loPEZ Dispenser

I promised myself I would try my hardest to remain optimistic about the new administration. This blog has been silent since the election (I’ve been really busy) and a lot has happened in the 50 days since Barry has taken over. You might see this as a typical conservatives lashing at an arch enemy. I have no problems with The Big O personally, however I cannot morally or consciously support his viewpoints on most issues. I have tried my best to look at the State of the Union objectively and here are some of my observations.

As people, we are only as good as those we surround ourselves with. It’s hard to hang with druggies without eventually taking drugs yourself. It’s human nature. Does it give anybody else pause to realize that a large number of the people Barry selected to his cabinet have had difficulties with their confirmations? Many withdrew on their own. What does that tell you? Do you really want a tax fraud running the Treasury? That’s like putting a counterfeiter in charge of the Mint. You just don’t do it! Have you read about some of the things Rahm Emanuel has done to those who oppose him? This is our President’s Chief of Staff, perhaps his most trusted adviser!

Now we have our new SecState Hillary Clinton. Did you see that stunt she pulled in Russia with the “reset” button that actually translated to “Overcharge”? Did nobody on her staff bother to check a Russian/English Dictionary? Not to mention that the whole symbolism was so cliche to begin with. These are the people the President has entrusted to run the government!

Then there is the Obamanomics. I do not know A SINGLE PERSON at work, at home, at church, or on the street, or any economic adviser (televised or quoted in print), trader or anybody else in the industry who has given an ounce of support for the stimulus (spending) package that Congress just steamrolled through. Aren’t these guys supposed to represent us and not their own interests? Did any of them actually read the over 1000 page bill? I think they all (Republicans and Democrats alike) saw this as an opportunity to slide in their pet projects without a lot of scrutiny.

Obama promised us the world during his campaign. I’ll let Rush and Hannity go through and pick apart the details of what campaign promises have already been broken but I have a feeling that those tax cuts for 95% of us are about to go bye bye. Jobs are being lost. It sucks. Who provides jobs? Businesses. Who does Big O want to tax? Businesses! This is counter-productive!

Most insulting to me is that the current news reports say that BarryO is preparing to go onto Leno this week to convince America to support his unprecedented $3.6 trillion dollar budget! Talk about a deficit! Barry, you already have the job! You don’t need to campaign to me. You know America does not support your asinine and outrageous spending plan! Get off Leno and figure out a different way to tackle this issue that doesn’t leave my kids with a 75% tax rate.! If all the rest of us need to tighten our belts then so should the government. Obama’s poll numbers are falling and congress’ numbers are still dangerously low! What will it take for our government to see that we are not happy with their performance?

America has the opportunity to vote with their wallets every day. Its called the stock market. Is it me or is there a correlation between the events of November 5th and the performance of the market to date. I wonder if many are now saying “I’ve made a huge mistake” with my election vote. Probably not too many…they’re all too concerned about what JCrew outfit the first lady is wearing. I’m not saying McCain would have been better but ‘m fairly certain that he wouldn’t have been worse!

We are in a dangerous place where the democrat controlled government can push their own agendas without any opposition. Just watch out for a “civilian security force”. When you hear that, it’s time to go get your guns…

Does anybody else wonder why congressmen and senators do not have term limits? I think that this is something that needs to change. Lets limit the terms to 2 for senators. That gives them 12 years to serve their country in a high office. Instead we have these stodgy old people who have grown comfortable in their lifestyle and have become corrupt by the lobbyists and special interest groups that feed their sense of importance.

I think that our elected officials have largely lost the idea that being in government is about service to your country, not the other way around. It has become a place where it is all about who is in charge. This is perhaps best exhibited by the second in line to the president one Nancy Pelosi who defiantly proclaimed “I am the most powerful woman in the world!”

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t expect congress to enact term limits on themselves. They would basically be putting themselves out of work. No, that would make too much sense…

Well, my guy lost. Oh well. I’ve pondered the things I could do to cope with this loss. I think the most effective method is comedy. Then I stumbled upon this gem.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

OBAMATRONS UNITE!!

“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”

- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

You all know that I am a supporter of McCain in the upcoming election. Besides not liking many of the policies Obama is proposing, the man just gives me an uneasy feeling about the future with him in charge. I think that many McCain supporters feel the same way but have no way to articulate this feeling. Its not something they can easily describe.

Daily, I read Scott Adams blog. He is the genius behind the Dilbert comics. I will post his blog from today and the response from one of his readers. The response I feel does an incredible job of putting to words my uneasy feeling. What do you think?

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The Blog Post
by Scott Adams
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http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/vague_feelings_of_discomfort/

Yesterday I was talking to some McCain supporters about how they arrived at their preference. We don’t see many McCain supporters in my neighborhood, so I always take time to hear their views. Admittedly my sample is not large, but of the dozen or so McCain supporters I have spoken with, there is a common thread: Obama gives them a vague feeling of discomfort that they can’t quite identify.

When I ask about this vague feeling of discomfort, the answer has something to do with how his views got formed, his past associations, how quickly he rose to prominence, and how charismatic (slick) he is.

The risk, as I understand it, is that once in office Obama would start sporting a turban and begin each speech with WAHLALALALALALAL!!!! He would appoint Supreme Court justices who favor a redistribution of wealth to unborn gay babies, and he’d legalize crack. It would all be part of his master plan to destroy America. I might have the details wrong, but it goes something like that.

It’s hard to argue against someone’s vague feeling of discomfort. After all, studies have shown that people are actually quite good at determining character and intelligence from nothing more than photographs. I just found it interesting that the people I spoke with described a vague feeling of discomfort in forming their preference. That is not something I ever heard in other elections.

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The Response
by User Phantom II
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Scott, I don’t think you actually understood what the McCain supporters were telling you. The problem with Obama is that nobody (or only his closest associates) knows what he really thinks. I heard a PBS recording of some fairly well-known news folks saying, just yesterday, that they didn’t know what Obama was really like - that they didn’t know how he’d handle foreign policy, they didn’t know how he really felt about capitalism versus socialism, and so on. They were saying that the only things they know about him come from the books he’s written and the speeches he’s given.

Now, these are members of the same press that was supposed to be finding out for us what he’s really about. They have had almost twenty months, and they didn’t do their job, for whatever reason. Only just now do they seem to be admitting it.

My problems with Obama are many, but I’ll try to boil them down here. The reason for that vague unease your neighborhood McCain supporters have is that his current words don’t fit his past actions. He has associated with an unsavory, by most standards, group of people, including Tony Rezko, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, William Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn, Rashid Khaladi, and more. Yet he says, in effect, he really didn’t know any of them very well. I don’t believe him. He’s either being disingenuous, or he’s too oblivious to be president (which would seem to fly in the face of that great intellect he supposedly has).

He says that he’s a big believer that we are our brothers’ keepers. Yet his half-brother George, whom he has met, lives in a hut in Africa on $12 per year. His paternal aunt is currently living in the slums in Boston (it took a UK newspaper to find that out, again showing what a poor job our press corps have done), and says she can’t really talk about him (Obama) until after November 4th. Does that kind of thing concern anyone else?

There’s a big blank in everyone’s knowledge of what he did in one important part of his past: his time at Columbia University. It’s as though that time didn’t exist - no one knows what he did during those four years.

He also has, in the past, supported socialism through the redistribution of wealth. He now says that that really isn’t what he’s going to do, but again, I don’t believe him. His work with Bill Ayers in Chicago, particularly his work with the Annenberg Challenge, seems to have been pointed, at least in part, to building curricula to teach teachers how to indoctrinate children in how to become radicals. I don’t think this is appropriate for children. I would rather have the schools teach them how to think, and then present them with both sides and let them talk it out. Obama does not seem to support that kind of free exchange of ideas.

Obama is running on a feel-good platform of “change.” Yet his ideas pretty much mirror those of Franklin Roosevelt. Take Obama’s desire for a “new Bill of Rights,” for example. That was proposed by Roosevelt back in 1944. Liberals always accuse conservatives of somehow wanting to take us back in time. When you peel away the onion of what Obama is saying, it leads right back to the New Deal and the Great Society. I’m not for that.

The bottom line, for me, is that he lacks experience and has had a somewhat radical past. I don’t feel it makes sense to hand the most powerful job in the world over to someone who not only lacks experience but also is largely an unknown.

At the same time, look at what his supporters say about him. Charismatic. A great orator. Gives them hope. OK, that’s a bunch of great feelings, but where is the substance to back them up? If I tell you what you want to hear, you’ll feel good - for a while. But then what happens when the words turn out to be just that: words? To whom will you complain then?

If you’d like an interesting intellectual exercise, then take a look at the major cities that are most out of control in the US. Those that have the highest crime rates, the highest poverty rates, the lowest high school graduation rates, the worst schools; and then ask yourselves how long it’s been since they’ve had a Republican mayor.

My point is that rhetoric, by itself, is meaningless. Take a look at the results. Are the candidates you are supporting proposing solutions, or short-term, feel-good actions that put band-aids on the problems? If you are intellectually honest, the very least you can do is demand of your legislators that they show results. If they don’t, then you should seriously consider evaluating, on an intellectual rather than emotional basis, what it’s going to take to get those problems solved, and who is proposing those solutions, regardless of their party.

As long as you let politicians keep getting elected because they make you feel good, rather than because they prove they can solve problems, the politicians are going to continue to do make you feel good. I believe, for a lot of people who look to feelings rather than realities, it’s time to grow up.

After watching the third presidential debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama I can’t get the simple question posed in the title off of my mind. Does the American middle class really believe in, and desire a Federal Government imposed redistribution of wealth? Of course, the Government has been doing this at varying levels for years through welfare programs, but what Senator Obama is proposing now is much more direct and obvious. He is promising to increase taxes on the wealthy (defined as those making over $250,000 a year) while lowering taxes on the middle class. He is applying wealth envy as an excuse to unfairly tax those who have proven themselves successful in our society, based on the assumption that many Americans, fueled by greed, selfishness and jealousy want to take what is rightfully theirs from those who have more than them.

I read an article a while ago (If I can dig it up I will cite it here) that posed a question basically the opposite of mine. It attempted to answer the following (paraphrasing): “Why do the Republicans and conservative Christians continually elect people into office who go against their best financial interests?” It is a valid question; the majority of the Republican base are hard working middle class people, who would directly benefit from Barack Obama’s proposed tax law changes. If a candidate is basically offering to save us thousands in our taxes every year why aren’t we jumping at the chance to vote for him? The answer is easy; I believe that the Republicans vote more on principle than their financial interests. We fundamentally believe that an imposed redistribution of wealth is wrong, and should be avoided at all costs. We put aside our selfishness and realize that it is immoral to take someone’s hard earned money and give it to someone else, who did nothing to earn it. Of course another principle that most Republicans hold is that a smaller and less imposing Government is optimal, which means that both spending and taxes should be cut.

I often hear the argument that the rich should “pay their fair share,” and that Obama’s plan wouldn’t hurt any of the rich because “they can afford it.” First of all, the rich already pay more than their “fair share.” The United States tax system is progressive, meaning that the tax rate increases with income. Additionally, secondary taxes, such as the death tax are basically only applied to the wealthy, because that incredibly high rate is only applied to wealth beyond the first $2 Million. We have all seen or heard the figures, where the top 5% of income earners pay some much larger percentage of taxes into the system. I will not repeat them, as to not sound like a talking point spewing robot, but it bears mentioning just to show that there is no question that the rich already pay their fair share. But what about that other point? The one regarding their ability to afford increases in taxes? I simply don’t think that is a valid question. If Target began requesting a copy of my W-2, and progressively adjusted prices higher for all of the junk merchandise that I buy there based on my income, the consumer reporter from the local news would have the story on air that night. There would be protests and boycotts. With a concrete example like that it is easy for everyone to see the unfairness of the system, but that is exactly how our tax code is designed, and Barack wants to push it even further in that direction. Based on Democrat lectures I have heard on the subject of taxes they make it seem like a large majority of rich people are chomping at the bit to pay additional taxes. The way Barack spoke of Warren Buffet I assume that he already has next year’s inflated tax checks written, and is gleefully having his assistant drive them to the post office as I type this. If I were a congressman I would put forward a bill at my very first session that would require the IRS to create a donation system. That way all of those rich Democrats would be able to easily pay whatever additional amount they want to the Government each year. I would even make that donation eligible as a deduction on the next year’s taxes!

I am not going to say how much money my wife and I make per year, though we do pretty well. Still, we are nowhere near that magical $250K mark set by Barack Obama. That means that if he is elected, and if he actually pushes for his proposed tax changes, and if congress actually buys off on those changes I would directly financially benefit from his presidency. In fact, almost everyone I know would benefit, yet the majority of them are not voting for Obama. We value virtue over personal gain at the detriment of another; even that other is a member of the “evil rich.” I feel that if John McCain would stand up, and say that he believes that the American people have enough principle to disagree with socialistic, wealth redistribution propositions he would gain traction with some of those still “undecided.” I believe that a majority of the middle class is better than what Barack Obama has assumed, though we won’t know for sure for three weeks.