Sunday, March 4, 2012

Random Thoughts for March

Random Thoughts for March, 2012
Robert A. Hall

Here’s a great idea. Since Wisconsin has open primaries, in the Recall Election primary, all supporters of Scott Walker can vote on the Democrat side, and write in Walker. If he wins the Democrat primary, it’s game over. I beat a Democrat in the 1976 Democrat state senate primary in my district (we were both running on write-ins), thus being the only name on the ballot in November.

I’m starting this right after watching the Super Bowl. As a NE Patriots fan, I was quite disappointed. Took me almost until I went to bed two hours later to get over it. But in Florida a guy was shot dead at a SB party. Here in Chicago, four people including him were killed by a drunk leaving a SB party, going the wrong way on I-80. And at my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, they had to break up student riots with tear gas. Pay attention. IT’S A GAME. Way down the list of what’s important in this world.

As regular readers know, I have Pulmonary Fibrosis, an eventually terminal illness. In fact, since the average time from diagnosis to death is 3-5 years, I’m about a year past my sell-by date. But I try to make those compromises with the disease I have to make, and go on with life, ignoring it as much as possible. I note some folks embrace the disease so it’s the major thing in their lives, better than a hobby. Thus letting it destroy their lives earlier than necessary.

We are all mostly enjoying life and averting our eyes, as Europeans did in July of 1914 and again in July of 1939.

In a continuing effort to appease Muslims out of murdering us kuffer, word is the Left is changing the words of its theme song to, "Kumbaya my Allah, kumbaya."

My suggested new motto for Chicago: “On the lake, on the make and on the take.”

Marine uniforms have been much sharper than Army uniforms since at least WWI. But it had to have been a Marine who slipped the Army the idea that a French black beret would look cool with dress uniforms or be practical with field uniforms (which they now wear everywhere, not just in the field). As far as I can tell, they haven't gotten the joke yet.

Is it me, or are more people than ever using "your" when they mean "you're"? Yes, my fingers are likely to type either, but I try to proof. Language is important. There's a major difference between "knowing your shit" and "knowing you're shit."

If you are sloppy in e-mail, you can’t blame folks for thinking you are a sloppy person.

Reading a book, even a novel, often changes how you think and how you view the world. I'm certain that being immersed in Robert Heinlein's science fiction novels, and later Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series, both started in Junior High, influenced my worldview. For the better, I think. And certainly Leon Uris' Battle Cry led me to the Marines, and his Mila 18 influenced my views on Jews and Israel in a positive way. The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater helped form my political views. I read these in High School. Pick your books carefully and read a wide variety.

The definition of “naïve” is an adult who still believes in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and what he reads in the newspapers.

All people want is a candidate who won't raise the debt, raise taxes, create inflation, spend more than we take in, drive jobs overseas, make the country weak, endanger public safety or cut any program that might ever benefit them in any way. Is that so hard?
 
The GOP nomination fight is starting to create some nostalgia for McCain, I think. Not to mention Bush.

It will be a real travesty if they don’t make La Internationale the permanent theme song of the Democrat convention.

You want to see a chart of “ethnic cleansing” made flesh? Graph the percentages of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and other religious minorities living in Muslim-majority countries over the last 40 years.

Despite its continuing failure, leftist economists still apparently believe that the route to prosperity is immense debt, driving large businesses overseas through high taxes and regularity costs, and driving small businesses under the same way. And the economically-ignorant vote for it, out of politically-honed envy.
How about a new voting rule: In order to vote, you have to show up with a check to pay off 1% of your share of the national debt?

The Culture War is over. Our Culture lost. (Individual responsibility, hard work, tolerance of other’s religious views, freedom of speech however offensive, limited government, property rights, the rule of law, the right to better your and your family’s economic condition unrestrained, family itself, the right to benefit from what you earn. The freedom to be let alone.)

My surgeon friend Dave refers to the actions of government bureaucrats as, “The revenge of the “C” students.”

Planned Parenthood was established to reduce the number of the “unfit” being born, compared to the “fit.” Looking around, they failed. (No, that’s not racist. Planned Parenthood’s idea of the unfit was based on race. Mine is based on behavior.)

I wonder if when Margaret Sanger established Planned Parenthood so “more of the fit and fewer of the unfit would be born,” she had any idea that in much of the 21st century world, the designation “unfit” would be based on gender, not race as she was thinking, thus aborting millions of babies for having a flower instead of a stem.

When liberals talk about a “war on women,” do they mean the millions of baby girls aborted in India and China thanks to modern pro-abortion policies?

Today’s liberals revere JFK. But if he were here today, running on the things he stood for, they’d rip him as a right-wing kook. (And boy, would his sex life be fair game for them now!)

I use Twitter when I have a few minutes in order to pick up links for my blog. But I have no idea why people tweet things like, “I’m having lunch at Denny’s on
Third Street
.” Who could care?

When I was a State Senator, they were going to name a street after me, but they realized no one crosses Bob Hall and lives.

If you have a job, you are in Customer Service. You may not know it, of course.

I wonder if the fact that liberals love bikes while conservatives love cars is helping the growing 2:1 ratio of conservatives to liberals in the US, given the outcome of most bike/car accidents?

From my friend George: When you are about to cast your vote for Obama, just remember that Whitney Houston died on his watch.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the people we helped win in Libya will eventually help people trying to kill us for being infidels.

The good news is that I really think Obama is going to make me rich. The bad news is that I think he’ll do that by steadily lowering the definition of who are “the rich who aren’t paying their fair share.” Having recently spent six hours on my tax returns, I kind of feel I’m already paying enough. But that’s just me. Warren Buffet thinks he isn’t paying enough, though the records indicate he isn’t paying what he already owes. And there’s no law stopping him from paying more, if he wants to, but he doesn’t.

If Obama had to make a political decision between saving your job and making his rich, 1% liberal friends feel all green and fuzzy over the environment, you had better get your resume updated.
Reporters once used, "who, what, when where and why" to write good news stories. But if it involves Islamic terrorism, they now skip the "why" in favor of some pabulum like "random violence," and avoid identifying the religion of the "who" if they possibly can.

I was talking with a couple of women at lunch recently. One said she was glad she retired from the phone company where she worked. The union came in, and she was reprimanded for not hanging up on a customer mid call and going to lunch at 12:00 noon on the dot, per the union rules. The other said she takes stuff to read to work at her company, because after the union came in the union steward told her more than once she worked too fast, making it hard on everyone. So she has a lot of free time at work, so as not to make the other union workers look bad. Meanwhile, American companies taking jobs overseas or to “right to work” states? Just "bad luck."

If they are talking about millions of dollars, it's a lotto prize. Government now only talks about billions and trillions.

In a free country, you are free to make as much money as your talent, hard work and, perhaps luck allow to improve your and your family’s lifestyle. Life isn't fair. It's certainly not fair that Tom Brady was born with athletic gifts that allow him to make more money in a year than I can in a lifetime. Nor is it fair that John Kerry married a rich widow that allows him to be probably the richest US Senator and to own yachts docked in Rhode Island to duck Massachusetts taxes, while I married a widow of, shall we say, more modest means. Is it fair that a surgeon has the brains and drive to get 14 years of education and training after high school, thus to make in a year what a Wal-Mart Greeter makes in 15? But if they made the same salary, who would go to medical school? Barack Obama's idea of fair is he gets to decide what your income is. After he decides, you can bet that neither he nor his elite friends will suffer any deprivation or miss any expensive vacations. His idea of fair is that the 5% who pay 60% of the income taxes should pay more, while the 47% of people who pay none at all should grow to be a permanent majority.

I’m on the Liberal Diet. I gain about ten pounds a month, but I was going to gain fifteen and cut back to ten, so it’s a huge success.

I recently got an e-mail from a woman I dated almost 40 years ago, who tracked me down because of  “I’m Tired.” She said we probably wouldn’t get alone now, as she is an Obama campaign worker. And her take is not to worry about the debt, because it’s not real money—the government can just print more. She is a retired educator. We are so doomed.

Since I do these “Random Thoughts” about once a month, I’m not sure how often I circle back to a thought. The privilege, I guess, of the aged and enfeebled.

If our immigration laws are “racist,” why don’t we adopt the same laws Mexico has. They must be perfectly free of racism, since they criticize us.

I suspect very few of the folks who are always lobbying to use the military to achieve their social goals were ever under fire themselves.

If a person left, “to take another position,” he quit. If he, “left to pursue other opportunities,” he was fired.

I used TurboTax this year for my taxes. It was great until Illinois rejected the return—twice—for some picky thing on the electronic signature. Getting back to that section was a nightmare, not intuitive at all. And getting help from TurboTax was a double nightmare. It’s not like I’m computer illiterate. I finally did it the old fashioned way—I printed and mailed it.

I’m told the Jews have a wonderful custom. In addition to praying for someone who is sick or in need, you do extra acts of kindness to others in their behalf, which is pleasing to God. It appears that the Islamists have a similar custom. In order to please Allah, you slaughter additional random innocents, with dismembered children apparently being most pleasing to their concept of god.

The Jihadists’ use of child suicide bombers is starting to make the Nazis look good.

E-mails where large sections of the copy are in BRIGHT RED CAPS can safely be deleted without reading.

Back in the 1960s, the “do your own thing” counter culture made fun of “traditional values” like the protestant work ethic and belief in God. Their children are now finding out how ugly it is to live in a culture without those derided values.

Three trends that doom our culture and country: 1. Judges deciding cases on their personal feelings of what is right and “fair,” not on the law. 2. Educators teaching students what to think, not how to think. 3. Journalists advocating for an agenda, not reporting the news straight up.

I have to admit that Obama has increased jobs and increased available energy supplies. Okay, it was in China, but still…

When Obama said he didn’t want his daughters “punished with a child,” do you get the feeling he was thinking of his mother?

Republicans longing for Reagan need to remember that he wasn’t Reagan before he was Reagan, and sometimes not afterwards. (You gotta think about it. All candidates are flawed.)

It drive me nuts when people use “Ex-Officio” to mean “non-voting.” It means by virtue of the office, can be voting or non-voting, as set up.

Campaign fundraisers on all political sides wake up each morning and think, “Who can I demonize today to raise money from the base?”

The correct pronunciation of “forte,” when you mean strength is “FORT.” Yes, I know in the last few years many dictionaries, overwhelmed with folks who think using the musical term is chic and say FOR-TAY for strength, have begun giving that as a second usage. Doesn’t make it right.

All political freedom and economic well-being above the subsistence level for the general populations in western civilization depends on property rights and the ability of individuals to accumulate capital. That so few of our “educated” younger generation have been educated to understand this is a failure that may doom future generations to slavery and poverty.

My wife always wants me to be more expressive. So the other night I said, “I love you dear…in spite of everything.” Apparently that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Do you get the feeling that a lot of voters would have to study the issues long and hard just to get to the level of "uninformed"?
Many people try to disguise cowardice as principal.

With countries as with people, when you prove untrustworthy, you are not trusted. This comes as a shock to many.

Many, perhaps most, people wish so hard that the world was like they want it to be that they become blinded to the world as it is. Yes, I’m thinking of progressives, but conservatives and the folks in the mushy middle are guilty as well.
Healthcare is a need, so it’s become a “right” you are owed by other people. Soon your need for food, clothing and shelter will become a “right” you are owed by other people. And of course, sex is a human need….  I’m getting in line at Hooter’s now.

Liberty” and “Equality” are incompatible. A quest for equality requires ever more coercion. Eventually, even Robespierre goes under the blade.

If the troops really wanted Obama’s support, they’d join a union and make political contributions.

If you reward behavior, you get more of it. If you punish behavior, you get less of it. But still politicians get elected promising to punish success and reward failure.

It seems to me there are some real odd ducks in my profession of association management. And it seems to me that I’m one of them.

I don’t feel self-conscious about having to pull an oxygen tank around, but I do hate that some people are thinking, “That’s what he gets for smoking cigarettes.” I didn’t, and pulmonary fibrosis has no connection to smoking. But maybe someone will see me and quit, so I suppose that’s to the good.

I don't agree with Mormon theology. Or Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or Bahia theology for that matter. Some days I don't even agree with my own theology! But if the Mormons want to baptize me, now or after I'm dead, they are welcome to, as long as it doesn't take any effort or cash on my part. Can't hurt, might help.
Many of my retired friends have developed the hobby of searching the Internet for interesting things and sharing them via e-mail. Not being retired yet, I wish I had time to open them.

Funny how the left can spot racism in every nook, cranny and word, but not the huge load they carry around and depend on to obtain power and buy votes.

Slogan: Obama loves the poor. That’s why he made so many of them.

I got an e-mail from Nancy Pelosi with the subject: “Vicious.” I thought she was confessing, but she was just fund raising. Millions of innocent electrons, generated by coal, died to send me that.

*****

Robert A. Hall is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
For a free PDF of the book, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com

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