Shots Across the Bow

If you haven't noticed yet, I'm posting here now.

I'm not done writing; I'm just not going to be doing it here.

I had my fill of writing about politics about a year before the election, but just when I said I was through, Democrats launched one of the most offensive smear campaigns I have seen in my life, targeting the Palin family for destruction. Democrat campaigners showed no honor, no respect,and no restraint as they attacked each and every member of that family.

It was a disgusting display of partisanship made worse by the fact that so-called moderate liberals did nothing, giving their tacit approval to the process.

And so I go fired up again. I dug into Obama's past political campaigns, his history as an executive, short lived and unsuccessful as it was. I learned that nobody should have been surprised at the treatment the Palin family got because that was the standard M.O. of the Obama political machine. His ascension to power was waged as a scorched earth campaign, regardless of the cost to others. As he said when questioned about the ethics of one of his early campaigns, he simply said,"If you can win, win."

I put that information out, and was met with a collective yawn.

The far left thought Obama's tactics were wonderful, while the moderate left (all two of them) were upset that I and others who were presenting the facts were "muckraking."

But I kept on, thinking in the back of my head that there were liberals out there who were interested in the facts, who could handle a debate, and could put together a sound argument that would explain their position in a rational manner.

I was wrong.

My mistake has been thinking that liberalism,or more properly, progressivism, is an ideology, as is conservatism. That is, an idea, based on facts and reason, useful for describing te behavior of a society, and the best manner of organizing that society. It isn't. It has more in common with religion than anything else, complete with hierarchy, a rigid orthodoxy, excommunication for dissenters,and an intolerance for questioning.

And you can't talk a man out of his religion. All you will do is piss him off.

The Nobel Peace Prize was the final straw. There is no rational way to defend giving it to President Obama. Not without debasing everything the Prize used to stand for. The Committee has said that they wanted to help shape the direction of American policy by giving the award to Obama. Many progressives find nothing wrong with that. But let's think about it for just a minute. Here we have an external group attempting to shift the course of American policy by giving an award to the sitting President.

Is it just me, or did the Nobel committee just try to buy off the US President?

And the progressives are okay with it. Of course, we know buying and paying for politicians is the Chicago way,but even in Chicago they try to be a little bit more subtle about it.

Putting the whole bribery thing aside, the act that many progressives,including people I know and respect, are so caught up in the idea of an Obama Presidency that even this farce, that tops Pia Zadora's Golden Globe and Milli Vanilli's Grammy, must be defended.

It's ludicrous

And then I see CNN running a fact checking story on a Saturday Night Live skit about Obama. Yeah, a real news organization investigating a comedy sketch show for factual references because they dared to poke fun at Obama.

That's scary. It's not surprising; after all, we've seen other news organizations target critics of President Obama, both before and after the election. What makes it scary is how few people seem to mind.

If they don't care, then why should I? As the progressive agenda is crammed down our throats over the next few years, and as people trade away basic rights and liberties in exchange for government supplied security, they will quickly learn that when you put your faith in men, you will always be greatly disappointed. And government is nothing but a group of men.

I'm out of the fight. Not because I somehow think I'm too good to get my hands dirty, or that I'm above the fray, or that I'm debating the issue on a higher plane. All that crap is nothing more than the loathsome lies of a man too cowardly to stand on his principles. Rather than choose to stand, he chooses to abandon principle in favor of a deluded sense of self aggrandizement, based on his supposed ability to stand above it all. To those, I simply leave the words of Rev 3:16;

So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

I'm out not because I refuse to commit but because the fight is lost. I used to hope that what I wrote might make a difference,even in a small way. I'm not egotistical enough to believe that I could change the course we're on, but that maybe I could contribute to a flood of writers that could energize people, get them involved, and maybe get this thing called Americaturned aroundand back on the right track. I no longer believe that can happen. I think it's too late.

Over a million people marched on Washington to demonstrate their anger at the course our government is taking. Most of these people had never demonstrated before in their lives. The march was a culmination of months of demonstrations and town hall meetings. meetings where the people spoke to their representatives, and voiced their concerns. And after this unprecedented display of grass roots activism, nothing has changed. The President claimed to be unaware of the march. The media downplayed it. The progressives caricatured the people,using offensive epithets to mock and demean the participants.

It was a shining moment, but it came too late. Most people are too ignorant or too apathetic to realize exactly where we are being taken by our dully elected government. (No, that isn't a misspelling.)

So, I'm not going to fight the tide anymore. We're going to get government health care whether we want it or not. That's the message Washington has sent and I'm getting it loud and clear. Cap and trade will pass as well, and I suspect Obama will then move on to education reform, to make sure he indoctrinates kids as quickly as possible. The world is sensing weakness, not just on the part of our President, although that's bad enough, but on the part of the American people, because we elected him. And folks, there's nothing worse than showing weakness to a pack of wolves. We're about to see the dollar fall like nothing anybody has ever seen before. We're about to see America become a laughingstock as our powerlessness is demonstrated over and over again. We're about to see Israel face extinction as she is hemmed in by enemies on every side, without the strong support of the United States.

We're about to see hard times like we've never seen before, and my efforts are going to be aimed at getting ready for them.

And that is what Stability For Our Time is all about. Isaiah 33:6 says that:

Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, And the strength of salvation; The fear of the LORD is His treasure.

I don't know about wisdom, but I do have a lot of knowledge. More importantly, I know here to find out things that I don't know, and I have the ability to help people understand these things. While the site is barely built and as ugly as the north end of a south bound mule, it is functional, and it's time I started using it .I'm sure that when she gets time,my lovely wife will drop in and spruce the place up a bit.

I'll still cover a lot of the same topics, but you can expect a lot more posts about what I'm doing, and why, and how, along with posts on natural philosophy, and most importantly, my journey as an awakened Christian. I also hope that as I purge the poison of politics from my veins, my sense of humor will return as well. I've been missing it.

And so, after 7 years, Shots Across the Bow is out of ammunition. The guns are silenced, but the ship is still afloat. I hope you all make the switch over to Stability, but more importantly, I am honored that so many of you have found my ramblings a worthy way to spend a little bit of your time.

Thank you.

So watch out for SEIU thugs. They aren't at work (Are they ever?) so they may be at your tea party, ready to rumble.

Hooray Labor!

I've worked in three places that were unionized. In every one of them, productivity was negatively impacted by the union. I saw workers on probation being told to slow down and work less, because they were making the rest of the employees in their shop look bad. I saw shops file grievance after grievance against other shops in the same plant for doing their work. I saw union workers watch somebody do work, then file a grievance, rather than telling them it wasn't their work. I watched union workers commit major safety breaches, get fired, then rehired on arbitration, with full back pay. I saw union workers go on strike just because it was the third Friday of the quarter. I saw a union organize a hostile takeover of another union, resulting in a loss of pay and benefits for the workers involved. (BTW, that was the SEIU.)

I'm sure there are good unions out there somewhere. I'm sure there are shops where the union works with management for the benefit of all.

Of course, I also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Funny stuff from Big Hollywood

My favorite:

Friend one represents conservative/libertarian principles. Friend two represents liberal/authoritarian principles.

A family member got her carry permit 60 days after filing.

I just acquired a new bare bones, nothing special, 12 gauge Mossberg 500.

Now I want to kick it up a bit. Stocks, lights, pistol grips, whatever. I'm not really interested in lasers or major optics because, well it's a shotgun. Effective firepower without supreme accuracy is kinda the point.

Suggestions?

Oddly, I'm not laughing.

First the setup.

David Letterman thought it would be funny to say during his Monday monologue that Willow Palin, Gov. Palin's 14 year old daughter was "knocked up" by New York Yankee player Alex Rodriguez during the seventh inning stretch. Tuesday night he continued his assault on the Palins by insinuating that Willow was a prostitute.

Yeah, he's a riot that Dave. His humor is always on the cutting edge.

Apparently Dave is miffed that Palin refuses to do his show, so he figured he would just go after her child as revenge.

Now the last New York person to make a crack like this was Don Imus when he insulted the Rutgers basketball team a "joke" that cost him his job on the radio. Will Letterman, whose offense is far worse than anything Imus said, face similar repercussions?

Of course not. Imus insulted a team of young black women; Letterman insulted a young white girl from a conservative family. That makes it okay. We're already seeing the media rushing to his defense.

Check the video below from MSNBC. Contessa Brewer interviews John Ziegler and asks why Sarah Palin would be upset about being called slutty. Think about that for a moment. Either Brewer had no idea what actually was said, which given the current state of journalism is not that hard to believe, or she knew exactly why Palin called Letterman "pathetic" and deliberately chose to try and change the subject from sexual assault to simple slander. Again, given the state of modern journalism, not too hard to believe.



Aside from the fun of watching Ziegler make Brewer look completely incompetent and unprofessional, this interview demonstrates just how out of touch MSNBC is. Think about it. Brewer doesn't operate in a vacuum. She has producers, editors and such who have to buy off on a proposed segment. All of them thought that this interview was a good idea, that it would be hard for Ziegler to explain why Palin was offended. Apparently they thought they could focus all of the attention on the "slutty" remark and defuse the time bomb of implied statutory rape. Thanks to John Ziegler, they failed miserably.

But what will happen to Dave? Will he pay a price? Probably not. He's already released a statement that when talking about Palin's daughter, he was talking about Bristol, not Willow. That's just self serving BS and I don't buy it for a second. Willow was the one in New York with Gov. Palin. She was the one at the ballgame. And she was still the daughter in New York when he made his second attack Tuesday night. He knew exactly what he was doing, and that's why he didn't use her name, to give himself deniability.

Not only is he an ass, he's a coward as well.

I like numbers. And I like charts that are based on numbers. Give me the raw numbers. No smoothing, averaging, or any other numerical torture. Just the numbers themselves.

They draw a clear,unambiguous and unbiased picture of progress, or the lack of progress. There's no spinning, no nuancing. There's just a plainly understandable picture. It says "Here's where we are. Here's where we thought we would be." And then the follow up would be to account for the difference,and that's where you can start to work the numbers.

So let's look at the numbers.



Let's get our bearings. The light blue line is the Obama administration's prediction of what unemployment would do if we didn't act immediately in passing his economic recovery package. The dark blue line is the administration's prediction of the effect their stimulus package would have on unemployment. The brown dots show what is actually happening.

You see how much fun this is? We can see clearly exactly how closely President Obama is meeting his own goals. Unfortunately,he's not doing so well on this one. There's a significant gap between his expectations and reality.

Of course,Obama is a Democrat,so this is not entirely unexpected.

Now that we have the data, the next step is the follow up question. Why aren't we where we thought we would be?

Well, let's look at the numbers.

If you look closely, you can see a slight break between the first two dots, which not only follow the curve but are part of the basis for the curve,and the subsequent dots. The rate of rise of unemployment is steeper in real life than in the projection. There are only two ways to account for this break. Either the problems were more severe than the Obama team recognized, demonstrating either a lack of vision or a disconnect with reality on their part, or their were events taking place at the time, like TARP and the Freddie/Fannie bailouts, that introduced new pressures on the employment market.

The next thing to notice is that the Obama team predicted a sharp decrease in the rate of rise of unemployment as soon as the stimulus package was issued. Clearly that did not happen. Again, their are only two ways to look at this failure. Either the design of the stimulus package was flawed or the projected effect was deliberately overstated.

The third thing to notice is that the projected peak for the non stimulated curve is second quarter 2010 while the peak for the stimulus is third quarter 2009. The real curve has already exceeded the worst case projection of the Obama administration, and while the rate of increase is slowing, we're still losing jobs at a fairly high pace. Where and when the peak will come is very difficult to predict. What is very easy to see, however, is that the Obama stimulus package has not had any positive effect, and may have actually had a negative impact.

So why is this important?

Well, yesterday, President Obama said that he was going to create or save 600,000 jobs over the summer by accelerating the stimulus. The chart clearly shows that he has set an impossible goal. If we project the curve out for the next three months, we can predict that the economy is going to lose another 500,000 jobs or so. (I'm being optimistic.) That means that the economy must show a net gain of at least 100,000 jobs over the summer for Obama to meet his goal.

Not gonna happen.

Let me explain. The rate of increase in unemployment is slowing. Fewer people are losing their jobs each week. We lost half a million in April and about 300,000 in May. Extrapolating that gives me roughly 220,000 in June, 160,000 in July, 100,000 in August. No matter what combination of saving and creating you use, because the goal is greater than the predicted losses, we will have to see a net gain of jobs. So in order to claim victory, Obama will have to shift the goal posts. He's going to have to come up with some rationale for claiming that the employment picture is even bleaker than it actually is. For example, if the economy does shed another half a million jobs over the summer, Obama will have to claim, and explain, why the economy would have shed 1.1 million if he hadn't accelerated the stimulus. That will be a tough sell since he has spent so much time and effort to convince people that things are getting better.

See why I like numbers?

Everybody is talking about it. The left is singing the praises of Obama, and how much he has accomplished in such a short time while the right is calling him the worst president ever bar none. SO really, how has he done in his first three months as president?

Well, let's see.

• He's nominated more tax challenged people to his cabinet than any other president.
  
• He passed the largest piece of corporate welfare ever seen, without reading it or understanding it.
  
• His proposed budget produces deficits as far as we can project.
  
• His early tax refund scam will give us an average of $300-400 but his budget will cost each of us around $46,000.
  
• The economy this quarter contracted far more than expected, but not as much as last quarter. Economists say this means the recession is continuing to deepen at a rapid pace. The White House says this means that we're coming out of it.
  
• Swine flu has broken out in several US states after crossing the Mexican border. He said he was not concerned.
  
• Chrysler has declared bankruptcy despite the bailout package Obama voted for.
  
• He fired GM's CEO.
  
• He genuflected before a king.
  
• He apologized to everyone who would listen for America.
  
• He utterly failed to build any international support for our efforts in Afghanistan, or to convince any other nation to drink the Kool Aid of massive public spending leading to massive debt as a solution to carrying too much debt.
  
• He did pretty well on his March Madness picks.
  
• He failed to notice a large grassroots demonstration against government overspending and arrogance.

So, how do you think he's doing?

I guess Rahmbo needs another crisis that he can capitalize on, so we're going to generate one over the swine flu outbreak. Give me a break, please! Here's a question for you. How many people in America have died from this national emergency? 1,000? 100? 10? Has anybody in the US died from the swine flu?

No?

Then this is not a crisis.

Sheesh.

Yes, I know contagious diseases spread geometrically, meaning we have to nip an outbreak in the bud, but good night! The media's all out running around like Barney Fife crossed with Chicken Little screaming about the Swine Flu Pandemic, presenting special reports and interviewing bemused epidemiologists who all basically say the same thing.

"Yes, we have some cases of Swine Flu, but nobody has died, and we're concerned, but not alarmed."

Even Obama isn't alarmed. Of course, he wasn't overly concerned about the pirates/hostage situation either, but that's just because he's so cool.

Here's the deal. Swine flu is most contagious during the first five days of infection. What this means to you and me is that the folks who present the greatest risk of transmitting the disease are likely to be the folks who don't even know they are sick yet. In other words, they are still running around, riding airplanes, subways and going to Dollywood, despite waking up this morning with a bit of a headache. When the flu really hits its stride along about day 3 or 4, they've already exposed hundreds or thousands of people. In other words, by the time an outbreak is spotted, and remember, it takes a lab test to confirm that the patient has swine flu and not a garden variety cold. Given transit time and culturing, 2 to 3 days may go by before the diagnosis is confirmed. The point I am making is that by the time doctors recognize that there is a swine flu outbreak, it's too late to contain it.

Period.

Bobby and Becky spend spring break in Mexico, and while they are there, they get exposed. Three days later, while flying back to Mainstreet USA, Bobby is sneezing and running a low grade fever. When they change planes in LA, 50 of the two hundred passengers aboard their flight, and 2 of the flight crew are now carrying the virus. The next day, Bobby still feels tired and achy, so he goes to the hospital. Here, we catch a break, because we're going to assume that a very smart ER physician notices that Bobby is too young and healthy to be battling the flu this hard, and he gets suspicious and sends a culture off to the CDC. Meanwhile, Bobby transmits the virus to 20 other people in the emergency room. By the time our bright young ER doc gets the results back, the 2 members of the flight crew have been flying for 3 days, but they've only been infectious for one day, so they;ve only infected 150 passengers travelling all over the US. At the same time, the 50 people Bobby infected on the plane have each infected 50 more, and they have no idea they have anything more serious than a cold.

What I'm saying is very simple. It's already here. And it doesn't matter where you are when you read these words; wherever you're at, it's there. That's the bad news. Forget the google maps and tracking the spread of the disease. The information you're looking at is days out of date.

On the other hand, there's very good news. Swine flu is relatively hard to catch, requiring some form of contact with the infected fluids. Additionally, while it is serious, it is by no means always or even often fatal.

In September 1988, a previously healthy 32-year-old pregnant woman was hospitalized for pneumonia and died 8 days later. A swine H1N1 flu virus was detected. Four days before getting sick, the patient visited a county fair swine exhibition where there was widespread influenza-like illness among the swine.

In follow-up studies, 76% of swine exhibitors tested had antibody evidence of swine flu infection but no serious illnesses were detected among this group. Additional studies suggest that one to three health care personnel who had contact with the patient developed mild influenza-like illnesses with antibody evidence of swine flu infection.

76% had been infected, with no deaths among the folks handling the infected pigs. It's just not that deadly.

The worst thing we could do would be to allow a media desperate to draw attention to itself tp overhype a non-event, and to indulge in some kind of mass panic, or allow ourselves to be stampeded into making a rash decision. Sadly, there are always people who look to take advantage of fear, like Rahm Emmanuel, who never wants to let a good crisis go to waste. And it isn't just the nannies on the left who will want to use this. For every one of them crying that this proves we need socialized medicine, there will be a righty shrieking that we need to be able to close our borders to illegal immigrants.

As for me, well, I went to Dollywood on Sunday where I mexed with people from all over the country, and a good chunk of the world.

I feel just fine.

err test post

When President Obama released the secret memos on the enhanced interrogation techniques and claimed that they "didn't make us any safer," his teleprompter must have skipped this bit reported in the Washington Post:

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that "the CIA believes 'the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.'

And this bit:

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast.

And this bit:

The Office of Legal Counsel memo states "we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM" and notes that "intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the [Counterterrorism Center's] reporting on al Qaeda." The memos refer to other classified documents -- including an "Effectiveness Memo" and an "IG Report," which explain how "the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information."

In other words, contrary to the President's statement, and the slobbering coverage by our national media, the enhanced interrogation techniques yielded valuable information.

Now here's the thing; I do not support or condone the use of torture in interrogation, regardless of the subject, and techniques like water boarding come awfully close to crossing the line. In all the debates I've seen and participated in over torture, nobody on the left has been willing to give a definition of torture beyond the old chestnut "I know it when I see it," and that makes any reasonable discussion difficult if not impossible. Adding outright fabrications and lies to the table as the President and his lapdogs are doing doesn't make things any better.

My first post in my new home. Did everybody get here? What do you think of the makeover? There are still a few kinks to be worked out, like some of the links to the left, but we're still working on it.

Expression engine has some neat features that weren't available on Moveable Type that should cut down on the admin load, leaving me more time for writing.

That may or may not be good news depending on your point of view.

Anyway, there's still some housekeeping to do here, plus a completely new site to design and build.

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