Today’s Quote: McFarland

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“It used to be American politics stopped at the water’s edge, and that American Presidents honored foreign leaders, regardless of their political persuasions or party.

No longer.

By failing to send even one senior level official to Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, this President has shown that partisan politics now extend beyond the grave.

Shame on you, Mr. President. You and your administration look cheap, small and petty.

–K.T. McFarland in a very trenchant opinion piece

What a coincidence that I’ve read two excellent pieces recently by Ms. McFarland. And this one goes right along with an earlier post of mine wherein I mused about the evils of politics infecting our daily lives to such an extent that it trumps all sense of propriety. But then what else would you expect from a man who gives the Queen of England an iPod?

Today’s Quote: Broadway

“The news is full of the Boston Marathon Bombing. I have no clue who could have done it or why. I won’t even venture a guess. What I do know is that the bombs were made from common items available to the general public like ball bearings and pressure cookers. This is important because it shows the idiocy of thinking something like gun control will put an end to mass killings. Nutjobs don’t even need a gun to kill a bunch of people. And explosives are already regulated by the federal government.

“Evil does not come from an object or a substance or anything else outside of ourselves…Controlling or eliminating these things will never eliminate evil. And evil is never satisfied. Evil works overtime. Evil does things purely for their own destructive ends.”

–Charlie Broadway, from a post on his blog

Way to state the case, Charlie! And way to call out our elitist political classes and their sycophants in the press–not to mention a large-ish segment of American society–on being so willing to piss around with trying to “fix” the problem to suit their own political ends without ever getting to the root causes.

I can hardly wait until congress introduces legislation to regulate and/or ban the ownership and purchase of pressure cookers…

Then and Now

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Here’s how far technology has come in the last couple of decades–I actually used to own most of the items in the top photo at one point or another. Now it sure is easier to carry all of it in the nice, compact package shown in the lower photo…

(This came from W&CIE via the Minimal Mac blog.)

Lessons about capitalism from my blue-collar, butcher father

Here, my friends, is an excellent opinion piece by former Libertarian VP nominee and all-around smart guy Wayne Allyn Root. It’s essential reading if you want to see both what’s wrong in our country and the correct attitude we need to adopt in order to begin to fix it. I will pull my two favorite quotes from it, but please go read the whole thing by clicking the link above.

First, what’s wrong and how it has been caused:

This president has damaged the American Dream–perhaps beyond repair. This President has created a bitterly divided society, a nation filled with anger, hate, rage, jealousy and envy. This President (the man who uttered “You didn’t build that”) has created an army of “have-nots” who instead of being inspired to work harder, aim higher, and do extraordinary things, see the successful as the enemy, and merely want to take what we have.

Now, the key advice from his father which is still valid for anyone today:

Forty years ago my butcher father taught me lessons about wealth that led to my extraordinary success in this great country. He said, “Son, I’d love to hate rich people. But no one poor has ever given me a job.” Wiser words were never spoken.

While, sadly, I no longer agree with his dad’s final observation about the Republican party–which in its current state is part of the problem and not the solution–how anyone with a brain can’t see how correct the other observations are is completely beyond me…

Today’s Quote: Krauthammer

“What he has done [is] completely in contradiction to what he promised as a candidate in ’08. He institutionalized the permanent campaign. He’s out there raising money at the beginning of the second term when he ought to be here working on the budget, on sequester, and all these other issues. But now he is the essence of exactly the system that he denounced and he promised he would messianically redeem.”

–Charles Krauthammer speaking about the POTUS

Never mind the person or the party, this is what politics gets us. No matter who it is, the only thing they really want to do is hold onto their phony-baloney jobs for as long as possible–all while lining their pockets with as much other people’s money as they can get away with. As taxpayers, we are those “other people” and I for one am getting extremely tired of bending over and grabbing my ankles while the ruling class…ahem…grabs my wallet.

This is precisely why the older I get, the more Libertarian I become. Let us joyfully get rid of them all–or at least as many as humanly possible. I feel especially sad for the younger generations who are being sold down the river into tax slavery by–and am I the only one to see the bitter irony–the nation’s first black president and his cronies. After all, it’s the generation of my niece and nephews that are going to be stuck having to clean up following this destruction.

But then again, it’s the younger generation that has sown the seeds of their own future doom by allowing themselves to be fooled into voting these charlatans into office, lured by promises of their own share of other people’s money parceled out in dime-bags by the politcrits–whether for “free” healthcare, college tuition, legalized pot, gay marriage or any other cause célèbre.

I guess I was just in a mood today… 😉

Life’s Assignment

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When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life.

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “Happy”. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life…

A little something I saw online ages ago—I have no idea where it came from, but I just dug it up while doing some file maintenance.

Head Start? It’s useless AND expensive…

As our New Year begins and we've theoretically averted going over the “Fiscal Cliff” (yeah, right…), here's a great article giving a glimpse of what we're in for (thanks, as always, to the Cato Institute):

“Cliff” Deal Offers “Head Start” to American Insolvency

It's this kind of BS–plenty of which we're going to see over the next four years–that will utterly destroy us. Significant findings/programs/legislation slipped past us in the dark of night by federal government buraucratic tools more concerned about saving their own necks than anything else. But you have nobody but yourselves to blame.