Clear Thoughts, Living Free

I couldn’t sleep Tuesday night. I went off to bed feeling uncertain with a bad taste in my mouth, my head throbbing with perplexing doubt. I thought that the election was all about the numbers, economic numbers. I was completely wrong. Everyone can take whatever they want and interpret the results however they please, to me this election was won by the takers and the enablers based on ignorance and the blaming of an administration that is four years in the past that spent less than the current one (in twice the time no less). It was won based on the personal destruction of a good and decent man, one who had the tools to be a successful President with a stellar resume containing extensive private and public sector experience. I spent countless time defending him from crude caricatures and misrepresentations, in the end it did not matter.

I will have no criticism of the Republican candidate, he attempted to run an optimistic campaign and he did as well as anyone could have against the tide. I reject the conventional wisdom of many who share my basic principles who seem to think that Republicans must embrace a candidate because of their physical and genetic characteristics along with rhetorical prowess. I reject the thinking that the Republicans must compromise basic principles and shun those whose thinking is considered impolitic by so-called progressive liberals. I reject the notion that this great country has neither right nor obligation to define and protect its borders and define immigration in a way that benefits this country and its citizenry. I reject the notion that unborn children have no rights and that there should be no debate about their systematic destruction when it is a matter of convenience. I reject the breakdown of language that results in the invention of tangible rights made up of consumables that are decidedly not free because they have costs that must be paid.

I realized on Wednesday that I am a dinosaur, as I approach my mid-thirties. I believe that big government fosters dependency and through that destroys initiative and personal responsibility. I think that big government divides us because it forces too many of us to participate in things that we have no desire to, to pay for things many of us find abhorrent while we have to make do with less in order to cover those things we find important and want to take care of ourselves. Those beliefs were rejected by the majority of an electorate who thinks contraception is free and any thinks that opposition of such is the result of a desire to deny access because we see it as a personal decision and responsibility. Forget them.

I will always be a Conservative and a Republican and I love this country. The federal government, it has clearly changed fundamentally and has no use for someone like me except to leach off my hard work. I do not want to “pitch in” more, if the federal government was efficient and limited to only those things that were truly necessary I would be more conducive to the message. Every day the definition of what’s necessary is expanded by the takers who have figured out they can vote themselves “free” things that they should really be taking care of themselves. I am now disengaged from the political process as a choice. It is a time for personal austerity and intelligent investing. My new goal is to learn how to legally minimize my taxable income. There are many things that I think government should do and much that it should not. Those elected and much of the electorate rejects this, they can have each other. I will protect what is mine moving forward and let them vote themselves trinkets into bankruptcy.

The Straight Ticket

I got myself in trouble with the missus last week because I failed to vote for a judicial candidate she preferred, thinking that I did so as an insult to her personally. Of course this wasn’t the case and like anyone actually trying to get out of a hole I stopped digging by not explaining myself any further. What happened was that I effectively voted straight ticket in early voting last week.

I understand that there are many who believe that straight ticket voting is a bad thing and the reasons against it appear reasonable. I don’t have an opinion for or against the practice and I don’t agree with the overt sanctification of voting this time of year. I couldn’t care less if anyone votes or not, it’s a personal choice and the constant nagging (i.e. “civic duty”) and self-aggrandizing (i.e. “I voted” stickers) over it is just as annoying as the nonstop commercials aimed at terrifying those dependent on government entitlements (as if the reality of impending bankruptcy can be deflected by pretty words).

In any case, I didn’t actually vote straight ticket, I voted separately for each contest and the result happened to be a virtual straight ticket (virtual because there were several single party races). At the top of the ballot, President, Senate, House, etc., there is a clear and discernible difference between candidates. At the judicial and local level, the difference is much more minute and sometimes impossible to discern.

I read the available position and biographical information and didn’t have a reason to vote against many of the candidates. I went with my gut, and considered voluntary association. At the top level of the ballot I was voting for the person I voted for and at the same time was voting against the other candidate. In the presidential and senatorial contests I was voting with extreme vigor against. Anyway, the tie-breakers down the line where I didn’t have a preference one way or the other went for the party I voted for at the top. There are several candidates this year that have so offended me through their campaigns that I consider any association with them, however meager, to be a net negative and party affiliation is not meager.

So, that’s my early-voting-got-me-in-trouble story. Of course no one’s going to stop nominating people who I think are jerks but it does affect my voting down the line, perhaps I’m not the only one. So, vote or not, for any or no reason. Fingers crossed the path more conducive to reality wins. Five more days!

The Television Programmers versus Distributors Cat Fight

DirecTV subscribers currently do not have Viacom channels, some of them good, as part of their subscriptions. Dish network’s subscribers currently do not have AMC channels, home to the mesmerizing and Albuquerque located Breaking Bad, as part of their subscriptions. The programming providers want more money for their product. Seemingly nothing wrong with that, except that product is bundled as part of larger packages distributed to customers and that more money will come from increased prices for those customers which might lead to canceled subscriptions, resulting in lower revenues to distributors. Both sides have launched cheesy campaigns worthy of a slimy political contest in attempts to blame the other side for their joint issues and distract the consumer from their ever growing monthly television bill. This cat fight is one in which the observer hopes both sides lose leading to a revamped home television entertainment model, one in which consumers can choose the programming they want. Currently, customers only have the choice of packages determined by distributors who have to include packages sold to them by programmers. It’s an outdated and doomed model; the only question is when the transition will take place. The sooner, the better.

The Most Inane Comparison in the World

Apparently July is the emptiest of all months in the sporting universe. As proof, the only proof necessary, is the kerfuffle over the supposed theoretical victor in an altogether impossible basketball game between the original Olympic dream team of 1992 and today’s of 2012. This idiotic episode was prompted by a question posed a few weeks back to Kobe Bryant pondering who would win. Kobe, often regarded as a legendarily competitive athlete, answered in the somewhat hesitant affirmative. There are almost endless reasons why there is absolutely no way to know which team would win in this theoretical matchup, the first being the absence of time travel (required for resolution). Unfortunately, this unconditional fact was no deterrent whatsoever to many commentators determined to opine; leading to many unlistenable sports radio shows and unreadable sports news websites for almost a week. Recently, the argument mercifully jumped the shark with President Obama jumping on board to declare his support for the 1992 team, the conventional (yet still completely subjective and unprovable) answer given by most. This whole episode might seem to be innocuous and it could have been but the indignation displayed by some commentators with regard to a question without an answer, completely based on subjective feelings, was so stupid, inane and annoying that it begs for scorn. It wouldn’t prove anything but maybe Michael Jordan, who appears to have taken to retirement donut in hand, will lead the 1992 team back onto the court one more time in an attempt to end this national nightmare.

More "Fair" Claptrap

In silly, over-the-top, disconnected from reality overtly political statements for the day the President of the United States of America makes his pitch for raising tax rates on families with incomes more than $250,000 per year:

“Let’s not hold the vast majority of Americans and ourentire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for thewealthy”

Taking the President’s words as literal, in his apparent understanding, Americans are supposed to think that because he supports raising taxes on a minority segment of the population, that those who do not think that raising anyone’s tax rates is economically sound are taking the rest of the population hostage because he will not support legislation maintaining all current tax rates. Seems a bit like projection.

The much derided “Bush” tax cuts of the early 2000’s are, as they have during President Obama’s entire misguided presidency, the object of much deranged scrutiny. Never mind that they have been the tax rates for nearly 10 years, actually resulted in increases in revenue collected year to year and maintained a progressive rate of taxation by income level (higher rates on higher income), these tax rates haunt political discussion like some kind of chupacabra of the fevered liberal mind.

The President was once asked if he would seek these kinds of increases even if they led to decreased revenue generation and he answered in the affirmative, under the auspices of “fairness”. Fairness being a word whose definition has been twisted to the point of being basically meaningless because it seems to mean anything to anyone. The plea to the majority is further discouraging because it illustrates a problem with direct democracy, don’t the minority of taxpayers deserve some kind of protection from confiscatory tax rates enabled by a majority? To some, there is no tax rate too high on and no problem that cannot be solved with other people’s money. How it is considered “fair” for one erstwhile “free” citizen to pay so much more, as a percentage of their lawfully earned gains, of the government’s activities than others is going to be a determining factor in this year’s election. Those who can conceive this as “fair” should not be surprised as the population of chupacabras shrinks; one wonders who or what they’ll blame next.