Random Thoughts

As Dr. Thomas Sowell often points out, bringing the price down doesn’t bring the actually cost down. It shifts the cost to someone else. Wanting something to be “affordable” means you want someone else to bear part of the cost, to bring the price down for you. I want the Government to make a new BMW sports car “affordable” for me. I figure I can afford $5,000 and the taxpayers should pick up the rest. Barack is cool. Shouldn’t being “cool” be a right?

I’ve been the hiring authority in an office for 37 years. I’m still amazed at people who apply for jobs and don’t send all the requested information, or who send resumes and cover letters full of typos, who don’t send thank you notes for an interview, or who show up to interview in flip flops, torn jeans and on females very low cut tops. The technical name for such folks is “the unemployed.” I wish I had time to open a job coaching service on the side, with resume reviews and mock interviews. I’d be worth every penny.

Chicago has had its coldest July on record, with temps never reaching 90. I kind of like how this global warming thing is working out in the summer, but it was hell the last two winters.

If Islam is a “Religion of Peace and Tolerance,” as we are constantly told, the folks who really misunderstand Islam are tens of millions of Muslims, including a large chunk of Islamic scholars and teachers, who use or support violence in behalf of establishing Shari’a law. American commentators spouting the “Religion of Peace” line should go and discuss it with the Taliban or the Mullahs in Iran to get a first hand view. While there, they could attend the stoning of a raped teenage girl charged with adultery, or the hanging of some Gays folks, or at least help throw acid on a girl for going to school. Maybe help with a few “honor killings.”

If reports are true, the Obama Administration has provided a terrific stimulus for one sector of the economy—firearm and ammo sales are reportedly way up.

A Marine friend reports he asked his stockbroker what he was buying. The answer was “canned good and ammo.”

I can’t keep up with e-mail, and my pile of unread books keeps growing. How do people do Facebook and Twitter? (Silly Twitter—Tweets are for Twits!)

The Health Care “Reform” debate seems to me to be a perfect example of the old adage that, “Figures don’t lie—but liars figure.” I read a lot about it, and have reached the point where I don’t believe anyone’s numbers. But experience tells me that government programs ALWAYS cost far more than predicted. (I’ve read that the Government though the steel producers were cheating them during WWI, and that the government could produce steel at 60% of the cost. So they started a steel plant. Which came on line—at twice the predicted cost, a year after the war ended. It delivered one batch of steel, at about twice what private enterprise charged, then closed.)

When politicians make economic decisions, the decisions will be made on the basis of politics, not economics.

We recently dined al fresco at a Bulgarian restaurant. The food was great, but eavesdropping on the conversations at other tables wasn’t much fun.

The Democrats honor Thomas Jefferson for founding their party. Be better if they honored him by following his principles. Not that Republicans always live upp to Lincoln’s standards.

All it would take would be one small asteroid strike or a super eruption of Yellowstone or another large volcano to make all our fretting about global warming, the environment and most everything else meaningless. Not to worry, though, Yellowstone only erupts about every 600,000 years. And the last one was only 640,000 years ago.

The people worrying about Obama’s birth certificate are wasting their time. You could prove he was born on Mars and the courts would find a way to rule he was an American citizen. They aren’t going to overturn an election, especially knowing doing so would result in riots in the major cities, with a lot of deaths and millions in destruction.

But the best new bumper sticker is: “Don’t blame me, I voted for the American.” If I can’t beat my enemies, I like to annoy them.

I’m sure I’m not the only one in America who couldn’t have cared less about Michael Jackson’s death, and had zero interest in his funeral. But it seemed like it.

Looking at the unfunded liability for Medicare and Social Security, I think my being on the leading edge of the Baby Boomers may not be such a bad thing. Good luck to you young ‘ens, who will have to pay for an increasing number of oldsters. (Unless rationing health care gets some great demographic results for you.)

The stimulus bill was intended to use our money—or actually money borrowed from the future—to stimulate favored groups to vote for the Congresscritters who passed it. So, in that respect, we already have public financing of campaigns. If I give you ten bucks out of my pocket to vote for me, it’s a crime. If I give your group ten million in tax dollars so you’ll vote for me, it’s an “investment in the future.”

If the Democrats think BO’s deficits are an investment in the economy, how come they thought Bush’s much smaller deficits were an abomination? Actually, of course, both the 2008 deficit under Bush and the 2009 deficit under Obama had to be passed by the Democrat controlled Congress. But people don’t seem to know that.

Being offended seems to me to be the fastest-growing industry in the country. It can pay well, too, if you can blackmail some one into coughing up.

Much as I’m not a fan of the media, I think the decline of newspapers is a very bad thing. Reading on the Internet is fine, except we tend to read things that reinforce our biases, and also focus in on just things that interest us, thus missing general news and knowledge. I suppose this makes me officially a dinosaur or, better, a curmudgeon.

People don’t seem to be getting any smarter about sex. I’m probably not any smarter myself—just older and too tired to do much stupid.

It will be 45 years on August 16 since I arrived at Parris Island, SC, for the defining three months of my life. No one who hasn’t gone through Parris Island, MCRD San Diego or Quantico will ever really understand that.

I’ve read that old people need less sleep. I must not be old, because I seem to need more the last few years.

On the other hand, when I flirt with young women, they are more likely to think I’m “cute” than dangerous. That’s a revolting development.

If Bush had talked about Hirohito coming down to surrender to McArthur, or the “Austrian” language, the media would never allow us to forget how dumb he was. And Heaven forbid if he’d ever made a snide joke about the Special Olympics. We’d hear about it at least weekly.

The collapse of the housing market hasn’t seemed to teach anything to the people pushing more home ownership for poor people.

When I contemplate the future, with the steady growth of the statist party in government, I’m not entirely unhappy that I won’t be here for too much of it.

I think that too much TV has destroyed people’s reasoning powers. On TV, all problems are solved in 30 or 60 minutes, with a satisfying conclusion. So we expect that all problems in the real world can be neatly solved in that time frame. Bush was pilloried because Katrina wasn’t instantly cleaned up. Now Obama is discovering that the expectations he raised on the economy are hard to meet in the world of instant gratification.

Is a white person who was born in Zimbabwe or South Africa, and became a US Citizen, an “African-American”? How about an Arab born in Egypt? Why not? (It’s a real hoot to hear political correct folks refer to the natives in Africa as “African-Americans” as they sometimes do.)

If the Islamists set off an A-bomb in DC or NYC, remember that Obama’s Department of Homeland Security was watching me and my fellow veterans.

Back in the 70s, very conservative Republicans helped defeat Sen. Ed Brooke. His replacement was Paul Tsongas, followed by John Kerry. How that was an improvement for Republicans, I’ll never understand. But they still want to defeat the “RINOs,” ensuring Democrats control of the Congress.

No matter how much power we give to the statists, they will never achieve equality of outcomes, their dream. Equality of opportunity is possible, but they keep putting their thumb on the scale to try to get the same results for all.

The media has misused the word “hero” so much, most people think it means “celebrity.” We have so many real heroes among us in our military, fire and police services and veterans, and mostly unrecognized by the population they served.

I’m happy to see they are starting to prosecute those sick phonies who claim military medals they didn’t earn, or to have been POWs or on secret missions. I say that as a Marine whose highest personal decoration was a richly-undeserved Good Conduct Medal.

It’s funny that the people who keep saying Bush’s deregulation of financial institutions led to the economic crisis were the same folks who blocked Bush’s efforts to better regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Or it would be funny if I wasn’t so close to retirement, with a depleted IRA.

I’m sick and tired of being discriminated against by Asians, as a white male. I mean, Asians get accepted into universities at higher rates, and were given mortgages at higher rates than whites, which proves they are discriminating against us. Or at least, when the difference was between blacks and whites, it proved discrimination to the satisfaction of the courts and Congress.

And Jews keep discriminating against blacks and Hispanics, which you can prove because Jews are over represented in good paying jobs, while those minorities are under represented. Of course, the average age of Jews in America is somewhere in the 40s, while for blacks and Hispanics it’s around 18, and older folks tend to be better employed, due to experience and education. But “representation in the population” is the standard for proving discrimination. Which means I have a case against the NBA, which discriminates against old, fat, short white guys, based on their percentage in the population. The fact that I can’t do the job has nothing, legally, to do with it.

Obama may do one thing Bush sure couldn’t—make Bush look good.

As long as there are beeches and sunshine and college girls and bikinis, the world is a sill a pretty good place.