Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Obama And The Left Finally Taking Aim At Our Second Amendment Right

Well, thank you very much, all of you second amendment supporters who voted for Obama and the other lefties in the Senate and House of Representatives. They have predictably seized on the recent killing of innocent school children in Connecticut to call for more federal gun control laws and further erosion of your second amendment rights. The liberal news media, of course, is singing in the chorus. In their minds it is always the availability of guns to the law-abiding citizens that is the blame. The Constitution, in their minds, is an old dusty document that has outlived its usefulness. Of course, they use their first amendment right to attack the second amendment, and I believe that when that right gets to problematic--I say "when" ironically, knowing that that time has long since arrived--they will suggest that it is time to curb that as well. 

I know that the argument is that, if there were no guns, there would be no gun victims. That is a useless and silly argument: It is impossible to get rid of all guns. It will always be necessary for our military and police forces to have guns. It is also impossible to get rid of all crazy or evil people.  The best thing is to provide deterrents at the schools, and I mean gun-toting deterrents, not just a locked door and a buzzer to let people in. Just as was the case at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the Connecticut elementary school was a gun-free zone.  The shooter in Colorado chose the one theater near his home--not the closest--where "No Concealed Guns Allowed" signs were posted.  He obviously felt more able to carry out his crazy scheme to the fullest if he were confident that there would not be a concealed gun in the possession of a movie patron.  The same thing is evident in the Elementary school shootings. As crazy or evil as this guy was, he was obviously not stupid. He was confident that the children and teachers would not be able to defend themselves.

I have no problem with hiring retired police officers, military or trained and armed security officers to patrol our public and private schools.  My daughter is police officer at a state university. Every college or university I am aware of has their own police department.  But, the security at our schools should not be a federal affair.  Local control is sufficient.  Our federal government has already taken to much power unto itself. Obama and his socialist cronies would love nothing better than to take on just a little bit more--who am I kidding? They would like to take on all they can get.

We on the right can pull out statistics and research till it makes you on the Left's head spin like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist. The most gun-related mass murders have taken place where the gun laws have been the strictest, and overall gun crime is less where concealed-guns are allowed.  You scream and shout till your blue in the face--and most of you on the left do--that we have to do something about guns in the hands of criminals and crazy people, but the fact remains that Connecticut has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

As important as the protection of our innocent children, is our protection of our constitutional right to bare arms.  The left has always argued that guns kill people and that we need to limit their ownership. Strict laws have been the norm in all communist and socialist countries in history. Our founders recognized that all law-abiding citizenry needed the right to bare arms, not to just protect their families and private property from foreign threats, but from domestic threats, including a government out of control. Criminals and crazy people could not care less about what gun laws our liberal-minded legislators or executive order-toting president might do to limit the gun ownership of the law-abiding. They will always get their weapons. The same day that the Connecticut elementary school shootings took place, a cray knife-wielding man cut up more than 20 children at a school in China. 

The point is that there will always have the evil and crazy among us eager to do harm to the innocent unprotected, and they will always find a way to do their evil and crazy deeds. The answer is not to disarm the righteous and sane among us, but to allow those among us, who are willing, to defend ourselves and those who cannot defend themselves from evil. More guns in the hands of good citizens prevent more crimes and atrocities. It happens every day.

By the way, the numbers of these types of mass shootings are down in recent years. The peak was reached in 1929. History is a wonderful thing.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Who Is A Big, Fat Liar? And, Who, Is A Big, Fat Idiot?

We often hear or use the terms "Big Fat Liar" or "Big, Fat Idiot", without really considering that the terms do not really make sense, if the point is to be clear and descriptive. For one, does being big or fat mean that you any more of a liar or an idiot than if you were little or skinny? Come to think of it, I have heard some use the phrase, "You are a little liar!" I do not think, however, that the meaning was the the person was suspected of lying a little bit. So I guess the big and fat descriptions refer to the greatness of the liar's lies or the abundance of the idiot's idiocy.


He may not actually be a 'Big Fat Liar', but Obama is at least a liar of a great magnitude. Most of the deceit, however, comes in the form of not telling the truth to the people he counts on to keep him in office: The voters in the middle of the political landscape, the ones he uses as his pawns, or as Comrade Lenin supposedly called them, "useful idiots". He tells them what they want to hear and then he discards them as he moves towards his goals. His success at this deception has, of course, been helped along by the media, who refuse to do their jobs. Obama got a lot of votes from people who are ignorant about what he has said in the past about his plans for his presidency. In 2008, while running for president the first time, in an interview for the San Fransisco Chronicle--no surprise that he would be truthful to that audience-Obama made some of the following statements about energy policy:

"The problem is can you get the American people to say this is really important and force their representative to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing citizenry. That requires them understanding what it is at stake, and climate change is a great example... When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal...under my plan of cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket...even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I'm capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas...you name it...whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations. That would cost a lot of money...they would pass that money on to the consumers. If you can't persuade the American people that, yes, there is going to be some increases on electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage and changing light bulbs and more efficient appliances, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy that the economy will benefit...I was the first to call for a 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gasses emitted would be charged to the polluter...That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of the market and ratcheted down caps that are being place, imposed every year...It will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge amount of money for all the greenhouse gasses that's being emitted."

Now, if you are concerned about the rising cost of things in this economy and you were unaware of these energy policies--using government regulations to force people to spend more for their energy and to put companies out of business--and you voted for this guy, shame on you for being ignorant and shame on the media for not letting you know what his policies really were and are.

And the there is the farce that is Obamacare. It is hard to wrap your brain around this, because the numbers are continually changing. When this health care legislation was signed into law, it was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $940 billion for the following decade. Now, the Congressional Budget Office, working with actual numbers and not the crap numbers allowed them by the Obamacare proponents, projects the cost over the next ten years to be $1.76 trillion. A bit more than expected, wouldn't you say? In 2009, Obama said, "Now add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years...less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration." A lot of people, including myself, knew it would be much more expensive than Obama and the Democrats claimed it would be--federal government programs are always much more expensive than they are promoted to be--but, many prefer to not think about the expense of things and go for the feel-good product. Too much candy will kill you, have you not heard? Critics called the numbers into question, but the media refused to high-light anything that might derail their boy's chances of a landmark presidential achievement. The news media largely loved FDR during his day and Obama is today's media's "FDR'. I might mention here that I was told by a pre-med student friend of mine that, after attending a university meeting for pre-med students about what to expect with Obamacare, that she and over a hundred fellow students, who had hoped to become physicians, decided that they would never be able to pay off the cost of their education under the coming regulations and dropped out of the pre-med program. I thought it would save us money--note, for the Obama fans, the sarcasm dripping.

Then there is the famous (not) statement that Obama made to ABC's Chuck Todd--it would be famous if the media would bring it up again--that "raising taxes on business in a recession would hurt the economy. You might gather from that statement that Obama really understands how economy works, but it really only shows that he says what he thinks will appeal to the voters at the moment, while quietly holding on to his socialist principles. FDR, though extremely wealthy himself, constantly railed against the "rich" to create in the minds of the target voters an 'us-against-them' mindset to insure their support. Obama has done similarly, especially this time around by demonizing Romney as a rich 'fat cat'.

Though he admitted in 2008 that raising taxes would hurt the economy, Obama also let slip in an interview with Charlie Gibson that he was primarily interested in social justice. In the interview, Gibson reminded him that though Obama said he wanted to go to the capital gains tax rates under Clinton of 28 percent, that Clinton had actually signed legislation lowering the rate to 20 percent and that Bush took it down to 15 percent and that in each instance revenues from this taxes increased, with the government taking in more money. He also pointed out that in the 80s when the taxes increased to 28 percent that revenues went down. Gibson then asked, "Why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?" Obama replied: "well Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for the purpose of fairness. We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year -- $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That's not fair."

I am so glad that Obama and the Democrats have a corner on the fairness market--for the benefit of you Obama fans, I am being sarcastic here. I am not sure they understand what the word "fair" even means. Does it not occur to Obama and his minion, including the slobbering news media, that reduced government revenue and slowing economies for the sake of 'fairness' in the socialist's mind is not being fair to everyone concerned. For the umptieth time, ECONOMIES ARE NOT STATIC, THEY ARE DYNAMIC! raising taxes will always stifle economic growth. When Obama says that asking the wealthiest among us to pay just a little bit more to help pay down the debt, he is playing his supporters like the fools they are.

This brings me to the "Big Fat Idiot" part. Clearly, if you have been paying attention--apparently around 52 percent of have not been, as of late--you understand that Obama and his knowing followers talk out of both sides of their mouths, depending on who might be listening, and knowing that the media will be silent and not bring up any embarrassing questions or mention any important statistics. Deception is rampant in the administration and the news media is uninterested. Anyone know any more about "Fast and Furious" or the "Benghazi Affair"? Let me say here that I totally expect economy to really tank again--it really has not started to recover anywhere outside of right-to-work states where Republican governors and Republican legislatures are in control. We are likely to hit depression lows, if the Obama administration gets its way. Unlike the FDR era, Republicans still have a say as to how much we tax and how much we spend. We have been told that the wealthy are the enemies of the poor and the middle class, no matter that the "wealthy" tend to be the major employers in the world. may of them actually work for their wealth and risk their wealth, when they can afford it, to create jobs for the rest and amount more wealth for themselves and other middle-class investors. Who has a 401K or other retirement program who does not depend on capital gains?

Clearly, we can see who the "Big, Fat (metaphorically speaking) Liar" is, though a really good argument can be made for the news media. Who then is a "Big, Fat Idiot"? Informed or uninformed, a slight majority put the Big Fat Liar in office again, so the answer is, I think, rather obvious. Sorry about the Big, Fat part. I do not mean to be insulting to big or fat people. I know a lot of big and/or fat people who voted for Romney too.