Arrogance

Everyone knows I am an arrogant bitch. Ok, maybe that is too strong, but opinionated? Absolutely. Strong willed? No doubt. Always think I'm right? No.

For several years...since October 04, I have used this site to post comments, commentary and opinions - is that repeating myself over and over? - on topics of interest to me. Most commonly politics and economics. I think I have been consistent, in my positions and my logic.

Victoria has been dealing with a significant medical problem and I have been occupied dealing with all the issue associated with it. I have also been very active at the American Conservative Party (ACP) site and devoting a lot of time and effort there.

This morning I came down to work on work things. I started thinking about Victoria's request to CJ on what she was going to do with her summer - school is out in 2 weeks. Victoria is thinking that CJ should try her hand at a business - for no other reason than to occupy her and let her make a little money. So, I spent some time doing research on one possibility.

I also logged into ACP and checked into chat and looked at recent postings. I was thinking about the format of the site and thinking about things that might be changed to make following discussions easier.

I started checking my reader for posts received from other blog sites to catch up there. Found a site that was interesting and signed up for that - but had to check in with Facebook and MySpace in the process. It reminded me I have not done a BlogRadio show in a while and someone suggested an ACP connection a while back....so I updated that profile with ACP in mind.

While that was going on, I started making a little room on my desk and came across some notes on a project I wanted to post on...except there was no where for it to really go in the context of everything else I was already working on....so I considered starting another blog for that to go into.

If this sounds like I am a little all over the place today....you don't know the half of it, but I have not been doing my job.

That ends today.

I have work to do, and it needs to be done. Although my posting here is sporadic at times, this is the only place that gets to be the catchall.

Laters....

Consequences of Same Sex Marriage

From an AP report out of Boston:

After four years of legalized same sex marriages in Massachusetts, researchers have found some startling facts:

1. 3 in 10 straight marriages ended with at least one partner remarrying the same sex within 3 months;

2. An additional 3 in 10 marriages ended with both partners remarrying the same sex within 6 months.

3. The historical average of 53% of marriages ending in divorce increased to 84% for marriages between straight couples.

4. The number of marriages between opposite sex partners declined 65%.

Some respondents to the survey gave the following reasons for their divorce:

"My wife used to nag me every weekend when I played golf with my friends, so I said what the hell. I divorced her and married my best friend. Now we play golf every weekend and no one nags us."

"My husband would never just sit and talk with me. I spent so much time with my best friend, that we both got divorced and married each other. We both can sit and talk for hours now, it is great."

"Well, my parents got divorced when I was 14. Dad is still in jail for shooting my mom with a nail gun and Mom has learned how to feed herself again. I just didn't want that kind of marriage."

Gay is normal

for a small segment of the human population. Homosexuality has persisted throughout recorded human history. A small segment of the human population will always (if the past is any indicator of our human genome) be homosexual.

If it is normal to be homosexual, is any law limiting the rights of gays reasonable if it is based solely on being homosexual? Someone is going to offer some specific thing like: yea, homosexuals can't be around children because they will molest them - ignoring the fact that most pedophiles are straight.

Let's outlaw divorce.

WHOA!?!? Where did that come from?

The most common refrain from those opposed to gay marriage is that it will have a devastating effect in marriage. They have not, to me, provided any proof or specific example of what that effect might be, but it is devastating....

Ever watch a marriage unfold in a divorce? On a rare occasion we have two adults in the process, but more commonly we have one adult and a child (the other is actually an adult that is acting so childish as to appear a child in all but age). And watch out when we have 2 children getting a divorce.....no barbarian EVER considered leaving that much destruction in their wake, even the Romans did less to Alexandria. God help the children in those situations because nothing else will.

If people REALLY wanted to protect marriage, they would outlaw divorce. That will have a much greater impact that the potential damage (if any) gay marriage would have on straight marriage.

Principles of the American Conservative Party

Voting was held this week on the following principles and overwhelming majority of those voting approved them.

Principles of the American Conservative Party

Foundation

From this Foundation, all principles flow.

• The individual is sovereign
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

• Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just limited powers from the consent of the governed
• We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America.

Principles

Authority of Government

• The citizens of the United States are the sole source of power and life of the United States Government. All powers and authority not explicitly given by the citizens to their representatives remain with the states or the people thereof.
• The United States Government has the authority and obligation to protect its citizens and their liberties from all actual and perceived threats regardless of the source, location or scope.

Limitiations on Government

• The federal legislature may make no law that abridges or limits the Constitutional rights of an individual.
• No state may abridge a citizen's right to life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
• Property currently owned or controlled by the Government is held in Trust for the citizens
• Regardless of compensation, no property shall be forcibly taken by government for private use or profit.

Citizenship

• Any child, born of a citizen, shall have all the legal rights of a citizen born or naturalized into the United States.
• Persons who are not citizens or resident aliens of the United States have no right to petition or benefit from any agency of the government except for petition of entry or asylum.
• A child born in the United States to non-citizens is not a citizen.

Citizen Responsibilities

• Each adult citizen is responsible for the health, education and welfare of himself or herself and their family.
• No adult citizen may call on the resources of another citizen or group of citizens without their explicit, expressed consent.
• No citizen or group of citizens, by expression of any character or physical trait, may call upon the resources, nor abridge the rights, of another citizen or group of citizens without their explicit, expressed consent.
• It is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in the political process.

Obligations

A recent conservation discussed our obligation towards our fellow citizens. One example was a couple, he was disabled and she had become injured. The question was: if you were aware of the situation, wouldn't you help? I answered maybe.

Do I have the resources needed? Can I spare them and not risk my own family? While the disabled and injured suggests that the couple bore no responsibility for their condition, but the nature of their situation was not offered. Had they overspent? Had they acted irresponsibility? Is it my responsibility to mitigate the consequences of someone else's choices?

I pointed out that while I might have some obligation towards them, I certainly could not be forced to take it. To be clearer, while I might have some obligation towards my fellow citizen, I can not off-load that obligation onto government thereby making my personal obligation the obligation of all citizens. That is the point: government does not have a personal obligation towards the citizenship: promote the GENERAL welfare.

Organizations like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army were formed by people and supported by large populations that feel a personal obligation towards those that have suffered some calamity. This is the appropriate way to work together to deal with personal obligations. Turning to the government to force (and that is what tax collection is) citizens to contribute to the specific welfare of specific people is a taking for private use.

Crossposted to American Conservative Party

Economics

In this post, I commented on the disparity between what is being reported as inflation and what it more like really is.

There are several economic items that on their face appear to be holding their own, but looking further you can see the rot spreading.

The inflation factor means the government (and anyone else) that bases raises and entitlements can get away with lower increases. So there is incentive to cheat.

It appears that the banks that make up the basis for calculating LIBOR (the London version of the Fed rate) have been cheating about how much they have really been paying each other. The result has been a lower rate than is actually occurring.

The question is, if banks and others are lowering interest rates AND inflation is actually a lot higher than being reported....isn't the spread killing investors? Duh. Well, only if you are the idiot actually ponying up the actual money. Those that create the instruments of demise are doing, well, not so well either.

Why then is all this slight of hand going on? Because a 500 trillion dollar derivatives market is poised to collapse and the banks, the majority of the top 100, will collapse with them. The Fed and the ECB can't, won't let that happen.

Unemployment is skyrocketing. What you say, the numbers don't show that. Of course they do, unless all you are looking at is a reported measure of the numbers someone else is reading for you. Hours worked fell substantially in April. The equivalent loss of 400,000 jobs. AND, the job rate is based on a modifier called the birth/loss. This is where the gooberment estimates how many jobs were created by the birth or loss of small businesses - too small to actually report actual numbers. Over the last almost year, this measure has been, to put it nicely, nuts. It continues to show increases in jobs in new businesses in construction, real estate and finance. Without this incredibly false increase, the joblessness rate would be almost a full point higher.

The rate of building new homes has dropped almost 2 million per year. How many people do you think that has cost them their jobs? If you said, a lot, congrats. If you said, the industry added almost 200,000 jobs over last 10 months, then you can go work for the gooberment.

Inflation understated, unemployment understated, interest rates, understated.

Oh, by the way, foreclosures and bankruptcies are climbing.

I am on the look out for good news, so far, the only good news is that Victoria's business is going to continue to get better this year.

Conservatism = Social conservatism?

I have become more and more unhappy with the idea that conservatism is defined by social issues. I have used the term traditionalist to describe those that promote social conservatism in a political realm.

Their arguments are consistently along the lines that society should not just change for the sake of changing. It is a simplistic and often useless observation. Society doesn't JUST change for the sake of changing. People didn't wake up and decide that children should be in charge, they abdicated their responsibilities over several generations.

Further, they will often suggest that long history has determined what works and we should not just toss those workable solutions - the most common time for this argument is in the area of marriage and their opposition to gay marriage. But no one is suggesting straight people have to start marrying gays, or that straight people have to get divorced.

Social conservatives have been in the GOP because they oppose the Democrat/liberal positions - NOT because they are politically conservative. Seldom do they make their arguments from a perspective of individual/constitutional rights. They use history, tradition, and very infrequently except by inference, Scripture.

If you support socially positions, great. I think you should be active in your support. Just don't call it conservatism, especially in the political arena.

HATE and the Fruit Tree

From Powerline:

Barack Obama gave his "More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia on March 18 to tamp down the furor caused by the release of videos excerpts of his pastor's sermons. Obama himself had proclaimed the importance of his pastor to his life over the past twenty years in books and interviews. Both circumstantial and direct evidence demonstrated Obama's knowledge of Reverend Wright's sick and indefensible views.

Rather than forthrightly condemn them in his Philadelphia speech, Obama chose to give the appearance of transcending them. Obama reviewed American history going back to the founding, provided autobiographical reflections, and presented himself as the man come to redeem racial relations in the United States. Obama denied familiarity with the statements whose revelation gave rise to his speech and suggested that they unfairly represented the man. Obama's speech provided the larger context for understanding Wright. Here is the key passage:

Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my
Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

As long as they were black homeless, black needy, black HIV sufferers. Our personal experience with Trinity is that it is a racist, white hating, and clearly AMERICAN hating church.

The Reverend Wright is a hater. He HATES. It doesn't really matter what he HATES, a man of God would not HATE. Would he?

Barak Obama made a fine speech about supporting the man behind the public persona, now Obama claims to have bitten into the apple from the tree of knowledge. Now that we have all seen that man, we must question, no, we must HOLD Barak Obama to his claim:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother...

By their fruits you shall know them. Apparently, after 20 years of being a student of the Rev Wright, we all better acknowledge that Obama is THE fruit that has fallen not far from the tree.
And like an apple just fallen from the tree, it is just a matter of time for the rot to appear.