THE AFTERMATH
Guy de Maupassant ends his great novel “Une Vie” with the statement “Life is never as good or as bad as one thinks.” Conservatives should understand that in politics, things are rarely as good or as bad as one thinks in the aftermath of an election.
Hat tip Paul MirengoffDEMOCRACY’S FATE
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
ca. 1840WELCOME TO RANDOM THOTS
If you are a new reader of Random Thots we invite you to click on the SELECTED POSTS link in the FEATURES sidebar on the right.
Here you will find a list of the most significant articles published within the last year or so, each with a brief synopsis of its content and an easy link to the full article.
FEATURES
Search Random Thots
-
LAST 20 POSTS
- HOW YOUR TAX MONEY IS BEING SPENT – THE PROCESS
- WHAT DEBT?
- SOMEONE WILL HAVE TO PAY THE BILLS
- A CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARIAN LOOKS AT THE U.S.
- SOLUTIONS ARE NOT THE ROAD TO POWER, A CRISIS IS
- WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND IT’S US
- OLD WHITE MEN AND THE FISCAL CLIFF
- WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS?
- GIMME THAT OLD TIME SECESSION…
- JUSTAKARTOON
- JOHN KERRY FOR SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
- REACTION FROM A READER
- “MORE FLEXIBILITY AFTER MY RE-ELECTION”
- THE RESCUE OF AIRMAN ROGER LOCHER
- IT WAS NOT ONLY ABOUT STUFF
- AMERICA LOST THE ELECTION
- IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE ELECTION RESULTS HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO
- THE LAWN SIGN AND BUMPER STICKER PREDICTOR
- SNIPPETS FROM ELSEWHERE
- OBAMA’S INFRASTRUCTURE DEMOLITION TEAM
Monthly Archives
Category Archives: Uncategorized
ImageA SNIPPET ABOUT THE CHEVROLET VOLT
The snippet is from a serious blogger with a sense of humor, or at least a good sense of the ridiculous or he wouldn’t call himself Senator Blutarsky. The moniker is fitting if you consider the Volt is somewhat of an Animal House product. Here is the Senator’s bottom line.
THE BOTTOM LINE: even with generous assumptions, the first generation of the Chevrolet Volt will consume about $1 billion in federal tax credits, and STILL result in an economic loss to GM shareholders in excess of $600 million over its lifetime. Without the subsidies, the cumulative loss would triple to $1.8 billion.
Go to the Senator’s own words if you want to read the nitty-gritty above the Bottom Line. Be forewarned, he uses a lot of numbers. Why not simply divide $1 billion by the number of people who pay taxes to see how much of your money has been invested in the Government Volt.
Let it go at that, watch tonight’s debate and don’t neglect to vote.
Posted in Environment, Humor, Uncategorized
Tagged Blutarsky, Chevrolet Volt, Pure economic loss, Volt
DEMOCRATS AGAINST DEMOCRACY
In a republic, representatives are chosen to debate and vote the issues on behalf of its citizens. The representatives are generally expected to vote according to the will of the majority but they are not bound to do so. In a democracy however, the people vote the issues themselves and majority rules – period! How strange it is then that the party that calls themselves Democrats is the party that so often ignores the will of the majority.
Case in point. In the recent primaries, Tennessee Democratic Party voters elected Mark Clayton to be their candidate on the Democratic Party ticket running for the US Senate. But the Democratic Party will have none of it. A Party spokesperson announced that:
“The Tennessee Democratic Party disavows his candidacy, and will not do anything to promote or support him in any way.”
This in spite of the fact the Clayton received nearly twice as many votes as his closest challenger. It goes from the ridiculous to the sublime. The spokesperson added:
“Many Democrats in Tennessee knew nothing about any of the candidates in the race, so they voted for the person at the top of the ticket. Unfortunately, none of the other Democratic candidates were able to run the race needed to gain statewide visibility or support.”
That’s not a reasonable excuse; it’s an admission of incompetence. It says Tennessee Democrats have no minds of their own.
I love Tennessee with its rolling hills and magnificent horse farms. Their politics aren’t bad either. Tennessee voted against Al Gore for president and it cost him the election. If only the people of his home state, who presumably knew him best, had voted for him we never would have learned what a chad is and the Supreme Court would never have been involved.
Some states allow resolutions where every citizen has the opportunity to vote on an issue. The decision may or may not be binding but it’s as democratic as it gets. California voted on Prop. 8 in 2000 and it passed by majority vote. The people had spoken; they made their wishes clear. And then the Democratic Party took the issue to the California Supreme court and won a decision to have the peoples wishes overturned. Californians followed with a new Prop. 8 in 2008. Same issue, same result. The people voted for it by a margin of 52 to 47. Democrats proceed once again to have the will of the people overturned in the courts. A better name for the Party would be the Autocrats.
Posted in Opinion, Uncategorized
GEMS FROM ELSEWHERE NOT TO MISS
Email solicitations for 3 dollar contributions from Carville and Biden are classless, stupid and desperate.
Posted in Uncategorized
MY LAME EXCUSE
Try typing on a computer with a keyboard that has 30 keys for the 26 letters and hides the Y in the lower left corner of the keyboard and you will begin to understand what I am up against. Several keys have 3 symbols. Press only the 8 key and you get the number 8 as expected. But you also need to use the 8 key somehow to type the question mark and the backward backslash. There is both an ALT key and an ALT GR key and another key to type a double S (SS). And I don’ t know where the @ is at. I have not found it anywhere.
All this is just one reason posts have been so sparse while I am overseas on this trip. Don’t ask why I don’t use my own laptop that I brought along. You wouldn’t want to hear that story too. New posts may be sparse until after I get home on Sept 5th.
Posted in Uncategorized
RYAN ROMNEY RALLY ROCKS — 10,000+ PEOPLE SHOW UP
Wisconsin is Paul Ryan’s home state and what a rousing reception he received! More than ten thousand plus cheering fans came in threatening weather to greet Ryan and Romney in the town of Waukesha.
Ryan was born and raised about 60 miles away in Janesville which is a modest sized town in fly-over country. That means it is down home America and Paul Ryan is Janesville’s Mr. Smith who went to Washington. Romney called his running mate “someone who is a leader . . . who has real character, who loves America,”. That’s a change we can hope for.
When the cheering subsided Romney got serious.
“If you follow the campaign of Barack Obama, he’s going to do everything in his power to make this the lowest, meanest negative campaign in history. We’re not going to let that happen.
Mr. President, take your campaign out of the gutter and let’s talk about the real issues that America faces.”
Someone near the stage started heckling the candidates Romney handled the heckler very well. Romney faced the person and said “You ought to find yourself a different place to be disruptive because here we believe in listening to people with dignity and respect.”
We are coming to a fork in the road and if we take the path to the left it will be so precipitous there may be no turning back. It will be the proof that Tocqueville was right. One reason Ronald Reagan was so loved is that he had great faith in the American people, in you and I, to do the right thing when all the chips are down. If we choose the path to the right it will be proof that Reagan was right.
Posted in News, Political philosophy, Political polemics, Uncategorized
Tagged Paul Ryan, Romney, Vice president pick, Wisconsin
PLANTING HATRED
Republicans vs Women. What’s not to love about that headline? Everything. It’s from the New York Times. Okay, It’s an editorial so one needs to allow some leeway but isn’t that over the top… or better said, under the bottom? How about “Democrats vs. Children” for an opinion article about mid-term abortions? Or “Democrats Against Democracy” for an opinion piece about preserving the integrity of the voting process?
The Editorial starts with this howler
“Republicans have not given up on their campaign to narrow access to birth control, abortion care and lifesaving cancer screenings.”
Really? Republicans are against life saving cancer screenings?
”A new Republican spending proposal revives some of the more extreme attacks on women’s health and freedom that were blocked by the Senate earlier in this Congress. The resurrection is part of an alarming national crusade that goes beyond abortion rights and strikes broadly at women’s health in general.”
That statement by the Times doesn’t make the hurdle to be called hate speech. However, asserting that Republicans are fighting life saving cancer screenings and spending taxpayer money in a campaign against women’s health in general does plant hate in the minds of the paper’s readers, many of whom are naive enough to believe such drivel. It seems Republicans have always engaged in “extreme attacks on women’s health”, this is just a revival, a “resurrection” of a perpetual battle against women.
Love flows naturally in the human race. Hatred needs to be stirred. As the nation’s leading newspaper, The New York Times has the biggest spoon. Unfortunately, they are neither careful nor truthful in how they use it.
Posted in Opinion, Political polemics, Uncategorized
WHAT I WOULD DO IF I WERE ELECTED DICTATOR
One thing that annoyed my father to no end was people who dumped spoonfuls of sugar into their tea and never stirred it because that would make it too sweet. It’s something my uncle Eddy did all the time. Uncle Eddy is a story by himself but that will have to wait for another day. It will suffice for now that you to know Uncle Eddy was not my father’s brother. He was my mother’s brother, got it?
The sugar in tea thing was my father’s pet peeve. I am an apple that fell far enough from the tree to have peeves of my own. If I tell you all my peeves it will destroy my marriage. But I will share one — telephone poles.
In my acceptance speech I will vow to fight for enactment of a moratorium on telephone poles. What am I saying! If I were dictator I would have Obamapower, no need to ‘fight for’, I could just proclaim. Good. No new telephone poles; all new wiring goes underground. I am beginning to get giddy from the power already.
Unlike my predecessor, I am not very interested in changing the tides. Let them ebb and flow like they always have and keep the clams happy. Who am I to go up against Mother Nature, aka God?
Next up, the federal department of education. It’s gone. Gone back to the states. The federal government has no business dictating what they want taught to my kids. The teachers unions will not be happy because if a teacher doesn’t teach the teacher will be gone. Tenure — gone. Discipline will be back! I will put the teachers back in charge of the classroom. There is no higher calling than “teacher” and a teacher needs to have the authority that goes with the calling.
On to healthcare. Obamacare is gone. Not back to the states, just gone! The quality of healthcare in America is superb but the delivery system is horrible. I will fix the system without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (Dictators can use as many clichés as they wish).
Tort law has to change. I considered Shakespeare’s advice in Henry VI — “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Too harsh I thought, just a little bit too harsh. We do need to keep a few because there really is such a thing as medical malpractice. But I will change tort law and set doctors free to practice patient medicine, not legal defensive medicine.
Commercials for prescription drugs will not be allowed. If I need a drug my doctor will prescribe it. Who am I to become my own physician by studying an advertisement?
Everyone will have to make a co-pay. Nothing creates greater demand and more waste than the words “It’s free.” I will establish clinics, good clinics, for the truly indigent and uninsured. Emergency rooms will be for emergencies when I am dictator.
I will close the southern border with modern technology, not wire and bricks. Penalties for crossing will be severe. Illegal immigrants who commit felonies will be sent back post- haste. But what’s done is done and cannot be undone. There are many good people here who took advantage of our laxities to make a better home for themselves in a better land. I will offer them a citizenship status where the only threat of deportation will be a criminal conviction. They can start working “on the books” and those who hire them will become law abiding citizens once again.
And when I become dictator you will still be able to buy those curly bulbs, but only if you want to.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged curly bulbs, dictator, Education, healthcare, Obamacare, pet peeve
SOFT TYRANNY AND THE POWER OF THE PURSE
Apple computers are in the process of becoming banned from purchase by employees of the city of San Francisco. The ban is not because of any safety issues; it is not because Macs are made in China; it’s not because of any shortcomings in Apple products and it’s not because Apple has broken any laws. It is because the company chose to drop out of an environmental program that is the ideology du jour of city officials.
San Francisco’s 50 departments and 28,000 employees will no longer be able to use city funds to buy Apple desktops, laptops or monitors because the Cupertino, California-based company dropped out of a rating system called EPEAT to track the environmental impact of computers.
To borrow a phrase from Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, the move by the city is an act of soft tyranny. The impact on the company’s sales was made possible not by law but simply by the power of the purse. Located just 30 miles to the south, Apple is a local boy to the City by the Sea. Apple was the little company with the better product battling the rich and powerful Microsoft that that represented the establishment. Like Volkswagens and Starbucks, the Mac took on some of the aura of the left. But now many on the left are eyeing all that cash the company accumulated and thinks it’s Apple’s moral duty to spend it. The conditions of the employees at the factories in China that build the computers have not escaped notice either. Once a favorite, now Apple is a whipping boy of the left.
Apple dropped out of EPEAT because they were denied a favorable green ruling for a new product line.
At the heart of the controversy is the company’s newest MacBook Pro with Retina Display, which Apple designed in such a way that it’s difficult to disassemble for the sake of repairs, upgrades, and recycling.
So an international agency that rates a company on its greenishness gives an unsatisfactory rating to Apple because some of its new computers are hard to take apart. What’s next, a ban on Oreo cookies because a Swedish cookie rating agency says they are black on the outside, white on the inside and can be used as hate filled analogies?
Apple can survive a city ban; the impact will not even be noticeable. But if a city can bring this off on such a frivolous basis, who is to say the federal government could not do the same?
Posted in Uncategorized