The wisdom of a child...

A good story that you can tell even your youngest child and they will know the difference between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican.

I remember the time that Catherine, one of my daughter Shannon's friends when she was little, told me that she wanted to be President one day. Both of her parents are liberal Democrats and were standing there with us.

I asked Catherine, "If you were President what would be thefirst thing you would do?"

Catherine replied, "I would give houses to all the homeless people."

"Wow, what a worthy goal you have there, Catherine." I told her, "You don't have to wait until you are President to do that, you can come overto my house and clean up all the dog poop in the back yard and I willpay you $5. Then we can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangsout, and you can give him the $5 to use for a new house."

Catherine, who was about 6, thought that over for a second, while her mom looked at me, and Catherine replied, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and clean up the dog poop and you can pay him the $5.

"Welcome to the Republican Philosophy, Catherine

Effete intellectual snobs

A former vice president who left office in disgrace coined the term effete intellectual snobs. I had not thought of that phrase for some time but Senator Obama’s recent speech in San Francisco brought it to mind in short order.

Thomas Sowell writing in Real Clear Politics :


Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama's public image and his reality. Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."



Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered. Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.



In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said. Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Senator Obama's own statements in San Francisco.



The leftists have no God because Marx, Lenin, and Stalin said there is no God. They decry, belittle, and satirize those that do worship God and their religion (unless it is a minority religion in the United States causing them to be politically incorrect).

How does Sen. Obama’s view differ from Sen. Clinton’s view on these subjects? In reality, they are identical. Effete intellectual snobs believe they have the truth and any other thoughts are the product of uneducated, gun toting, bible thumping, Nascar followers in wild woods of Pennsylvania and Indiana. These effete intellectual snobs believe that raising the educational level of these “typical white people” will suddenly turn them from their God, guns, and cars. Once educated, they will suddenly understand carbon credits, want to munch veggie quiche, and drink mineral water.

The true problem is that the leftists don’t understand our history but we understand theirs. In the evil empire, God, guns, and individual thought was banned. The villas on the black sea were filled with effete intellectual snobs who lived off the work of the uneducated. The people no longer had guns because the government disarmed them. Dissent was punished with a literal Siberia rather than just the failure to obtain tenure.

Clarify all they want but the lefties of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries are remarkably similar.

Improving Government, Bureaucracy Style

The article on the US Postal Service requires an update. For an unknown reason, the magazine that was most recently "damaged during processing" by our government agents in charge of the mail was not neatly deposited in a plastic magazine body bag but was mended using "We're Sorry" tape.

Take the survey and let us know what you think happened.

You can choose but at least my magazine got her.

Charlie Rose and Barry Goldwater

Charlie Rose interviews Barry Goldwater



Quintessential Barry Goldwater

Hope is not in Arkansas or from Chicago, it is in the Village in NYC

The Village Voice is not on my regular reading list but I highly commend this must read article by David Mamet.

Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full

"And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I
thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? "

U S Postal Service -- How to Care -- UPDATE

About twice a year, I receive a plastic bag from the United States Post Office with the remnants of shredded mail inside. A “sincere apology” pre-printed on the bag explains how a government agency that repeatedly is raising the postal tax has to process great volumes by the “most expeditious distribution possible.”

To be completely fair to the post office it is usually not a piece of first class mail but a magazine rendered illegible by the government machinery. The magazine publishers receive a discount for being the best customers and sending high volumes of mail. The best customers get the worst treatment.

The first time I received one of these bags was during the Clinton presidency and I noted at that time that the US Postal Service really cares about nothing because it is a government monopoly. As I showed the bag to friends, I asked what type of system and apology they might expect from a socialized health system. Would the US Department of Socialized Medicine have body bags explaining that in order to provide the most expeditious care possible we sometimes make mistakes and ask for our understanding?

Government health care should be limited to mandates to employers who can then provide through a free enterprise system. At most, they should hand out vouchers to the needy to purchase health care coverage and services. The myriad rules, regulations, and waste of Medicare and Medicaid teach us that government does not practice medicine well.
The last sentence on the bag states, “We assure you that we are constantly striving to improve our processing methods in order that even a rare occurrence may be eliminated.” As I stated earlier, this occurs about twice a year and my first receipt of a mail “body bag” was over 10 years ago.

“Government is not the solution to our problems, Government is the problem.” Ronald Reagan

UPDATE:The post office has determined that the frequent increases in first class mail are insufficient and they may need to suspend one day of mail shredding each week. Think about the corollary with health care. Doctors offices, clinics, hospitals, labs, and ambulance services shut down one day a week to save money.

William F. Buckley, Jr. Nov. 24, 1925 - Feb. 17, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3447250.ece

http://www.nationalreview.com/


Billy,

May ye have been in heaven a half an hour before the devil knew ye dead.

Sympathy to Christoper and the family.

DJR