One comment I often hear, and even make myself, is that - “I wish our politicians would use a little common sense”. That’s not to say that they don’t… part of the time at least. I realize that politicians have to wheel and deal with a lot of folks that they probably don’t agree with, and who may be anything from a friend to an acquaintance to someone they actively hate. This of course can make life difficult when ‘ya have to smile and shake hands with some ignorant fool you just reached a compromise with, even if you would prefer to visit great bodily harm on his slimy carcass. It’s all part of the job and there’s not much you can do about it, irregardless of whether you happen to be the Mayor of a town to small to have a horse, President of the United States, or even the “Galactic Overlord”. Local politics can get downright bloody at times, particularly in the larger jurisdictions, but those of us in the smaller communities are “reasonably satisfied” with the job our elected officials are doing, most of the time. Generally they’re people we know, and usually we can talk to ‘em, explaining our problems and viewpoints, and they also know the local voters aren’t going to buy a scam. If the Grangeville City Council makes a bum call, they’ve only got three thousand people mad at them. If the county commissioners do it, they’ve got fourteen thousand irate people snapping and snarling at their heels. But if the US Congress makes a major mistake, three-hundred-million people out for blood isn’t a pretty sight!
But we still maintain that “Common Sense” is sorely lacking in American politics, which I usually agree with. Common sense is defined as what people “in common” would agree on as prudent and sound, without reliance on an in depth study or prolonged research. Thus "common sense" equates to the knowledge and experience the person using the term believes that they do or should have. And there’s the rub. We don’t all have exactly the same knowledge and experience, therefore we have different viewpoints. As an example, most Democrats apparently think the bailout and stimulus plans makes perfectly good sense, while most Republicans think its complete insanity. As I’ve often stated in the past, my knowledge of economics is severely limited. But even I know that you can’t long survive if you continue to spend money you don’t have and aren’t going to get!
Bailout and stimulus seem to be the hot button subjects at present, and a good reason why common sense is so necessary in our government. The present plan is to spend another eight hundred billion bailout dollars or so over and above the Bush era bailout, and I’ve yet seen anything said about how we’re supposed to pay for all this. The eight-hundred billion dollar Bush bailout essentially went to the big banks to keep them solvent, wherein the banks promptly split the take between their major stockholders and executives (none of whom are exactly poor by any measure). The “little guy” investor was left holding the bag, and waving good-by to his hopes for a comfortable retirement. The “Big Three” automakers got a few bucks as well, to keep them in business, but I notice they’re still loosing money hand over fist! Congress is happily investigating all the “wastage” of investors’ money, which strikes me as a case of the pot calling the kettle black! Now we’re going to come up with yet another bail-out, and stimulate the economy to the tune of another eight hundred plus billion dollars. Five-hundred or thousand dollar “free money” checks from the government is a nice chunk of change for most of us, but hardly enough to “stimulate” anything. For most Americans, that isn’t even enough to pay the months rent, or cover a car payment! I suspect the grocery stores will do pretty good… for the month… but what happens next month? The states are supposed to get a few bales of money to sink into an assortment of infrastructure projects that have been deferred for years. All well and fine I suppose, there are a lot of roads and bridges that need repair, schools that could use a facelift, and hospitals that need an up-grade. But how much of this needed work is going to be pork-barrel projects designed to enrich the friends and supporters of prominent politicians? Another thought comes to mind as well, why sink a lot of money into fixing roads and bridges when nobody is going to be able to afford to drive on them?
President Obama plans to cut taxes for roughly 95% of the American people, which leaves the remaining 5% to pay the bills. That’s a lot of government income that we won’t see! At the same time we’re going to spend another two trillion (approximately) dollars in covering bad debits and kick-starting the economy? Well, I don’t work for the Treasury Department or the White House, but I do know enough about home finances that when my income is dropping I’m not about to run out and buy a new car along with remodeling the house! Certainly there are a lot of things I’d like to accomplish, yesterday if not sooner, but if I can’t afford them right now, they’re going to have to wait until I can. Do it all on credit? Yeah, right! Far to many people have found to their sorrow that credit card bills have to be paid as well, and it would have been a lot cheaper in the long run to delay that big purchase, waiting until they had cash in hand. Keeping in mind that government cannot create wealth (it can only spend what it can extort from the citizens) the proposed tax cuts and skyrocketing unemployment are going to severely depress the government’s revenues (income). Bailouts and stimulus programs will do nothing more than increase an already staggering annual budget.
President Obama says we have to act boldly to solve the financial crisis. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner added that we have to try things that have never been tried before. The Obama team wants to boldly take our economy where no economy has gone before. Humm… somewhat like “Star Trek”, only right now we apparently aren’t going to have the assistance of the Vulcans to save the day. Obama’s economics also begins with a violation of the Prime Directive of a free-market economy, you can’t stabilize the economy by increasing the deficit! We’re going to “bring the full force of the United States government to bear to strengthen our financial system” according to Geithner, but he didn’t say how, when or why. That’s not so much a plan as a wild idea! Besides, “the full force of the United States government” hasn’t been very successful at anything since we fought World War Two! This approach is based on the idea that doing something quickly is more important than doing it right. And if you don’t know what you’re going to do, make an announcement that is designed to placate people with vague promises of “change”.
Our republic has been threatened by socialism (with a striking lack of success) for many decades, but now it looks like Obama-Pelosi-Geithner Axis just might make it happen. The Democrats seem to think that that throwing government money at a problem will immediately solve it and the grandkids will be happy to foot the bill. Congressional Republicans on the other hand are using a bit more common sense I’d say, wherein they seem to realize that bankrupting the nation isn’t going to solve anything.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Legacy of Gun Control
On April 19th, 1775, aproximately seven hundred British soldiers marched on Concord Massachutes with orders to seize and destroy the military stores held there by the colonial militia. The had the misfortune to tangle with a militia company at Lexington Green, where the “Shot heard ‘round the World” triggered the American Revolution. Shortly thereafter, a meeting engagement with three more companies of militia near Concord convinced the British to withdraw to Boston, leaving the Redcoats with a grudging respect for the marksmanship of the “armed rabble” they had anticipated easily dispersing, and leaving Americans a lasting legacy of gun control efforts.
The Governor General of Massachusetts and Army Commander Gen. Sir Thomas Gage began preporations to defend his base of Boston, and was rightfully concerned about the possibility of having large numbers of armed rebels in his rear areas. He decided to disarm Boston’s 16,000 civilian residents in America’s first “gun control act”, including the many loyalist citizens not involved with revolution nor guilty of any transgression, in complete disregard of their rights as Englishmen. With typical British prefidity, Gage promised the return of those confiscated weapons when the emergency was concluded, a promise that was never kept. The Selectmen of Boston, believing this was best for their citizens, arranged the surrender of guns to the civil authority at Faneuil Hall, where they were soon seized by troops of the Royal Army. In five days the inhabitants had surrendered “1778 firearms, 634 pistols, 273 bayonets and 38 blunderbusses”. I can only assume that the loyalists of Boston happily turned in their weapons, abiding by the “lawful” order of the British governor. There are no records of course, about what the Rebels had to say about those orders, or of how many rebel guns were turned in rather than hidden away for future use.
Nearly a hundred years earlier, in 1689, the then new King of England, William of Orange, enacted a series of guarenteed rights for his subjects, one of which was the right to bear arms. (Irishmen, Scotsmen, and English Catholics of course were famously excluded.) This right extended to all English subjects in the American Colonies, where General Gage’s ill advised Boston gun ban became the reason for the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, denying government any authority to ban the citizen’s ownership of weapons.
British disarmament was a "creeping" program, much as we see hapening in the US today. In 1870 Britain, licensing was decreed for anyone who wanted to carry a gun outside their home. Further restrictions came with the 1903 Pistols Act, denying handgun ownership to anyone who was "drunken or insane". After soldiers returned from the trenches in 1918, the government became concerned about the number of souvenir weapons they had brought home with them. Further fueled by fears of socialist and anarchist movements along with the 1917 Russian revolution, the resulting 1920 Firearms Act introduced a registration system that allowed local police to deny a license to anyone they deemed "unfitted to be trusted with a firearm". Restrictions were tightened with the 1937 Firearms Act, which banned most fully automatic weapons. The 1967 Criminal Justice Act required licensing of shotguns, while the 1968 Firearms Act consolidated existing gun laws. The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 banned semi-automatic and pump-action rifles, and short shotguns with magazines. Registration was also enacted for shotguns, which were required to be kept in secure storage. The government drew up legislation banning handguns larger that .22 caliber, and later introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which outlawed .22s as well. More recently, in response to a series of high-profile shootings, the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 was introduced, which made it illegal to manufacture, import or sell realistic imitation guns. With the most restrictive gun laws in Europe, England still has a higher per capita crime rate that does the United States.
Disarming the British public in the wake of a mass murder of children by a psychopath who had slipped through the cracks of the criminal justice system has done nothing to make Britain safer, but, this British system of disarmament is the model that the head of the National Education Association has called for in America. In some ways, Draconian gun laws are worse when they are enacted in countries that had once been bastions of firearms freedom. The carry of concealed weapons was common among South Africans at the time of apartheid, where the practice extended to Black and Coloured citizens as well as White. Then came the communist-connected African National Congress. From the beginning, the ANC made it clear that they had a prohibitionist agenda insofar as gun owners' rights. This at a time when violent crime in South Africa, including car-jackings and home invasions, is skyrocketing. Gun writer Jeff Cooper's wife Janelle once said, "Saying that we should ban guns because crime is rising is like saying we should ban boats because the floodwaters are rising."
In the end, we need to remember why it's so important to fight for the human right of self-defense, and for the civil rights of law-abiding gun owners in America. If nothing else, we have no place to flee to if we lose our rights here. We have the power to build weapons to defend ourselves with, but sadly, there are plenty of those who would take that basic right away from us. No one, including the Brady Campaign, seriously believes that Barack Obama was elected president because of his support for gun control. But the Brady Bunch pretends that they supplied Obama's victory in November, and have since handed him a long list of gun bans and assorted restrictions that they expect him to deliver in gratitude, and they're very serious. The "non-aligned" anti-gun folks are jumping on the band wagon as well.
In the fight over firearms civil rights, the best word-smiths seem to be among the opposition. Have you noticed how the popular term today is "gun violence"? If a soldier shoots an enemy of our nation in war, it’s "gun violence." When the police shoot an armed criminal in the line of duty, it's "gun violence." When a mother shoots an intruder to protect her child, it's "gun violence." But remember that there are times when violence is required to protect the innocent from lawlessness, which is why the cops have guns in the first place, and why so many law abiding private citizens have them as well. The next time someone starts jabbering about “gun violence”, explain to them that the problem isn't "gun violence”, but rather "It's gun crime, stupid!"
The Governor General of Massachusetts and Army Commander Gen. Sir Thomas Gage began preporations to defend his base of Boston, and was rightfully concerned about the possibility of having large numbers of armed rebels in his rear areas. He decided to disarm Boston’s 16,000 civilian residents in America’s first “gun control act”, including the many loyalist citizens not involved with revolution nor guilty of any transgression, in complete disregard of their rights as Englishmen. With typical British prefidity, Gage promised the return of those confiscated weapons when the emergency was concluded, a promise that was never kept. The Selectmen of Boston, believing this was best for their citizens, arranged the surrender of guns to the civil authority at Faneuil Hall, where they were soon seized by troops of the Royal Army. In five days the inhabitants had surrendered “1778 firearms, 634 pistols, 273 bayonets and 38 blunderbusses”. I can only assume that the loyalists of Boston happily turned in their weapons, abiding by the “lawful” order of the British governor. There are no records of course, about what the Rebels had to say about those orders, or of how many rebel guns were turned in rather than hidden away for future use.
Nearly a hundred years earlier, in 1689, the then new King of England, William of Orange, enacted a series of guarenteed rights for his subjects, one of which was the right to bear arms. (Irishmen, Scotsmen, and English Catholics of course were famously excluded.) This right extended to all English subjects in the American Colonies, where General Gage’s ill advised Boston gun ban became the reason for the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, denying government any authority to ban the citizen’s ownership of weapons.
British disarmament was a "creeping" program, much as we see hapening in the US today. In 1870 Britain, licensing was decreed for anyone who wanted to carry a gun outside their home. Further restrictions came with the 1903 Pistols Act, denying handgun ownership to anyone who was "drunken or insane". After soldiers returned from the trenches in 1918, the government became concerned about the number of souvenir weapons they had brought home with them. Further fueled by fears of socialist and anarchist movements along with the 1917 Russian revolution, the resulting 1920 Firearms Act introduced a registration system that allowed local police to deny a license to anyone they deemed "unfitted to be trusted with a firearm". Restrictions were tightened with the 1937 Firearms Act, which banned most fully automatic weapons. The 1967 Criminal Justice Act required licensing of shotguns, while the 1968 Firearms Act consolidated existing gun laws. The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 banned semi-automatic and pump-action rifles, and short shotguns with magazines. Registration was also enacted for shotguns, which were required to be kept in secure storage. The government drew up legislation banning handguns larger that .22 caliber, and later introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which outlawed .22s as well. More recently, in response to a series of high-profile shootings, the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 was introduced, which made it illegal to manufacture, import or sell realistic imitation guns. With the most restrictive gun laws in Europe, England still has a higher per capita crime rate that does the United States.
Disarming the British public in the wake of a mass murder of children by a psychopath who had slipped through the cracks of the criminal justice system has done nothing to make Britain safer, but, this British system of disarmament is the model that the head of the National Education Association has called for in America. In some ways, Draconian gun laws are worse when they are enacted in countries that had once been bastions of firearms freedom. The carry of concealed weapons was common among South Africans at the time of apartheid, where the practice extended to Black and Coloured citizens as well as White. Then came the communist-connected African National Congress. From the beginning, the ANC made it clear that they had a prohibitionist agenda insofar as gun owners' rights. This at a time when violent crime in South Africa, including car-jackings and home invasions, is skyrocketing. Gun writer Jeff Cooper's wife Janelle once said, "Saying that we should ban guns because crime is rising is like saying we should ban boats because the floodwaters are rising."
In the end, we need to remember why it's so important to fight for the human right of self-defense, and for the civil rights of law-abiding gun owners in America. If nothing else, we have no place to flee to if we lose our rights here. We have the power to build weapons to defend ourselves with, but sadly, there are plenty of those who would take that basic right away from us. No one, including the Brady Campaign, seriously believes that Barack Obama was elected president because of his support for gun control. But the Brady Bunch pretends that they supplied Obama's victory in November, and have since handed him a long list of gun bans and assorted restrictions that they expect him to deliver in gratitude, and they're very serious. The "non-aligned" anti-gun folks are jumping on the band wagon as well.
In the fight over firearms civil rights, the best word-smiths seem to be among the opposition. Have you noticed how the popular term today is "gun violence"? If a soldier shoots an enemy of our nation in war, it’s "gun violence." When the police shoot an armed criminal in the line of duty, it's "gun violence." When a mother shoots an intruder to protect her child, it's "gun violence." But remember that there are times when violence is required to protect the innocent from lawlessness, which is why the cops have guns in the first place, and why so many law abiding private citizens have them as well. The next time someone starts jabbering about “gun violence”, explain to them that the problem isn't "gun violence”, but rather "It's gun crime, stupid!"
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Gloom and Doom?
Even when considering the subject matter of my last few columns, I was shocked to hear that a few acquaintances actually consider me to be a doomsayer and sometimes rumor monger! Moi!? Gloom and doom!? Purveyor of rumors!? Heaven forbid!! Why, I’m the friendliest, happy-go-luckiest, easy going guy you’d ever want to meet! Well, my wife does think I’m a bit grumpy and grouchy, somewhat cantankerous, totally pessimistic, and I imagine a bit paranoid as well (particularly when I’m thinking about Congress, the IRS, the UN, and al-Qaeda). It’s to be expected I guess, considering that during most of my working life I’ve probably seen nearly all the bad things that can happen to people, and few of the good ones. After all, people usually call the Fire Department when they’ve got a disaster in the making, not when they win the lottery. Besides, I write about national and international politics for the most part, and that means gloom and doom are pretty much the order of the day.
However, in the interest of keeping the peace among my acquaintances, I’ll pass on discussing our politicians and the mess they’ve gotten us into (only for the week you understand), and talk a bit about a few non-political threats instead. So, with a smile on my face I’ll ask, how could the world end? No, I’m not about to go running around in a hair shirt, ringing a bell, and wearing a sandwich board sign claiming that “the end is near”! The end might well be near for all I know, but somehow I rather doubt it.
Seriously though, what sort of disasters might befall our little blue marble floating around in space? And how might that impact the human race? I can think of a few ways the applecart might get upset… But before I start speaking about real possibilities, there are two currently popular “threats” that are not going to destroy the Earth and all its inhabitants. Those two are global warming and global cooling. Global warming could be a bad thing for people who live near the coast or on the desert, but we really need to remember that our planet has been much warmer throughout most of history, and it seems that life is still here (although I sometimes wonder about “intelligent life”). At the other extreme, a new ice age would probably curtail most human habitation of the northern latitudes, but the tropics would be pretty much the same as we see today. However, I expect there'd be a lot more vacation property for sale in Florida as the sea level drops. Right now we're in the later half of an interglacial period, so it's a reasonably safe bet that the glaciers will again be on the move, probably within the next 10,000 years or so. No matter what the climate does, and despite Al Gore, we can expect to see any number of species extinctions, as always happens during climatic shifts. A species become extinct when for one reason or another they are no longer able to survive changing conditions, and typically that happens within 10 million years of its first appearance. It’s also estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
On to more serious threats that really could cause the end of life on Earth…
The Earth is struck by asteroids and comets all the time. On January 3rd of this year a large meteor exploded in the air near Tok Alaska, severely rattling the local citizenry. A hundred years ago what was believed to be a small comet exploded in the air over Tunguska Siberia with the effects of a nearly 15 megaton blast. Fortunately these incidents occurred in remote areas, and there were no known human casualties. But scientists keep finding evidence of medium-sized impacts that caused regional devastation, one near New York around 300 B.C., another in eastern Canada about 11,000 B.C., and the famous Meteor Crater impact in Arizona around 50,000 years ago. Even larger asteroids have been credited with mass extinctions in Earths biological history. The end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is one, and the more devastating Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago in which some 80 percent of animal species vanished. It would take an asteroid the size of a small planet to really snuff out life on Earth, but nobody has noticed one of those heading our way… yet.
An alternate theory for the flat featureless Martian northern hemisphere is that huge lava flows simply erased any previous features. Similarly, there's some evidence that the dinosaurs on Earth were killed by enormous volcanic eruptions in what now is India, instead of by an asteroid, or maybe in addition to. Moderate volcanic eruptions stir up huge amounts of soot, ash, and dust, blocking sunlight and that does have climatic effects. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines measurably cooled the planet in 1991-92, as did Indonesia's Krakatoa eruption in 1883. Even worse was the Mt. Tambora eruption on Java in 1815, which cooled the Earth so much that Europeans called 1816 "the year without a summer". The Mount Toba super volcano in Sumatra erupted 75,000 years ago and cooled things down enough that most of Earth’s human population died, leaving just a few survivors to repopulate the world. Then we have the Yellowstone supervolcano which will probably wipe out almost everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians, again. Ahh… and it’s already overdue.
But even supervolcanos couldn’t end life on Earth. To do that we’d need something similar to the eruptions that created India's Deccan Traps, or the Siberian Traps in Russia. In both cases huge fissures opened up in the ground and oozed lava that spread hundreds of miles in all directions. They released enormous amounts of gases, smoke, and soot into the atmosphere, and those eruptions continued for tens of thousands of years. In Siberia, 3 million square miles were covered by layer after layer of lava. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that an eruption event two or three times the magnitude of the Siberian one could end life on Earth.
Still, while life seems to be quite hard to eradicate, the Earth will certainly come to an end in about 5 or so billion years when it’s engulfed by our expanding sun. It’s a natural event, as stars expand into red giants near the end of their lifespan, leaving their planets little more that burnt-out cinders drifting in the void. Some calculations indicate we've only got a billion or so years left on this planet, which is rather gloomy in itself, since life in some form or other has been around the third rock from our sun for nearly 3.7 billion years.
On the more cheerful side, scientists of an advanced future civilization could simply move Earth to a safer orbit. If we haven’t already been swallowed by a wandering black hole.
However, in the interest of keeping the peace among my acquaintances, I’ll pass on discussing our politicians and the mess they’ve gotten us into (only for the week you understand), and talk a bit about a few non-political threats instead. So, with a smile on my face I’ll ask, how could the world end? No, I’m not about to go running around in a hair shirt, ringing a bell, and wearing a sandwich board sign claiming that “the end is near”! The end might well be near for all I know, but somehow I rather doubt it.
Seriously though, what sort of disasters might befall our little blue marble floating around in space? And how might that impact the human race? I can think of a few ways the applecart might get upset… But before I start speaking about real possibilities, there are two currently popular “threats” that are not going to destroy the Earth and all its inhabitants. Those two are global warming and global cooling. Global warming could be a bad thing for people who live near the coast or on the desert, but we really need to remember that our planet has been much warmer throughout most of history, and it seems that life is still here (although I sometimes wonder about “intelligent life”). At the other extreme, a new ice age would probably curtail most human habitation of the northern latitudes, but the tropics would be pretty much the same as we see today. However, I expect there'd be a lot more vacation property for sale in Florida as the sea level drops. Right now we're in the later half of an interglacial period, so it's a reasonably safe bet that the glaciers will again be on the move, probably within the next 10,000 years or so. No matter what the climate does, and despite Al Gore, we can expect to see any number of species extinctions, as always happens during climatic shifts. A species become extinct when for one reason or another they are no longer able to survive changing conditions, and typically that happens within 10 million years of its first appearance. It’s also estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
On to more serious threats that really could cause the end of life on Earth…
The Earth is struck by asteroids and comets all the time. On January 3rd of this year a large meteor exploded in the air near Tok Alaska, severely rattling the local citizenry. A hundred years ago what was believed to be a small comet exploded in the air over Tunguska Siberia with the effects of a nearly 15 megaton blast. Fortunately these incidents occurred in remote areas, and there were no known human casualties. But scientists keep finding evidence of medium-sized impacts that caused regional devastation, one near New York around 300 B.C., another in eastern Canada about 11,000 B.C., and the famous Meteor Crater impact in Arizona around 50,000 years ago. Even larger asteroids have been credited with mass extinctions in Earths biological history. The end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is one, and the more devastating Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago in which some 80 percent of animal species vanished. It would take an asteroid the size of a small planet to really snuff out life on Earth, but nobody has noticed one of those heading our way… yet.
An alternate theory for the flat featureless Martian northern hemisphere is that huge lava flows simply erased any previous features. Similarly, there's some evidence that the dinosaurs on Earth were killed by enormous volcanic eruptions in what now is India, instead of by an asteroid, or maybe in addition to. Moderate volcanic eruptions stir up huge amounts of soot, ash, and dust, blocking sunlight and that does have climatic effects. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines measurably cooled the planet in 1991-92, as did Indonesia's Krakatoa eruption in 1883. Even worse was the Mt. Tambora eruption on Java in 1815, which cooled the Earth so much that Europeans called 1816 "the year without a summer". The Mount Toba super volcano in Sumatra erupted 75,000 years ago and cooled things down enough that most of Earth’s human population died, leaving just a few survivors to repopulate the world. Then we have the Yellowstone supervolcano which will probably wipe out almost everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians, again. Ahh… and it’s already overdue.
But even supervolcanos couldn’t end life on Earth. To do that we’d need something similar to the eruptions that created India's Deccan Traps, or the Siberian Traps in Russia. In both cases huge fissures opened up in the ground and oozed lava that spread hundreds of miles in all directions. They released enormous amounts of gases, smoke, and soot into the atmosphere, and those eruptions continued for tens of thousands of years. In Siberia, 3 million square miles were covered by layer after layer of lava. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that an eruption event two or three times the magnitude of the Siberian one could end life on Earth.
Still, while life seems to be quite hard to eradicate, the Earth will certainly come to an end in about 5 or so billion years when it’s engulfed by our expanding sun. It’s a natural event, as stars expand into red giants near the end of their lifespan, leaving their planets little more that burnt-out cinders drifting in the void. Some calculations indicate we've only got a billion or so years left on this planet, which is rather gloomy in itself, since life in some form or other has been around the third rock from our sun for nearly 3.7 billion years.
On the more cheerful side, scientists of an advanced future civilization could simply move Earth to a safer orbit. If we haven’t already been swallowed by a wandering black hole.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Agenda
At approximately 11:56 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 2009 - The oath of office as President of the United States of America was administered by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, The Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr. to Barack Hussein Obama, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, DC. With that oath, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States, our first Black president, and not incidentally the inheritor of what can, in redneck speak, probably be called the biggest bucket of worms in American history.
Mr. Obama might do well to remember that of the two previous presidents he holds in such high esteem and evidently hopes to emulate, history considers Abraham Lincoln to be America’s first dictator, while Franklin D. Roosevelt is considered to be the second. He might also remember that he faces a situation eerily similar to those of Lincoln and FDR, in that if they could solve the problems that faced the nation upon their assuming office, they would be considered among Americas greatest Presidents. But if they had failed, both had a very good chance of being America’s last president. Lincoln is obviously Obama's favorite president, and they have many positions in common: -- They both believe that levying more taxes is the way to economic recovery. -- They both believe the Constitution is a living document that allows them more flexibility and greater presidential powers. -- They both believe in big government. Of the more or less conventional problems facing the new administration, we find the war in Iraq and the worldwide economic downturn leading the pack. To these two I would think we might want to add the ongoing “corruption in government” situation as well. The Obama/Biden regime has announced their political agenda (http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/) for the next few years, which seems to be a composite of many sacred cows, in that it contains a little something for almost everybody. It also leaves me with a number of serious questions. First of course, is just how does the government intend to pay for what appears on the surface to be a multi-trillion dollar social services program? Are we to borrow even more money from China and the Arabic world, or just print a few more train loads of cash? Secondly, do we really want such a vast expansion in the influence government has over our daily lives? Finally, if you think we’re buried in federal bureaucracy now, wait till you see the paperwork snowstorm these programs will generate! We were promised change, and it appears that we’re going to get it, in spades.
Overall, the essential idea is a massive investment of federal funding in America. That certainly is a fine sounding idea that nobody could possibly object to, right? But I will ask, what federal funds? Where are they to come from? I seem to remember that when President Bush suggested cutting taxes, the democrats were quite hysterical about how that would cause the cutting back of so many beloved social programs! Now however, with the republicans being out of power, the democrats are going to cut taxes for 95% of the American population and still invest a trillion dollars? We’re going to computerize America’s medical records? A safe claim I guess, as most of them already are. But if we have such a hard time securing the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs computers now, how are we going to keep the hackers out of our medical records? Apparently we’re going to equip “tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries”, so that America will lead the world in science and technology. Following the scientific boom days of Kennedy/Johnson, the democrats have had a pretty poor track record on supporting science research, and this isn’t going to be cheap either!
The claim is that President Obama has been a strong advocate for sound budget practices and the reduction of wasteful spending in Washington. How do we know? After all, he has no congressional track record to indicate where he stands, and the democratic party has never been known for not wanting to spend bales government money, unless that spending was a republican idea in the first place. They claim he is committed to fiscal transparency and accountability. He wants to ensure that “tax cuts and spending commitments are paid for without burdening our children and grandchildren with excessive debt.” Humm… that’s definitely a change for the democrats! We’re going to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan or so the claims go, while increasing troop strength in Afghanistan, and of course modernizing the Armed Forces… Modernizing the military and winning the War on Terror? Just try getting that past Reid and Pelosi! We’re also going to spend hundreds of billions on small business improvements, make two million American homes energy efficient, build an alternative energy network, and not incidentally reduce global warming. (Right now, the climate change question argued among the scientists is, are we actually warming up, or are we cooling down?) The democratic plan for the next few years sounds all well and fine, or at least it hasn’t totally antagonized the republicans yet. But to this old realist it also sounds somewhat like a utopian pipe dream, and I’m very much afraid that with it, this country is being led down the primrose path to European style socialism!
And we still have that dark cloud hovering over Mr. Obama himself. Foremost in a good many minds is the question of Mr. Obama’s qualification to be our president. Most Americans accept that he is a “natural born” American citizen, and thus is qualified to hold office. Quite a few others however, seriously question his natural born status, and thus the legitimacy of his presidency. Then there are those who quite frankly “don’t know” and are waiting for somebody, preferably the Supreme Court, to make a decision and lay the question to rest. In my case, I’m one of the “don’t know” group and will be rather uneasy with the entire situation until we get a final decision. The left of course blames this mess on radical right “dirty politics” and right leaning conspiracy theorists who would believe anything. In return, the far right points out the left’s clumsy attempt to bring John McCain’s citizenship into question during the campaign, and with that they consider Obama to be at the center of a nefarious plot to take over the nation. And there's the rub. It is of course quite possible that Mr. Obama conspired his way into the world's most powerful office. But we should also remember that doing so would involve a network of people and government agencies spread over three separate nations, working together in complete secrecy, over a long period of time. But then, in today’s world almost anything's possible.
We shall see I guess, but in the meantime I’ll agree with the bumper sticker that says “I’ll keep my freedom, money, and guns… you can keep the change.”
Mr. Obama might do well to remember that of the two previous presidents he holds in such high esteem and evidently hopes to emulate, history considers Abraham Lincoln to be America’s first dictator, while Franklin D. Roosevelt is considered to be the second. He might also remember that he faces a situation eerily similar to those of Lincoln and FDR, in that if they could solve the problems that faced the nation upon their assuming office, they would be considered among Americas greatest Presidents. But if they had failed, both had a very good chance of being America’s last president. Lincoln is obviously Obama's favorite president, and they have many positions in common: -- They both believe that levying more taxes is the way to economic recovery. -- They both believe the Constitution is a living document that allows them more flexibility and greater presidential powers. -- They both believe in big government. Of the more or less conventional problems facing the new administration, we find the war in Iraq and the worldwide economic downturn leading the pack. To these two I would think we might want to add the ongoing “corruption in government” situation as well. The Obama/Biden regime has announced their political agenda (http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/) for the next few years, which seems to be a composite of many sacred cows, in that it contains a little something for almost everybody. It also leaves me with a number of serious questions. First of course, is just how does the government intend to pay for what appears on the surface to be a multi-trillion dollar social services program? Are we to borrow even more money from China and the Arabic world, or just print a few more train loads of cash? Secondly, do we really want such a vast expansion in the influence government has over our daily lives? Finally, if you think we’re buried in federal bureaucracy now, wait till you see the paperwork snowstorm these programs will generate! We were promised change, and it appears that we’re going to get it, in spades.
Overall, the essential idea is a massive investment of federal funding in America. That certainly is a fine sounding idea that nobody could possibly object to, right? But I will ask, what federal funds? Where are they to come from? I seem to remember that when President Bush suggested cutting taxes, the democrats were quite hysterical about how that would cause the cutting back of so many beloved social programs! Now however, with the republicans being out of power, the democrats are going to cut taxes for 95% of the American population and still invest a trillion dollars? We’re going to computerize America’s medical records? A safe claim I guess, as most of them already are. But if we have such a hard time securing the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs computers now, how are we going to keep the hackers out of our medical records? Apparently we’re going to equip “tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries”, so that America will lead the world in science and technology. Following the scientific boom days of Kennedy/Johnson, the democrats have had a pretty poor track record on supporting science research, and this isn’t going to be cheap either!
The claim is that President Obama has been a strong advocate for sound budget practices and the reduction of wasteful spending in Washington. How do we know? After all, he has no congressional track record to indicate where he stands, and the democratic party has never been known for not wanting to spend bales government money, unless that spending was a republican idea in the first place. They claim he is committed to fiscal transparency and accountability. He wants to ensure that “tax cuts and spending commitments are paid for without burdening our children and grandchildren with excessive debt.” Humm… that’s definitely a change for the democrats! We’re going to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan or so the claims go, while increasing troop strength in Afghanistan, and of course modernizing the Armed Forces… Modernizing the military and winning the War on Terror? Just try getting that past Reid and Pelosi! We’re also going to spend hundreds of billions on small business improvements, make two million American homes energy efficient, build an alternative energy network, and not incidentally reduce global warming. (Right now, the climate change question argued among the scientists is, are we actually warming up, or are we cooling down?) The democratic plan for the next few years sounds all well and fine, or at least it hasn’t totally antagonized the republicans yet. But to this old realist it also sounds somewhat like a utopian pipe dream, and I’m very much afraid that with it, this country is being led down the primrose path to European style socialism!
And we still have that dark cloud hovering over Mr. Obama himself. Foremost in a good many minds is the question of Mr. Obama’s qualification to be our president. Most Americans accept that he is a “natural born” American citizen, and thus is qualified to hold office. Quite a few others however, seriously question his natural born status, and thus the legitimacy of his presidency. Then there are those who quite frankly “don’t know” and are waiting for somebody, preferably the Supreme Court, to make a decision and lay the question to rest. In my case, I’m one of the “don’t know” group and will be rather uneasy with the entire situation until we get a final decision. The left of course blames this mess on radical right “dirty politics” and right leaning conspiracy theorists who would believe anything. In return, the far right points out the left’s clumsy attempt to bring John McCain’s citizenship into question during the campaign, and with that they consider Obama to be at the center of a nefarious plot to take over the nation. And there's the rub. It is of course quite possible that Mr. Obama conspired his way into the world's most powerful office. But we should also remember that doing so would involve a network of people and government agencies spread over three separate nations, working together in complete secrecy, over a long period of time. But then, in today’s world almost anything's possible.
We shall see I guess, but in the meantime I’ll agree with the bumper sticker that says “I’ll keep my freedom, money, and guns… you can keep the change.”
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