the government) have to do is accept the love of God and that Jesus died for your sins and you can be part of the club. It's an offer you can't refuse.

First you need, then you bleed, now you're down on your knees.

'Roid Burn

Whiny, whine, whinge! Performance enhancing drugs are ruining professional sports, killing people and messing up our children. Really? You think those obsessive personalities wouldn't find something else to mess up their bodies even more if they didn't have steroids? On a positive note, there's the healthy part of the obsession to be healthy, or at least look super-freakishly healthy. We already have chemicals in our food and air, hormones in our eggs and meat, mercury in our fish, who knows what in diet sodas and energy drinks, so a few injections of stuff that's already in our bodies is going to cause a problem? I don't see what the fuss is about.

I used to be outraged at the NFL, NBA and MLB because it's not fair that teams from other towns can bulk up when my representatives are playing by the rules, but the more I think about it, some of them only get to play 2 or 3 years before they tear an ACL or get too many concussions or die from a freak heart problem, so why can't we let them get bigger and hit harder? They're in a rough business anyway. It's kind of like not letting soldiers smoke. Most of them are not going to die from lung cancer unless it's caused by some enemy agent released on the battlefield. I really don't understand people complaining about doping in "sports" like the Tour de France. First of all, they're bicyclists so they're probably jerks anyway and secondly, wouldn't you rather see the limits of human endurance and physical capacity even if it's enhanced by daily blood transfusions, performance enhancing drugs and mind altering robot implants? Who knew anything about the Tour before Lance? I'll tell you who; elite cyclist snobs.

Don't we all watch to see them crash and burn anyway?

Taxic Shock

Like Woody said, we can live to be a hundred if we give up all the things that make us want to live to be a hundred. I know someone is going to have to pay the piper, but wasn't it the kids that all suffered in that story anyway? What did the parents do after the kids were gone? I don't think they sat around crying about their kids. They probably just made some more kids and then complained about how they weren't ever as good as the martyr kids that got taken away. Most of them just retired early.

You aren't going to convince me that we will have a better society if we pay more taxes. History is proving that. How is our life any worse now that we're paying less taxes? As long as you still have a job, you're doing ok. I mean a real job, not a Wal-Mart or McDonald's job. That probably sucks, but why should I suffer to make your life better? The more taxes we pay, the more barnacles collect on the government. If you take away the teat, all the suckers are going to find something else. If we can make them resort to a life of crime, then put them in prison and it's free labor with no taxes required to support the poor. It's a simple solution and the circle of life.

Hakuna Matata!

New Year Resolutions

I'm not big on resolutions anyway, so it really boils down to one resolution this year. I'm not going to exercise more or eat better or save money for my kid's education. My resolution is to do everything I can to piss off Democrats even if I have to cut off my own nose. I'll take this environment down with me if I can get a bunch of whiny liberals telling me to recycle and use less water in the desert. I don't care if anyone has a job as long Democrats control the presidency and congress and we can blame it on them. I'll drive my dually pickup right over your little smart car while I'm texting on the highway.

What's the best way to upset a liberal? I've started a list:

1) Bumper stickers: From the simple NOBAMA to the "Piss off a liberal: Work hard and be happy", they're the best way to get your message across.

2) Let your dog poop in the common areas without picking it up or throw trash out your window in the car.

3) Talk about Sarah Palin. We know she's stupid too, but it's fun to act like she's our mascot.

4) Elect idiots: They're easier to manipulate and they don't try to make government do anything. On the flip side, they're more likely to be involved in scandal.

5) Try to sneak religion into schools and government. We're not that big on church anyway, but it causes more grief there than anywhere else.

6) Attack the gays. We don't really care what they do but tell one joke and you've soured the mood for weeks.

7) Use communism and Hitler together talking about liberals. We know it's contradictory but the message is there.

8) Bring your gun to work and wave it around when you're talking about what happened on Game of Thrones this week and then say, "this is the same gun they used at Columbine".

Obamageddon: No we can't!

Fetchez La Vache

One of the most American foods we have is French Fries. I heard today that the three most eaten vegetables here are 1) fried potatoes (fries), 2) fried potatoes (chips) and 3) iceberg lettuce (water in leaf form). If you could get a family sized bag of burger (beef) chips for two dollars you could wipe out vegetables statistically, but why are fried potatoes called french fries when in France they just call them frites pommes? There was that whole thing about changing the name to freedom fries, but it seems like the American way would be to sell the name to some corporation to get it in every restaurant and grocery store.  "Pick me up some Google Fries!"  But I'd rather change the names of burritos and tacos before we start thinking about French foods. Who's going to eat carne if we just call it roasted meat and I'm not switching from French's mustard to the spicy brown English one either.

I'm not sure why we can't use this as a public relations trick. When we're negotiating with other countries and they talk about us patronizing or offending them, just point out all the imports from their country:

France: Salad dressing, mustard and toast

Germany: Beer, pretzels and shepherds

Mexico: Cheap beer, cheap food and unskilled labor

Canada: Bad comedians, Celine Dion, cheap supposedly skilled labor

Japan: Crappy cartoons, sushi and tiny tree presents for your mom

China: All the stuff we used to make

We're all friends here, right?

Magna Charter School

Proof that just like life, segregation will find a way when you defy the laws of nature; Charter schools are the answer to the failure of the public school system. When are they going to figure out that you just can't teach everybody. Some people are just soylent green and even a good teacher could spend all their attention on a rock if performance evaluation is based on improvement metrics of the weakest Gomer. Throw in some emotional disturbation and a deficit of attention and even a professional cat juggler wouldn't be able to cope.

In the 80's I thought I would have to pay beau-coups to put my kid in a sterile catholic/military petri dish with no authority challenge and thinking for yourself meant finishing your calculus homework. Silly conservatives thought vouchers were the answer, but why steal the cake when you can get the recipe and put the place out of business? Now we can siphon all the money from the public school system, pay our charter school teachers peanuts, leave the problem kids with parents that don't care in the already struggling system making it look even worse, force the good teachers to quit, sneak a little religion into the charter and break the bank to force education into privatization all in one punch.

If everyone can afford a good education, how are my slightly below average kids going to compete in the real world?

Spare the Rod

You hear people talk about corporal punishment as a form of humiliation like that's some revelation. The hum in humble comes from humiliation, right? I'm not sure what the problem is here. We were all spanked as a child unless you grew up in some hippie camp. We all hate our parents and we all turned out ok. Do we want our kids to live with us until they die? Why would they want to leave the house and get married and have their own kids if they don't decide they can show us how much better they can do it?

Anger is a motivating force and if you want to keep competition and the American way going you have to perpetuate that dysfunctional drive or we'll all start doing artsy crap. Why do you think all the music from the 60's and 70's came from the British bands? They weren't spanking their kids and they weren't driven to conspicuous consumption and baby booming economic control of the world. Capital punishment is just extreme corporal punishment and where would we be without that? If people (or kids) start thinking they're just as good as everybody else, then what's to stop them from thinking they're above the law or God's will? It's a slippery slope.

I brought you into this world and I can take you right back out.

The Xmas Wars

I don't like to get pissy, but this backlash against our original beef with Christmas becoming "Santa Claus and gifting" instead of baby Jesus's b-day is a little ridiculous. Wasn't it enough to shorten it to Xmas. Replacing Christ with a tilted cross (X) is rubbing it in a bit (who says the Jews don't control the media?). I guess we should neuter all holidays to secular motifs. We could have zombie bunnies for Easter to keep the undead (back from the grave) theme. Does recognizing a religious holiday constitute a break in the separation of church and state? Who cares?

Have you ever tried to sing O Holiday Tree? Feliz feriados? Blue Hanukkah? White Kwanzaa? It's funny that we celebrate giving gifts to children to avoid the previous tradition of groups of young men going from house to house demanding alcohol and food. Christmas is one of those big bags that we keep stuffing new things in to please everybody until it won't mean anything to anyone. My kids think it's about Santa rewarding their behavior for the year because that sounds like a good idea when they're being bad.

Not effective: "God sees what you're doing and you'll regret it when you die."

Effective (first couple of times): "Santa is going to bring you a big pile of dog poop if you keep doing that."

Believing in Santa Claus is just one step away from believing in Jesus. He's watching you all the time. He's magic and can bring you good stuff or bad stuff and he lives some place far far away and you can't go there to check it out. Don't look on Google Earth.

This (Xmas) war would be a lot better if we could use our guns.

Abortion Is Murder

One of the most prominent fences bisecting political philosophies; this is a good litmus test to separate left and right. With the death penalty and war justification, you might think exceptions for advocating the destruction of life would fall into the conservative camp, but it's not difficult to find the right answer to this question when you follow these rules: 1) Life is a wonderful gift that can't be taken away... unless you do something wrong, 2) Since brains aren't required for life, a heartbeat is enough.

Everyone loves (other people's) puppies and children, so why is it hard to understand that once a child has a beating heart you would be an Indian giver to take it away. If you think the child might be evil or deformed, you have the option of making it someone else's problem. If no one wants to care for it, then god's will can be decided by sending it to war or death row.

If there was a puppy growing in your tummy, you wouldn't destroy it.

Fear Addict

We are all afraid of something and it's our nature to embrace these fears. Ironically, most of us do this by avoiding them or building elaborate defenses. It's like putting up fences to keep out the brown people or acquiring vast wealth to avoid death; we all know it doesn't really solve the problem so yelling that from the sidelines is not helpful. We're not stupid. We know that plastic surgery looks worse than the wrinkles, but you can tell we can afford the procedure. It's a class thing which is something Democrats have to repress. (proven by how touchy they are when you call them elitist).

So when you tell us we're driven by fear and greed, it's like telling a monkey he's driven by a compulsive banana addiction. So what you're saying is I'm human. Interesting concept. What are you driven by? I have a fear of sleeping on the floor so I got a bed. My irrational fears keep me from thinking about the rational ones. If you're worried about the rats eating your toes, you don't think so much about the fact that you're homeless. We turned irrational fear into a whole industry with the cold war and then Reagan had to be a hero and win it. I think that was during his senile years.

A shiny city on a hill is a formidable redoubt.

Activist Judges

So many times I get the insulted virgin response from Democrats when I talk about activist judges promoting their policies, but I'm not specifically opposed to legislation from the bench. Look at the recent ruling about Obamacare being unconstitutional requiring people to pay for health care insurance. Now with a legal precedent I can stop paying for car insurance too. There are many good examples of judicial activism like Bush v. Gore, Plessy v. Ferguson, campaign finance restrictions removed for corporations, striking down the law allowing same-sex marriages. It's a tool in your belt like a gun or a lobbyist. The funny thing is that Democrats are so holier-than-thou that they won't admit to using dirty tricks as a means. Compromise my ethic? - No!

The reason it doesn't work to shout "activist judge" at a Republican is we're just going to say, "Duh, why else would we have selected that judge." It's only cheating if you can get an indictment. We point it out when you do it because you feel guilty for being weak. Look at Roe v Wade; you had to use "right to privacy" to make it legal to kill babies? That's not a stretch? I believe the constitution was meant to be interpreted and some people call any decision they don't agree with activist, but there's no such thing as objectivism (I'm looking at you Ayn Rand) so there's no universal interpretation of the law. The only universal law is in the bible.

The constitution is more like a set of guidelines than actual rules.

Fiscal Conservative

I get tired of the muckrakers saying, "I thought you were supposed to be a fiscal conservative". Maybe the old Republican party was worried about saving money or making sure government is small and efficient, but the important thing now is 1) Anything to make me pay less taxes, 2) Shrink the government to where the programs I don't like are not effective. These two goals are not at odds with each other. Fiscal conservative is a nice way to say stingy and I'll own that. I'm cheap with the government, but generous with my friends. Why do I want to pay for your public school when I already pay for my kid's private school. I don't care if your kid can make proper change for me at McDonald's. I don't expect him to because he's trying to cheat me anyway so I'll keep him honest.

If we strap the government for cash, the essential programs are still going to get funded because they're essential. They may have tight budgets too, but since when do I want government workers to have comfortable lives? You work for the government if you can't do anything else. Who else would go into the military? If you have to kill a program you're going to kill the ones that aren't required first. Why do we need to pay for schools? Look at the little house on the prairie. Your parents are going to teach you the important stuff. You pay for everything else.

Fiscal conservation means I keep my money.

Family Values

When I say family values, I mean that my family is more important than other people and they deserve more from me, but mostly I'm going to do what I can to rig the game in their favor. It's like the hierarchy of needs. You help those close to you first and when that's satisfied you can move further outside your circle. You would have to be a Democrat to want to help someone before you help your family or spread the help out to everyone where it's useful to no one. Everyone cheats and that's the first thing you need to teach your family is to be wary of other people taking your stuff. It goes back to the nature of people: bad.

I love my family so much that I built (not literally) a fortress to protect them. It's my sanctuary to keep all the bad elements out there. They will be safe in here. I won't expose them to any of the bad people in the world, which might be a problem when they grow up and have to fend for themselves with an unnatural fear of diversity. But when they turn 18 they're someone else's problem.

My family is my most important treasure.

Perpetual Deficit

We borrow money when we buy a car or a house and we all imagine a time when we can pay off all our bills and live off the interest of what we've saved, but it's pie in the sky. We have to think of the country like a citizen of the world where we have to borrow from the world bank to compete in the big market. Where would we live if we didn't borrow? We need to think of borrowing as a hedge against inflation and devaluation of the currency. As long as we owe trillions of dollars to other people, there's no incentive to make that money worthless.

It's sort of like in a bad economy if you think you might have to file bankruptcy, you'd rather be deep in debt than just a little in debt if it's all going away. Why would we want to pay off all the bills? It doesn't make it any easier to survive. If everyone else owes us money, they aren't going to repay any more than we're going to repay them. The house of cards will keep going until someone knocks it down. Just start building it again when that happens. You've still got all the cards.

If I pay off my house, my wife will just start buying more crap.

No Squeaky Wheels

People talk about minority repression like it's a bad thing. When you live in a little "D" democratic society, the rules and the goals are set by the big "M" majority. I know this sucks a lot of times like in school when you want to play kickball and everyone wants to play dodgeball, or you get picked last in team selection, but the benefits are better than the inconveniences. It homogenizes us where we all know what to expect in normal interaction. We are comfortable living next to people who look and act like we do. What if your neighbor played different music really loud and slept at different times than you did? What if they didn't have the same religious or educational beliefs that you do? How hard would it be living next to those people?

Democracy filters all the bad stuff out of society in the form of minorities. Unfortunately, some things that fall into minorities aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, but that's the price you pay to keep chaos outside. Imagine if your church had to modify its beliefs to allow everyone to worship there. You would no longer have any of the core mythological constructs that make us who we are. Any concept that was difficult to believe or subjected anyone to negative feelings would be discarded. I don't want to live in that generic society.

The wheel squeaks to tell you it needs to be fixed.

NASCAR Go

I don't watch NASCAR, but I understand the penchant. It's raw power and pure structure without a bunch of twists and noodles. People say baseball is the American sport, but it's more like Americanized cricket than a pure sport. American football is much more American. This is a game that is as close to our government and society as can be. It's kind of like the Constitution; every rule is well-defined but open to interpretation. The real rule is the meaning of the rule, not the words on paper. That's why a touchdown is when the ball crosses the plane and why a fumble recovery is only known after you unpile the bodies. Some rules you can enforce with photo finish replays and some can't be "ruled" until after the whistle blows. Football is litigious with red flag challenges, unsportsmanlike conduct and personal fouls.

NASCAR is similar with all the cars going in the same circle with the same car and the same limits. Only the driver is tested and while money may buy better equipment for training, repair and fame, if you have enough money to play, there is an artificial equalization within the class that promotes competition and levels the playing field. This is just like regulated society in general. Once you have enough money to play, you can compete and one day if I'm not taxed to death I can do that instead of watching NASCAR (I mean football). Sports seasons give us a sense of safety in familiarity.

My team is going all the way this year.

Deregulation de rigueur

Ironic that I'm quoting Darwin (well paraphrasing), but if you believe a theory of evolution might work in a closed environment, then you wouldn't want to keep imposing rule after rule with an arbitrary structure of control mutating your experiment into a narrow definition of life. If you were god, you would remove as many rules as you could allowing expansion into all manner of sentience with no bound. The free market follows this Darwinian analogy. Do you want a business to survive that can't regulate itself or survive the parasitic nature of the rest of the economy?

The problem with regulation is similar to the problem we're having now with allergies and our immune system. If you Purell everything, when a business needs to survive a real adversary, it has no defenses. Also, if you look at the way our economy has evolved over the past 200 years, there are certain mechanisms that are in place to help businesses help themselves. If you regulate them from the outside, then these mechanisms start working against the corporations like when our immune systems work against us when they don't have anything else to do. That's why kids that grow up with dogs and cats in the house at a young age have stronger immune systems.

A little dirt in your system is good for the soul.

Guns Will Save Us

There's a healthy fear to knowing a snake will bite you. When you look at that snake, you may think it would make an easy snack or it would be perfect boot material, but you're not going to just walk up and take it, unless you have a gun. If everyone had a gun, we would all be snakes except the people in this analogy wouldn't have guns so you're strike would actually be a deterrent, or maybe the snakes would all have guns.

I've heard people talk about letting teachers carry guns to school which sounds like a good idea on the surface, but most teachers are small framed women (in my district), and in high school they could possibly be overcome and have their guns be used against them which would definitely be a problem in some of the bad school districts. Teachers in those areas tend to be a bit larger, so maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad, but still, it seems like a better solution would be to have patrols with guns and dogs by licensed carriers with registered skills and room lockdown alarms that would lock all doors in the school in case of emergency. I need to think that one through a little bit because there are some problems with the plan, but guns make people respect you even if you don't deserve that respect.

Forced respect is the definition of society.

North American Scum

People look at Americans with disdain because we're not afraid to spend our money and feel good about it. Overindulgence is our middle name and we'll wave it in your face and laugh. Am I supposed to apologize for having fun? If God didn't want me to spend this money, why did he give it to me? Or maybe that's the way he's taking it away by letting me spend it on superficial crap that won't really make me happy. Lesson learned!

The difference between Republicans and Democrats is not our spending habits or even our attitudes about it. Democrats go on holiday to Europe and act like they also hate America but have no control, or they tell everyone they're Canadian. We don't care. We'll wear a jumper and a baseball cap made of a big American flag and tell everyone how we saved (or kicked) their ass in WW II. We're like big Charles Barkley stars that everyone loves to hate over there. Who wants to go see old buildings and mimes for a vacation? I'd rather sit on a Maui beach and drink my 18 year old single malt.

You wouldn't touch us with a ten foot pole.

Evil Exists

Some people say that evil is just a concept and there is no pure evil at the core of all bad things, but it is all black and white to me. Relative morality is like reverse discrimination; it's just a loaded term to push people's buttons. The absolute morality is right there for us all to see. Our book may just be one interpretation of it, but we have to fight it our whole lives. Part of that evil is in us and that drives us to sin if we let it control us. The inner fight is the easy one if we follow the right path. That's just staying between the ropes on our journey through life.

The difficult fight is all the evil that is swirling around in the universe without any control. We have help, but our egos may tempt us into thinking that our personal bodies are more important than the big fight for our souls and the souls of our religious families. We're not all meant to make it to the final fight and that evil may knock some of us down even though we're following the proper path. It's the evil in the world that drives us to good. Without it, we would already be good and there would be no struggle or suffering and no meaning to this temporal existence before the eternal peace.

Evil makes the world go round.

Work Ethic from Jesus

Democrats talk about this protestant work ethic being an industrialization of the Christian mind, but it's more about survival than it is about role models. Imagine what would happen if we all gave up our jobs and walked the earth espousing our philosophies and helping others. Even if we could all magically cure people and help bad people become good people, we'd quickly run out of sick and bad people and then we'd all be walking around asking for handouts from other bums. "I don't have any food or shelter to give you. I'm walking the earth."

So in the interest of concretizing this myth, I'm going suggest that each person should walk the earth for two years (maybe between high school and college?) and go around helping people. Since you probably can't heal the sick and your philosophy won't be honed enough to convert the evil, you should just do odd jobs around the house like mow the lawn, do the laundry or clean the garage, but by spreading the word and showing your compassion during this time, you can justify the rest of your life working too many hours and all the compromises that you have to put up with to have a good life. It will also make you feel better about your indulgences (like massages).

I gave during my walking time.

Here Comes The Rapture

Some people say the end of the world is coming in October of 2011. I don't know if I believe that, but if we believe it might come or that we might be an instrument in achieving the end of the world, why would we break our backs and our banks trying to fix the planet? Maybe this is just how the story is supposed to go. It could be that we're supposed to die a slow death of poison air, undrinkable water, population overgrowth, civilized wars and religious lunacy and that's what the revelation turmoil was all about. It sounds like hell on earth, but unless the sun explodes or a meteor cracks the planet in half, the end of times is probably going to be more of a whimper than a bang.

Do we really think we can fix this problem? To get everyone on board, we would have to have a really good dictatorship that could keep people in line even when they were poor and oppressed, or maybe a genocide that left only people willing to work towards a brighter future. Right now, we have too many countries pointing fingers at each other. "China is using more resources than they should and oppressing their people." -- "America is burning more fossil fuels than the rest of the world combined three times." -- "Saudi Arabia isn't even civilized enough to have schools for women." If all but one country did a good job fixing their environment, the one that's left could still ruin it for everyone and spend and waste everything the others saved so they would be riding into the rapture living the good life while the rest of us suffer.

I think I'll just keep spending and let the world take care of itself.

Charity Control

Democrats want to spend my money on their charities. I can't afford to give as much money as I want to my church to help people who really need it when I get taxed by the government charity services. They say we can't have civilization without helping society along, but it's like a giant black hole sucking all our money and not helping anyone that I know. Some of them aren't even Christians or Americans.

Why should everyone get the same health care that I'm working to afford? That's charity. Why should I have compassion for someone I don't even know when I'm not helping the people I do know as much as I'd like? When you're really sick, the hospitals don't usually kick you out if you don't have insurance and people with chronic problems are going to explode our group rates anyway. Why should I pay if I'm not sick? The government is punishing me for not being sick.

I don't want to help people I don't know or agree with. What if they're my enemies?

I Like Money

Democrats will tell you that money is not important and we should share everything and help people and have compassion and walk the earth with only our robe and sandals. That doesn't sound very American to me. I'm sure Gandhi was a good man and we need saints and saviors and such, but they're just role models. If we all tried to be exactly like our models, then who would stand out as a role model?

I work hard for my money and I treat my family well and I like to spend my money. Why should I let liberals make me feel guilty about something I enjoy? They enjoy their meditation and I enjoy my Jet Ski. What's the difference? Money is not evil. If more poor people had massages, maybe they would work harder to actually be able to pay for their own masseuse. I can't be lazy because I don't like to be poor.

Why don't more people like money?

Mission Statement

Having been both a Democrat and a Republican at different points in my life, I thought it was important to list the reasons why I picked one "party" over the other. For most people that are even remotely interested in politics, a party is more like a religion or a personal philosophy, so I want to try to express these reasons in a personal and subjective form instead of a simple set of rules or a "platform".

"Here we go." - Mario