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Helen Thomas is an 87 year old reporter who also happens to have the special status of being a White House correspondent.  In May she made a comment that has, fairly, been criticized as discriminatory toward the Jewish people.  In essence she said, they should get out of Israel and go to Poland. 

I’m going to be honest and say I don’t get the full issue around the Jews and America.  There are things at play that I just don’t understand.  From the Holocaust to money to political power.  So I guess Poland is their home??  I can only imagine this statement if it were slightly different.  If a reporter had said that all blacks should go back to Africa, or all Hispanics to Mexico.  If THOSE comments had been made with this president there is no doubt that the reporter would have lost access to the White House.  The fact that she has been able to keep that is awful. 

I know liberals, in general, have wanted to be the anti-George Bush administration (no, REALLY… click that link, its a classic) and they felt that GWB was too Israel friendly, but to go this far the other way is an embarrassment.

Helen Thomas should lose her access to the White House and be fired by her employer.  At least her agency has some class.

[Initially Written 6/6/2010 10:39PM]

For long time readers of my blog, you’ll know that I don’t much buy man made global warming.  I believe the human effect on global warming to be very minimal.  That the sun is the common cause of global warming.

Over the past several years the sun has been “very quiet”, in that it hasn’t had many sun flares and the such.  That, however, appears to be changing.

So, get ready for global warming to be ‘proven’ all over again.

I won’t get into the big debate here, but there is one fact that has yet to be answered for me.

Why was it hotter in the middle ages than it is now?

Were the factories polluting more back then?  Were the cars less efficient?  Yes, that is sarcasm.  The middle ages were followed by a mini-ice age.  In fact in the 40’s and 70’s there was the scare of the coming ice age.

It was best put in an article many years ago.  Remove all the cars and factories in the world and the temperature may drop a tiny bit… remove the sun, and we have problems.

Finally, just because I feel that global warming is a farce doesn’t mean I don’t understand the need to be ‘cleaner’.  Of course we should strive for better gas mileage.  Of course we should strive cleaner factories.  However, we don’t need to set civilization back 100 years for a very unproven (and I’d even argue, debunked) theory.

So, I am going to leave open the fact that I am missing something here.  That I should, as I normally do, totally disagree with Barack Obama.  However, I am having a hard time finding that with this decision.

What decision?  Student loans.  With the ‘health care’ bill, there was a large section that dealt with student loans.  The situation before the current law was very odd to me.  A commercial institution would 'loan money to me, but they had NO RISK.  If I defaulted, the federal government would back up that loan.  Ultimately being held responsible for my debt.  This is why student loan debt is ‘for life’.  You can’t file bankruptcy on it, you either pay it or they will take it from you.  Either by garnishment from your wages, tax return, or ultimately your social security benefits.  However if I paid, the profit made off the loan went to the bank.

I’ve never understood this. 

So what is the situation now?  The federal government is squeezing out the private lenders.  They can no longer make loans backed by the federal government.  Those loans can only come from the federal government. 

I’ve done some searching to figure out why this is bad and I found a few reason brought up:

1. The customer service of the government workers is poor.
• From personal experience, is the customer service of the government worker poorer than the private worker?  Yes.  Is it poorer than Dell’s technical support?  No.  It is adequate, and the truth is… if you pay your bill, you never have to talk to them.
2. Loans in default will skyrocket. 
• I am sure it will go up.  However, student loans are a debt that you cannot get rid of.  So even if they go in default, in the end.. the debt will be collected.  So the fix for this?  Regulate how hard and how defaulted loans are collected.  This is not a showstopper.

 

If these banks want a piece of this pie, there is NOTHING stopping them from offering student loans that are not backed by the federal government.  Nothing. 

This is one issue, even after reading a bit, I think I have no issues with the federal government taking over. 

Health insurance on the other hand….

This post is a bit belated, as I generally like to post this a few days before the end of the year. 

To wrap 2009 up in a few words, “IT SUCKED!”

The year started off with great hope, as we were getting ready to work for our next daughter.  We were ready for the adventure that would await.  We ended up getting our daughter and it was tough.  It was very hard, but we were committed to the long haul and making her life the best it could be.  But all of that abruptly ended in November.  The time with her will forever paint 2009 for our family.  Dear Jasmine, we still miss you.

Sprinkled throughout the year were a lot of other bad moments.  Two were thrown upon us in 2 hours time.

We had gotten a call to go to a family members house for an important discussion, we knew that this was likely a serious illness.  Likely cancer.  As we were getting ready to go to this family members house I answered the phone, it was a long time ‘friend’ Howard’s daughter.  Telling me that Howard had died.  Howard was a 74 year old man that I talked to every 4 to 6 weeks to touch base with him.  I always saw him as a grandfather figure, my wife and his wife describe it as a father/son relationship.  He had a month long fight with cancer, and in all their rush to battle the cancer they couldn’t find my number to let me know.  So I never got to have that final conversation with my dear friend.  Then we went to the family members house and found out that this family member had breast cancer.

That family member is OK as far as I have been told, but I still miss my friend Howard.  I think about him often.

This year also had a few spats with the local law.  I got a $170 ticket that was the most bogus ticket I’ve ever gotten.  I will never respect the law enforcement agencies again.  I wait for my call to jury duty, as I will be very honest and let them know that I will make anybody I have to judge… innocent.  So I doubt they’ll let me serve. Then we got some citations for not having our dog’s properly registered.  Didn’t even know we had to register them.  A warning would have been sufficient, but in a year where budgets are hurting the government does what the government does best… fine you.

We had yet another church fail.  This one was particularly hard to swallow.  Overall, really a good church fit for my family.  But their Elder said something whole fully inaccurate to my wife, and when I confronted him on it (Matthew 18), he basically called her a liar.  I have a low tolerance for leaders like that.  I can deal with regular members, but when the leadership is that screwed up it is time to leave.

And one of the worst things of all, Barack Obama was elected.  That may seem extreme, but his policies and the way he has done business has the great potential of destroying America.  We can’t spend like he is spending.  We couldn’t spend like Bush was spending, and he is making Bush look like an child.

Now, there were some good things in the year.  I did take a new job.  I had a memorable trip with my oldest son.  We went to Disney as a family.  It is never all bad, but this year certainly wasn’t fun.

What’s wrong with the government?  Clearly the tenth amendment sheds some light on it:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Our government has overstepped its bounds in relation to this law, but it has happened in a very tricky way.  Money.  One of the main complaints Republican governors had about the stimulus money was the unemployment part of it.  Accepting the unemployment money today held you to certain requirements tomorrow.  The same thing goes with DUI laws, accept the .08 limit and get federal money for your roads.

Then there is the other stretches for what is exactly delegated to the United States by the Constitution?

It turns out that includes more and more each year.  This non-sense has to stop and states need to stop looking to Uncle Sam for their bailout and start paying their own bills.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Gun control is a hot topic recently.  There have been a lot of mass shootings and all of them are unfortunate.  There has been a lot of gun sales since Obama was elected.  People are afraid of the gun control laws he will (understand I did not say may) make.

However none of that is relevant to the constitution.

The constitution has been defined by the supreme court to mean that the individual has the right to own guns, regardless of being in a ‘militia’.  I could go into the arguments to that, but it doesn’t matter.  It has been determined that it is my right to own a gun.

The only way to rebel against a government, which the founding fathers obviously supported, is with weapons… and they protected that right.  You can’t read the constitution, specifically the second amendment, any other way when you understand that.  They knew that governments have to be thrown aside at times and it takes weapons to do that.

I think in my lifetime we are going to see two things:

1. The end of the United States.  I just can’t see how California values can coexists with Texas values much longer. 
2. Some world wide catastrophe that will end up with major losses of life.  Billions dead.

I wonder if the second amendment will be the reason for number one?

Time to update this.  As I read about the governor of Texas threatening to withdraw from the Union!  I think we are much closer to things coming to a battle then anybody may imagine.

[Initially Written: 4.13.2009]
[Updated: 4.15.2009]

February 1997 as an 18 year old father I took a job at Celotex.  The location I worked at was a shingle mill.  We made ton’s of shingles, from your basic 3-Tab shingle to the elite ‘Presidential Shake’ shingle.  We put out a lot… of garbage.  Really it shocks me to think about how much trash we put out the door that later came back to us. 

It was a union shop.  I was actually a union steward for a period.  At times we had 150+ people working there during my 3 years stint at that location.  At other times it employed thousands of people.  But this thing happened, creative destruction. Celotex did not adapt, companies like Owens Corning did.  The end result was that Celotex went out of business.  I quit six months before the location I was at went out of business for good, because I saw it coming and at that time I had a couple babies to take care of with one on the way. 

Creative destruction is really the corner stone of capitalism.  You have to let things die, companies are not immortal.  There is no reason why Ford, GM, Chrysler, and AIG should be considered to big to fail.  Why? 

Below are some pictures I took today while driving past what used to be Celotex.  A place that used to employ thousands.  Now was just a bulldozed field.

View Full Album

[Initially Written 3.4.2009]

The clock is ticking down.

I am a bit of a history buff when it comes to politics, and I don't have to go back far to say that in the future George W. Bush will be looked at as a great president.  Maybe even one of the greatest.

Ronald Reagan was a hated man when he left office.  Had a great approval rating, but hated none the less.  The media and the left hated him.  Sound familiar? 

Harry Truman had, until George W. Bush, the lowest approval rating in history.  But is now regarded as a one of the greatest of all time.

History will treat George W. Bush very well.

Think about what he has gone through while in office.

The repercussions of the dot.com crash.  This was well on its way to reality when he took office. 

Then 9/11.  Something that should have been dealt with more fully in Clinton's presidency.  Though I think that will come down to partisanship being the cause, as those on the right (before my political time) were focused on a stain on a dress.  Clinton was even criticized for his one response on the issue.  9/11 almost bankrupted this country immediately.  I specifically remember a claim being made that all we bombed was a place that made medicine! Which lead to the war in Afghanistan.  While there is still a lot to be established there, but the foundations of a democracy in this country are in place.  I remember well before 9/11 hearing many Hollywood stars calling for action over there to protect the women and children.  Life over there is much better for them today.

Then it led to the Iraq war.  You hear the statement, there were no WMD's found.  I disagree.  Radical muslims are WMD's.  We have found a lot of them in Iraq.  This war was interesting.  We certainly went in without an exit strategy.  We didn't know we'd get in as easy as we did.  Before this war started it was talked about how we'd be fighting Iraq for years.  Not in Iraq, but Iraq.  As we all know we marched right over Iraq, then the WMD's came to us there and we haven't been able to leave/

So in the future when we have two more great muslim allies in that part of the world, we have George W. Bush to thank.  This alone will be what defines his legacy for the masses.

Loss of manufacturing jobs.  NAFTA.  Plain and simple, this is the cause for our issues.  I remember right after this was passed (early in the Clinton years) a local paper announcing that a manufacturer was relocating to Mexico.  They specifically stated that their reason for the move was NAFTA.  A Republican at the time was quoted trashing the legislation.  By time Bush was in office, repealing NAFTA would have completely trashed our economy and foreign relations.  Which is why Obama won't change this either.  But to lose this many jobs and still have an incredibly low unemployment rate throughout his presidency was amazing.

Katrina.  Katrina was a twice a century kind of Hurricane.  The fact that it fell on Bushes time in office... pure 'bad luck'.  Could the handling of that been better? Of course.  But really, how do you handle a city where people refused to evacuate in spite of warnings?  Then lets be real, how many false alarms are there in regard to this each and every year?  We had one this year! 

Wall Street / Mortgage Crash. So this is the current problem.  Bush gets the blame, he's in charge so I get that.  But what is really the blame?  Bad bankers.  People were given mortgages that they couldn't pay.  So no big surprise when they didn't pay them.  What caused bankers to give these loans?  Greed and regulation.

They were greedy to make more money in the short-term.  They were forced by democratic wrote legislation to give loans to people based on where they lived and not necessarily on ability to pay.  It wasn't a lack of regulation, but bad regulations that fed into this. 

In the grand scheme of things 10% of mortgages failed.  If people are running business where 10% makes THAT big of a difference, then they need to learn how to do better business.

The Media. The media is left to begin with and when you have that many big things going on in your term you will make mistakes.  So they picked up on it big time and gave no grace to the situation.  The reason for that leads to the other reason he will have a legacy.

George W. Bush was a major player for the religious right.  Never before have we had, since abortion was unheard of, such a pro-life president.  I really think the stance the West has on abortion will swing back so far to the right that when it happens GWB will be looked at as a beacon during such a dark time in human history.  I can't see how a civilized country can justify killing babies.  Yet here we are.  GWB stood firm in is opposition to embryonic (and I love how people leave that word out of the argument) stem cell research.  Only to have science prove him right.  Why we are still bickering over this is just stunning.  Science has shown that they can take a normal adult cell and 'reformat' it to make it just like an embryonic stem cell.  A technology that likely wouldn't have been found had he allowed the research. 

Marriage was under attack during his presidency and America stood up against it.  The left would like to believe that in time this will become a non-issue.  I actually think our country will become more intolerant of things like homosexuality over time.  Thanks to our interactions over in muslim countries we will see a great influx of muslim families in our society.  You think Christians are unreasonable in relation to relative morals, you haven't seen anything yet. 

I've disabled comments on this post because this is not something I'm wanting to debate, but will leave it as a moment of praise from my to our great president.  George W. Bush.  People say he caused so much.  I only see one thing that you could even pin on him as the cause, and even then I think it lays more with the regulations in place and greedy bankers.  EVERYBODY thought attacking Iraq was the right thing at the time. Only the wise ones still agree with that.

Now lets not confuse my praise for blindness.  I know that GWB made mistakes, but to take his complete body of work... I can do nothing but praise it.  If I could change something about his policy it would be two things.

Immigration and financial responsibility. He was way to willing to give a pass to illegal immigrants and while countries do run deficits during war time, they didn't need to be THAT big.  However, a good chunk of the 6 Trillion dollars of deficit were added during the time when democrats had control of congress, the place that actually passes the budget.

What I do think history will see when they look back at recent history is partisanship.  This country has been pretty divided since the end of Ronald Reagan's last term. 

So Mr. President.  Thank you for 8 great years.  History will treat you well.

HT: CNN.com