Friday, June 5, 2009

Bridges

A funny thing happened to me this week. I had to attend the funeral of an ex customer with a fellow employee. This employee shall remain anonymous, but she is a HUGE Obama supporter. I'm talking HOPE stickers on her car, pictures of the "Chosen" one in her office and so on.
It's funny, because I would consider her a Kool Aid drinker, because of all the junk she has. It really bothers me too because I know how intelligent she really is.
When picking her up I turned on some music with my IPod, as I didn't want the trip to turn into a huge argument,(like the one I had last year with my boss over politics on a 3 hour drive) over talk radio.
Shockingly (ironic tone totally intended), the discussion did turn to politics, because of my work with the Broomfield 9/12 Project. I was really cautious with my tone, and words. It's hard to come out and say "oh I think both Obama and Bush have driven us right off the cliff, and both have ignored the hell out of the Constitution."; even if that's exactly how I feel.
I was slightly stunned when she came out and said that she thinks all politicians are bad, and they all ought to be thrown out. She went on a tirade about personal responsibility, and how all the baby boomers never taught their kids about money, and now we are paying the price. When I asked her how it felt to own a car company, she threw up a bit of denial "oh come on, Obama didn't really do that" (YES REALLY!!!! I was screaming inside) but for the most part I found we agreed on 90% of what we were discussing.
I mean we really agreed! She was lambasting the liberals and crazy environmentalists, called Tiller a murderer (and yes, she is pro choice) and admitted that we are going bankrupt as a society, both morally and financially.
The only thing she wouldn't do was throw Obama under the bus. Which I think I understand a bit now. When you dedicate so much emotionally to a person it is hard to admit that you were wrong. And she was either wrong, or lied to my face about what she believes, and I know her to be an honest person. I think this is a case of her not being able to "willingly suspend disbelief" as the Secretary of State would say (it was actually tough for me to type that out, I really don't like her). I really worked hard to explain to her that I believe both Obama and Bush are progressives, and that we need to get back to the basics, let the States decide their own laws, own future and get the Feds out of everything. That it was hard for me to turn my back on the fact that I was raised Republican, but that we cannot continue down this path.
At the end of the conversation, we agreed that there was a lot we agreed on, more than we disagreed on. I think she will end up letting go of her emotional attachment, and I hope so. I will be the first to pick up the HOPE sign if someone can convince me that socialism/fascism/statism works. So far in my life I've never seen it happen, but I have seen it destroy good people and kill the human spirit. Some of my customers and friends are being ground down by it right now.
When my friend got out of the car at her house, she said something that I will cherish and something I never expected to hear. "Jason, you have a gift, and you better not waste it. You need to make sure people hear what you have to say, whether that means teaching or something else, use that gift!" This coming from someone who voted opposite every belief I hold true last election.
The bridges are out there, and if either of the political parties quit playing games, and actually got back to values, they'd take this nation by storm. A die-hard conservative man and an Obama voting pro choice woman just proved it!

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Too Much Information

TMI
It used to just be a silly schoolgirl phrase, or a way to tease your friends when they spilled something personally embarrassing. Now it's a political strategy by to Obama administration.
Despite the fact that we have become a 24/7 Media world, even the media can't keep up with what Obama is pushing down the pipe. Just last week, you had the battle over Gitmo, Heath care, and Cap and Trade. and new CAFE standards. Not to mention the credit card protection act, Obama's speech at Notre Dame and talks of the impending GM bankruptcy. This is all in one week. How is the regular Joe out there supposed to follow all of this? I'm going to let you in on a little secret - they want you overwhelmed.
I heard someone make the analogy of the media pipeline being about 6" in diameter and the administration pushing 18 inches of information through it each day. No wonder the White House felt the need to create their own "media" release when the UCONN Lady Huskies came to visit. Every other reporter was busy with the 40 other stories that day.
When Obama said "CHANGE" he wasn't kidding. Debate has gone right out the window. You are going to get nationalized health care, despite the fact that we have no idea what it will look like. Maybe that's why he can't rally his own party to fund his closing of Gitmo. The plan is short on, well to be honest, a plan.
Just wait because the best is yet to come. Cap and Trade is the largest tax hike on all economic "classes" ever. Once again, a plan is sprinting through the House, but there hasn't been a lot of open debate on this. We really haven't even had the debate over whether we need it. Personally, I'm not a big fan of walking through my house feeling like I'm in a eclectically lit hallway from a fight scene in a Jason Bourne movie, but get used to it. (BTW, just for fun I did install some compact fluorescent bulbs in my basement stairwell, now I bounce off the walls when I go downstairs. It really does feel like I'm in a movie.) Compact fluorescents are just the beginning. I had a discussion with a friend who works for a wind turbine manufacturer the other day. Even he admitted that they couldn't survive if it wasn't for government subsidies, they can't compete with coal. Do you ever hear that though? All you hear is that they are "good", not bad like coal and oil.
I find it terribly ironic that the man who campaigned on "transparency" is giving us the equivalent of a laser show. So many thing are happening on a daily basis that no one can follow all of them and remain sane. And the best part about a laser show is that everyone looks at the pretty colors, while you never know what's happening in darkness on the floor below. Of course, having a few media outlets in your back pocket, NBC and the New York Times to be specific, only helps in this charade.
When you lose even the chance at debate, the days of the republic are limited. Of course, there are quite a few people who don't really care and think politics isn't for them. In this case the TMI means anything relating to politics is just a bother. Ignorance is bliss.
At some point the American people are going to wake up to a country that looks nothing like what the Founding Fathers put together. Since I'm an extremist fear monger, I believe we have already crossed that line.
The next time you watch the news, ask yourself what you aren't hearing about, or what's already happened while everyone was looking somewhere else.
Then again, maybe everything is TMI. It's your choice my friend.
Welcome to "Change".

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Bizzaro World Part II

WOW!!!!!
What else can I say? The UAW now has a controlling percentage of Chrysler, plus the ability to select a member of the board of directors.
WOW!!!!
Does this seem odd to anyone else out there? Looking at this from the outside, isn't there a bit of conflict of interest here? So who does the UAW go to when renegotiating their contract??? THEMSELVES???? This is not good, and should scare the crap out of all hard working Americans, union members or not (and since I don't know a lot of government workers, teachers or autoworkers I guess I'm really just speaking to the people who didn't give Obama almost half the money for his campaign).
This is PAYBACK. Good old Chicago style politics and a huge reason that a lot of Americans are turned off by our system. Pay to play, lol sure it is, just legal pay to play.
The Auto companies had a myriad of sins to pay for; arrogance, poor customer service (not making good cars), treating suppliers like crap, and execs making ridiculous amounts of money. The UAW was just as bad, having a jobs program where people got paid over 80% of their salary even when they weren't working, unimaginable retirement plans (almost as good a PERA) and wages that killed the bottom line for Automakers.
SO who pays for those sins???????
We do! Along with anyone like banks and hedge funds who invested money (often for retirement) in Chrysler. See all that Tarp money we dumped into Chrysler back under Bush??? ALL GONE!
What about the last instalment under O?
ALL GONE!
Creditors who held liens on Chrysler were told that they would have to settle for under half their GUARANTEED money. Funny, that means more money problems for the banks - oh what a viscious cycle this is becoming.
The part of this that should FRIGHTEN everyone is that the US Government has just declared null and void legal contracts between a borrower and a lender. This is LOOTING, but on a scale like we've never seen in America before. The people with a legal contract get SCREWED, and the UAW gets ownership. WOW - you to can be part of the American dream.
Coming soon - The Government wants to own you from age 5-22 (plus however long it takes you to pay them back). Anybody remember the "Company Store" scam???

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A few thoughts on (another????) Earth Day

Here we go again...
The more things change, the more they stay the same....

Opps, sorry I was just amazed that it's Green Week and Earth Day once again. Seems like every other week is Green Week nowadays. I'm all for protecting our planet, and I'd be willing to bet that throughout my lifetime (especially during my time in Boy Scouts) I've done more good to this planet than bad. Thing is - I don't need a new religion. Or as Jack Nicholson's character said in As Good As It Gets "Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up around here."
Lately, it seems like we are getting a lot of crazy. I noticed just a week or two ago that the Denver Nuggets were wearing GREEN uniforms to promote awareness of "environmental" causes. Hmmmm how much did it cost in time and energy to make whole new uniforms. How many windmills did it take to give us those monstrosities.
Oh and it isn't just the average sports fan who is bombarded with this PROPAGANDA. My kids watch Nickelodeon "On Demand" when we need a break. I actually caught a mini ad before Dora (if that show isn't propaganda I don't know what is) which personified the earth as a loving character who "gives a home to the human race" and "cares for me and you". The whole point of this ad is to recycle paper. While on the surface it's fine and cute, I'm sorry but the earth is not a person - it's a thing. This ad is just a start. You put this together with what kids are taught at school about "global warming" and you will see parents being turned in for being "eco-enemies". When you start teaching kids that the cuddly wonderful polar bears (oh wait, they really eat PEOPLE?) are dying because the ice is melting you are just indoctrinating them. (I actually had a guy I went to college with mention that "the polar bears are dying, we have to do something")
Heaven forbid we teach kids to listen to their parents, respect authority, and obey moral standards. But we can't do that anymore. So while we worry about our kids being green - a lot of them get to wear ORANGE, because they don't know right from wrong.
The fact is that I'm worse than a holocaust denier because I do not believe in "man made" global warming. "The argument is over," I've heard High Druid Gore say. Funny thing is, he won't debate anyone so I'm not sure how it's over. The argument hasn't even been made yet. We've only been "smart" enough to calculate and track temperature for a little more than a hundred years. so if the world is 3 billion years old, how do we know that the earth hasn't warmed and cooled 100 times over.
Since when does .0002% of the atmosphere trump the sun, which is approximately 100 times larger than this planet. It's almost like taking a balance ball compared to a golf ball. If that balance ball gets hotter or colder, do you really think that the grass stain on one dimple of that ball has a greater effect?
I recommend that everyone out there pick up a book called "State Of Fear" by Michael Crichton. Remember the guy who wrote "Jurassic Park"?? He started out a few years ago to write a book about what would happen when global warming actually destroyed the earth. Amazingly enough, when he took a hard look at the science, he just couldn't stay with his original concept. THE SCIENCE WOULDN'T SUPPORT IT. He was just too intellectually honest to write a book that propagates a lie. Best part is that he was on the side of the environmentalists, right up to his death. the problem he had is that global warming is a political issue, not a scientific one.
I know - I'm a heretic, holocaust denier, worse than Hitler and Nixon combined. Especially because I wrote this on Earth Day. Well you can simply burn me at the stake, because I'm not going to become one of those TRUE BELIEVERS out there.
Just give me back my basketball! You can keep your religion, I've already got my own and it doesn't depend on anything as temporal as Earth or weather.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Bizzaro World

So this is to be my first official blog (thanks Brian for saying this is what I was meant to do) and I have to admit I'm starting to feel like I'm living in Bizzaro world. You know, the messed up alternate universe where Bizzaro (Superman's twisted mirror image) lives.
Yesterday I officially became a protester and I'm not happy about it. I liked the insulated world I was living in. Those of you who know me would probably say that I'm rather outspoken (who me???) and that I have strong opinions (who'da thought???). But I've never been the protester type.
I think what changed me is the two little boys who are sleeping down the hall. When it was just about me, so what if the world was upside down. I've always had my values (not to say that I've always lived up to them) and yes Mr. Schumer, they are traditional values passed down from horrid places like my parents, my church, and the Boy Scouts (another right wing radical group). But until I was responsible for those two beautiful (but trying) little lives I knew I could take care of myself. Now I really do wonder.
I wonder why the economics I learned as a freshman in college don't apply to our government. Rule one in Econ 101; you must have a way to pay for what you borrow. For about the last 4-6 years that rule has gone right out the window. And not just for the government, but for the guy down the street. When did it become socially acceptable to be a deadbeat??? I'm not smart enough to fix the economy, but I'm pretty sure that loading up in TRILLIONS (think about that number for a minute, a person who lives to be exactly 85 years old will only have 2,680,560,000 seconds in their life, so more dollars in the last 3 months than seconds in my life) isn't going to fix it. Maybe I'm just oldfashioned or maybe they are teaching NEW Econ 101 and I missed it.
I wonder why it seems like the stuff we tried to get away with watching as teenagers (remember when you first got cable and you could stay up til 2 in the morning and turn on HBO and maybe catch a steamy sex scene) is now a commercial for a body wash. I have to admit, I AM the MTV generation. My friends thought I was crazy because of my love for videos, now I turn on ten minutes of MTV and I can see everything and anything I ever lusted over as a teenager. There is no shame in this recent explosion of exploitation. What happened to watching a video cause it's MUSIC television, not real life soap opera whorehouses broadcast 24 7 on that channel. My uncle was a sailor and I doubt he ever saw that kind of show while on shore leave - at least not constantly.
I wonder why people think life is so cheap. I've seen the environazis protest over the life of an owl, but call anyone who is Pro Life an extremist. Hmmmm, I know it's not right to ask this, but how cheap is innocent human life today. And I seriously don't want to hear the what if rape, incest, life of the mother so on and so on arguments. Not that those don't have merit, but the percentage is minuscule in comparison to everyday abortion. Those are issue we could compromise on! America is one of the only countries in the world where you can stand on the corner and scream "ABORTION ON DEMAND, 24 7" and only about half the people will even look at you. Most European countries have tighter regulation on abortion, so please don't tell me that there isn't room for some regulation here. And I'm sorry, but being any part of an abortion will leave a hole right through your soul. They don't tell anyone about that part.
Lastly, I wonder about "global warming". The same people who put a giant ICE planet on the cover of TIME magazine in the late 70's are now saying the earth is going to burn up????? Or wait, was that last year, before we had one of the coldest winters on record in the Northeast, or where it's supposed to snow 20" here in Denver tomorrow. Sorry, I was raised to question anything that seems like a line of rats following the music (does that make Al Gore the Pied Piper, jeeez what a horrid song that must be). Somehow this new religion doesn't appeal to me. And this new enviromentalism is a religion, of that there is little to argue. Of course this is from the same people who brought you evolution only in the schools, a THEORY that has one hell of a lot of holes in it. Why not aliens, teach??? It makes as much sense.
I guess I just never thought I'd live to see Bizzaro world. Guess I better go find some blue kryptonite, and pray every night and day for those two boys down the hall. I'll pray that by the time they grow up, Bizzaro world is a place in their dreams, not a nightmare coming to life more vividly each day!