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This is an open request for anyone in the playground here to create a post on beatcanvas regarding your take on Palin's speech tonight. I'm not watching it - got work to do, unfortunately. But I'd love your input here, if you're okay with it. |
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It's taken me a bit to grasp what's happening in the country, but I get it now. The Republicans are about to dump their collective tea into the media's Boston Harbor. After watching the despicable treatment Sarah Palin's getting, I think we're about done. Don't get me wrong: I think the questions asked of her are, for the most part, worth asking. But here are some questions that didn't get asked: 1) If it's okay to discuss Bristol Palin's behavior, why is it not okay to dig into Biden's lobbyist son's behavior and the connections to his dad and the related legislation? Which one will likely have a bigger impact on the lives of Americans? 2) If it's okay to look into Sarah Palin's past exploits after less than a week of her candidacy, why haven't we had a full fishing expedition into Obama's association with domestic, unapologetic terrorist Ayers in over 18 months of Obama, the candidate? 3) If it's okay to discuss Todd Palin's DUI 24 years ago, why are we not hearing any tut-tut from the same questioners about Obama's admitted drug usage from long ago? 4) If it's okay to plaster Sarah Palin and her baby onto Us magazine with the title: "Babies, Lies, and Scandals," why does Michelle Obama get a pass on how her hospital shunts away the insurance-less poor to other hospitals when she graces Us magazine? It's only going to get worse, I know. I'm not sure if after all of the negativity surrounding her by the heavyweight media types whether or not the vastly more experienced John McCain will be elected president over the hype and fluff of Barack Obama's featherweight experience and lifelong poor judgment. But I'm not sure it matters to me. What I do know is how blatantly obvious the media bias in America has become, and how no one with any desire for all of the cards to be laid upon the table can look to the media for answers. What I hope, though, is that John McCain will show us the fighter he is and come out swinging. I know that Palin will come out swinging. I refuse to have the Hugo Chavez/Michael Moore/Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama-loving elites determine the direction for our nation. I'm pretty steamed about it, and I'm not alone. |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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I'm posting this entry with Google's new browser, Chrome - in beta of course. First thoughts: economical and very speedy. You can read more about why these things are so here. I like it so far... quite a bit. You can download it yourself and try it out. If you take the time to read the 38-page storyboarded / comic panel description of the app at the first link, you'll understand why I think this is the most significant change in computing in a decade. This browser is, in my opinion, a replacement for Windows. It runs like an OS. |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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Tamara and I went out today on a 19-mile bike ride. Which was good for my tubby butt.  It's been a while since we rode that far. That's actually how we got to know each other better - bike riding. She used to be a bike-riding fool, clocking it in at around 100 - 150 miles per week. But married life took over, and where I'm more of a casual rider, and not the miler she was, I think she opted for time with me (a good thing) instead of bike-riding (also a good thing). We've made the unspoken decision to meet somewhere in between, I think. Maybe 70 miles a week. Then we relax out on our back deck, which is an oasis of sorts for us. Check out the big ol' cottonwood (this picture was shot from our deck).  Ten feet off the deck, as I write this, is my beautiful bride, soaking up the late afternoon sun and reading a book. What a great weekend this is. |
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There's an axiom I tell my kids about remaking songs: if a musician or group is going to remake a song, the original version should suck so that the remake is obviously better. An example of this is Rufus Wainwright's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallejuah." Fabulous rendition, and while Leonard was a good songwriter, he's a bit tough on the ear. Rufus made the song soar. On the other hand, there is Jeffrey Gaines' cover of Peter Gabriel's classic, "In Your Eyes." Utterly flat. That's like trying to cover "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers. If you can't do it better, or do it substantially different in a refreshing way, don't do it at all. The same advice that American Idol judges give contestants all the time. Don't over-promise by selecting a song where you can only pale in comparison to the original. So when Barack Obama trotted out on his Greek stage to give his speech, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," and tried to invoke King's backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial, it was a lesser cover. You just don't touch a classic. One thing that Obama said during his speech: In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don’t have boots. You're on your own." Isn't being on your own called adulthood?Germany is a classic example of what happens when an interventionist government policy stretches beyond its means and over-promises. Germany's democratic socialism sounded great... voters went for it, politicians legislated it, and then the inevitable happened: it collapsed. Socialism is a like a sprint. When those who receive are substantially fewer than those who give to support it, it can work. But because population ebbs and flows, and because generations vary in size, it is unavoidable that those who line up to receive promised benefits will have to be supported by the fewer who give to the sytem in support of it. The United States is entering that period now, with its 79 million baby boomers starting to retire. Gen X has less people in it. The sprint of the baby boomers' wealth creation can't be sustained because the numbers are simply too low. Gen X can't give enough to support that. The numbers aren't there. Looking again at Germany, in the conclusion of a paper from the Max Planck Institute that looked at this topic: The middle classes will after another decade of fiscal crisis have learned to live without government-organized social solidarity, just as they learned in the past to rely on it. Thus as politicians keep talking about health care reform, more and more people will understand that the only health care reform they may benefit from in their lifetime is to eat more vegetables and stop smoking. Concerning pensions, already today nobody expects the state to deliver anything other than an unending series of benefit cuts, however dressed up. Those who can afford it have begun to save for their old age, those who cannot must wait and see. Similarly, the number of private schools is growing, and well-to-do parents send their brighter offspring to American or British universities. In the spirit of true liberalism, more and more people are helping themselves, which will make them even less willing to let the state take the rest of their money to help those who cannot. Even if the fiscal means might again become available to reconstitute the interventionist welfare state, the structure of a changed society may no longer generate the necessary level of political demand for it. The Max Planck Institute is a think tank that "conducts advanced basic research on the governance of modern societies. It aims to develop an empirically based theory of the social and political foundations of modern economies by investigating the interrelation between economic, social and political action." The researchers warn that such a society which over-promises is abandoned by its citizens. The people realize that it is actually better to be on their own, because the government is not a parent, but a parasite. It doesn't create its own wealth, but rather pulls from the wealth of the people it portends to support.The strongest society is one where it is expected that everyone is on their own. People used to say with pride that they pulled their own weight. No longer. When we have a popular presidential nominee who mocks such emphasis on independence, he's only begging us to go the road of Germany, to our own eventual collapse under the burden of too many recipients on too few contributors. The ironic part about this is that the very people who most fervently support Obama are the ones who will strain under the weight of what he proposes. But they lack the education in history and math to see it. Obama's rendition is not better than Germany's. Barack Obama is our time's Great Over-Promiser, who disdains a society of people equipped to make it on their own. |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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Conversation at the Flying Mango |
Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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