A Lesson On Human Nature

More fun from my coworkers!

I was talking to a friend of mine's little girl the other day. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she replied,"I want to be President!" Both of her parents are liberal Democrats and were standing there. So then I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give houses to all the homeless people."

"Wow - what a worthy goal." I told her, "You don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50 Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where this homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward a new house."

Since she is only 6, she thought that over for a few seconds. While her Mom glared at me, she looked me straight in the eye and asked,"Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

And I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Her folks still aren't talking to me.

Though humorous, I could easily see this story taking place. After all, when socialist concepts are explained succinctly enough that a six-year old can understand them, they are often revealed for the utter stupidity and tripe which are at their heart. Liberalism and Socialism are only acceptable when they're crouched in fancy terms, big words, which always equate to someone getting someone else's money.

But you can't call that robbery--after all, it's "Legal."

Foreclosing Foreclosures

There must be something wrong with me.

I just don't understand something that is apparently a vital aspect of my country.

It boggles my mind; confounds and confuses me.

I don't know why my country men would be willing to do this, yet more and more it seems like I'm in a minority of those people who don't.

What am I talking about? What has me so confused?

Why people take handouts from the government.

What's worse, is why do our elected representatives continue to provide handouts to the people? Though, ultimately I know the reason for that: they want to buy themselves a vote.

What brought this on today was an AP story that I found on MSNBC talking about the Senate's upcoming vote on an anti-foreclosure plan.

Disgusting if you ask me.

No one forced these people to take these exotic mortgages, and as such they should now suffer the consequences of their bad decisions.

I'm not getting bailed out of my mortgage--nor do I want to.

Especially not by the government. I don't want my tax dollars spent bailing people out of their own bad decisions. That's not the purpose of the Federal government. Heck, it's not even the purpose of state or local governments.

That's the purpose of charitable organizations.

Which, despite the Democrat's intentions, is NOT the point of the Federal Government.

At least not the federal government whose Constitution I had studied.

The Housing Balloon

The Senate OK'd a bill that would 'help' thousands of home-owners who made the brilliant decision to use Adjustable-Rate and other exotic mortgages. Why do they need this so-called help? Because these exotic mortgages have a bomb built into them. They start their life out as low-interest loans, and after a few years of getting payments applied to them, their interest rate explodes, leading to higher payments. Additionally, the House has already passed a version of the bill, which means that now both sides of Congress will need to hash out the differences and re-vote before sending it onto the President.

Let me be up front with everyone: I do not like this bill.

I firmly believe it is both unconstitutional and goes against the fundamental concepts of the free-market upon which our society is built.

How can I say this? Is this some evil grinch in me that wants to see people lose their homes? Of course not. I feel bad for them. A little at least.

Yet, these people willingly chose to enter into those loans. They KNEW that the interest rate was going to blow up on them, yet they went into the loan anyways. On the other side of things, the various financial organizations which made those loans also knew that once those rates increased, then the borrowers would be unable to make the loan payments.

How exactly am I supposed to feel bad about people who make informed decisions, even if those informed decisions are not in their long-term best behavior?

Why exactly should our government be trying to help out either people or business who made decisions on their own, about their own finances, and are now effectively in that proverbial lake?

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer opined this about this particular bill:

be a source of salvation for those families who were tricked into unaffordable loans

Do what? How exactly were these people tricked? I don't know what type of loan they signed, but my mortgage has the interest rate, including the fact that it does not change, clearly written on the contract I signed. There is no way that these families were tricked into purchasing such a loan--to imply that is at best to be trying to hoodwink the public into accepting another government handout to cover people's own stupidity. And if they WERE tricked into an ARM, by the mortgage lender not disclosing the fact that it was an ARM, then there are already statutes on the books to deal with fraudulent lending practices.

No. This is merely a bailout of people too stupid for their own good, companies too greedy for their own good, and the Federal Reserver which is responsible for it all, by forcing us to go to a wishes-backed currency rather than the gold standard.

America Needs a Farm Bill

America needs a farm bill, our constituents need a farm bill.

--Norm Coleman Senator Minnesota (R)

... That's odd. I didn't realize that our country needed the government to subsidize various and sundry industries.

What's odder, is that I still can't find the place in the U.S. Constitution which allows Congress to use my tax dollars to subsidize industries.

What this is, is just another attempt for pork. For Congress to vote their pet ideologies, people and other odds an ends money. One of the many reasons we have such high taxes (unless you're one of the 'poor' making less than $30K annually) and a massive national debt.

It is just another symptom of the 'vote us money' form of government, where the unwashed masses who live at the government's whims (i.e. those on welfare and government employees) are used and abused by the powered elite, tossed tidbits of the state treasury in an effort to keep them ground and voting for the powerful.

How much longer can this idiocy last?

Sometimes, I wonder if even a President such as Ron Paul could stem the tidal flow of destruction which has been building in our Federal government since it forced the States to give up their rights back in 1866.

There is something to always remember:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

-- Alexander Tyler

Selfishness. Complacency. Apathy. Dependency. I see all those things in our society today. So when comes the bondage?

Need Help? Ask Big Brother!

Anyone that has talked to me about government welfare programs know my opinion about them. They're evil, and should be banned. Immediately. They have no place in our society, nor should they be allowed under the Constitution of our increasingly socialist country.

Or to put it into internet lingo: welfare = teh 3vil!!1!

Now, that that's firmly out of the way, imagine my surprise when I was coming back from lunch, and heard an advertisement on the radio. It talked about how when you need money, you know what the sound of help is - followed by the sounds of someone swiping a credit card through one of those scanners. They then go on about how welfare now has these handy-dandy debit-cards as opposed to the old fashioned stamps, and that you should call their 1-800 number because, hey, you to might qualify to live off of my taxes.

So, we have this evilness of welfare, and not only are they stealing my tax dollars to give to other people, but they're also using those tax dollars to advertise the program, so that they can justify giving more money away to people who did not earn it.

When did our government become this huge entity that felt it was okay to play Robin Hood? And then to waste money by advertising the programs?

Edwards: Taxing you just because he wants to

Presidential hopeful, John "Little John" Edwards - you know, the joke that was on the other John's ballot a few years back - has stated that he wants to raise the taxes on the wealthy (this is according to an AP story).

Now, I don't consider myself wealthy. I make a decent (okay, I make a great) wage, but that's offset by the outflow of money I have going on. A car note, my own stupidity in regards to credit as a youngster, and that massive blob of student loans I still have hanging over my head. Well, just because I don't consider myself wealthy doesn't mean that I'm not considered that for the purposes of tax hikes.

What these morons who always want to raise taxes never seem to want to tell you is that these tax hikes against the wealthy begin somewhere in the area of $35K per year. Basically, if you're not living off the government coffers, you're considered wealthy.

Which I guess I can see since they've taken such great pains to ensure that people no longer own land and must give the first three or four months worth of their salary to the government.

It's this concept that they need to tax us all into bankruptcy-in order to pay for more entitlement programs (yeah, I want MY money going to the lazy whelp who refuses to get a job and just keeps cranking out more an more kids)-that keeps me from ever voting Democrat. I can honestly admit that a lot of what Mr. Bush is doing/has done in office scares and sickens me. After all, I'm a firm believer in small government.

But back to Little John, let's look at what he has to say in this quote:

"It's just the truth," Edwards said during a news conference following his speech to the California Democratic Party convention. "It's the only way to fund the things that need to be done."

That makes my blood boil.

Rather than raise taxes, let's kill some of the pointless government programs out there. We don't need a Federal level Department of Education. We don't need government grants to those too lazy to work. In my household we have a simple rule, if we can't afford it, we don't need it. For the first few years of my marriage, we were very, very tight on funds. Yes, me and the Mrs. both worked full-time jobs, but we still had a lot of bills (again, that stupidity thing with the credit cards) - and those jobs weren't the best thing in the world.

Now, I would have loved to have been able to eat steak or lobsters every night. Or have gone out to dinner three, four times a week. But we didn't. We couldn't afford such things. So what did we do? We ate a lot of Gwatney brand hot-dogs and macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles. Then after I got my next raise and the wifey got a better paying job, what did we do? We moved up to Hamburger Helper. Or more accurately, the generic Wal-Mart brand of Hamburger Helper. Even today, I know that we can't afford to have steak every night, so we still cook a lot with ground beef. Yes, the other stuff going into the meat is a lot more and better, but I'm able to feed my family of four for less than $100 a week. Heck, for less than $80 a week.

I mean, one week we had five nights where we ate a dish based on ground meat. I spent $8 on those 5 pounds of meat - the minimum that I would have spent on a roast or a cut of steak. And that's the point - rather than whining about how I can't fund things at the amount of money I'm making now, I modify my buying habits so that what I buy matches how much I make. Amazing how that works, eh?

Sure, I guess I could whine and complain to the government about how I'm not able to provide steak to my kids every night, and the Leftists out there would say, "Well you know, the government owes you that. Why don't you sit back and let Uncle Sam take care of you."

But you know what, I don't think I could live with myself if I did that.

I know I couldn't look my son in the eye and tell him that he needs to work hard at everything he does. I know I couldn't look my son in the eye and tell him that he needs to be a man and support himself and his family, that HE is responsible for such things.

No new taxes (or better yet, the dismantling of the Income Tax and replacement of it by a National Sales Tax). Smaller government. These are the things that I want to see happen in the government. Unfortunately, neither of the two "big" parties seem to want either of those things. It makes me very interested in the Constitution Party: