If this doesn't make you cringe, you are the problem. (updated)

Irregardless of whether or not ending a sentence with a preposition is one of your personal peeves, I think Western Pennsylvanians supposably say it wrong more often. So, for all intensive purposes, I was right that it's an eastern peccadillioe. Not that you need to call the calvary or anything; No need to go nucular about it. It's prolly not a big deal anyhow. Though I do admit that it can be really fustrating when people say things that bother you. Aks yourself: is it just the way people are brought up? I could care less personally, it's just an itch that I've always wanted to, you know, itch. But are we loosing any attachment to grammar, spelling, and sentence usage? Maybe it's the evils of spell-check, or perhaps people just don't spend enough time in the libary. Whatever the problem, we need a concerned effort to nip it in the butt because less and less people are good writers.

"Daily" short: Conservative Politics are Harder

I've put my finger on another one of those things that has bothered me for a while, but refused to take shape in my brain: When a conservative goes against his principles or makes a mistake, it's because he's wrong. When a liberal goes against his "principles"... or at least his campaign promises, he's actually right!
Pretty basic, but also a pretty good explanation of why the Republican takeover of the 90's ended because they failed to live up to their own goals, but Barack Obama can continue to contradict his party, his campaign, and even himself from week to week and get away with it: He's usually flip-flopping to the correct answer. OK... to the less wrong answer.

Put another way, if a conservative runs on conservatives principles - also known as reality - but then governs like a liberal, he's useless. He's a liar, he's a bad leader, and he's quite frankly wrong. The governor of California comes to mind. And, in fact, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress come to mind. They say one thing during the campaign, but then screw everything up when in office. But liberals don't carry this onus. They're wrong the whole time they're campaigning. So when they actually do something that goes against those principles, everybody's happy. If you run on closing Gitmo, immediate withdrawal of troops, and banning guns, but then leave the prison open, keep the preceding secretary of defense running a continuing war, and respect - or at least pretend not to notice - the 2nd amendment... well, it's hard to criticize those things. And because conservatives attack ideas, we also acknowledge when people get things right. A liberal would never stray so far from his agenda just to acknowledging truth.

Great (and funny) article on the economy

Here is a great piece talking about how backwards and damaging the administration's approach to the economy is. It's also a great off-hand warning about Obamacare!

homicide

It has been a full month since my last post, and I apologize. Kinda. My post deployment break (yeah, I figured it was pretty obvious why I'm doing this anonymously, so I've decided to just hang that out there. I don't speak for the military, I'm just in it... for now) is over, and I'm going to try to get back into this. Luckily, Chris Matthews has provided me a segue.

Mathews has been really getting his figurative ass handed to him lately, and it's good to see. But I heard something today that independently irked me. OK, I didn't so much hear it as read the hearing impaired subtitles while listening to Rush (not the band) on my iPod and running on the gym treadmill. But I digress. The point is that I didn't catch the whole discussion, but it was about the abortion doctor killing that just happened in Kansas. Like I said, I didn't hear the whole discussion, but I did hear Mathews saying that his guest should not use the term "murder" of an unborn child because even if you believe that it is "killing" another person, murder is a "legal term".

Now, for the record, I'm walking a fine line here with regards to the murder of the doctor. I do not think it was right. I am not in favor of vigilante justice of abortion doctors, mostly because I believe that it hurts the pro-life cause more than it helps it. If we are to remain a nation of laws in spite of our current government, then as civilized people we must work within those laws until such time (if ever) that it becomes impossible to preserve freedom that way. So for the record, I'm against it.

But morally, I also "get it". I do believe that the doctor was a murderer. He specialized in, and advertized late-term abortions. So he was killing children older than those that might have been incubated and saved as premature births in a local hospital. No matter what you think of early abortions - and for me there is little difference - this is unarguably a baby human. It can cry, feel, eat, shiver, and suckle it's mother. Morally, what the killer did yesterday is stop another killer. Even though I wish, for a whole host of reasons, that he hadn't done it I can't be sad at the passing of a man who I morally rate as no better than Charles Manson or Ted Bundy.

That aside, let's get back to Chris Matthews and the subject of Murder as a legal term. To start, I disagree on the face of it. Murder has meant the unjustified killing of another person for about as long as it has been an English word. The fact that it has a legal meaning does not make the common use of it invalid. What that doctor did was murder babies. But I'm going to give Matthews the benefit of the doubt here, and accept his premise: Murder is far too technical of a legal term to apply to a man who kills womb-entrapped infants for a living. So we are going to be more technically accurate ourselves. If Chris Matthews doesn't like using "Murder" to describe these killings, then we shall henceforth use the word "Homicide" as it is more specifically descriptive. A child, unborn or not, is a homo-sapiens. Homicide is the killing of a member of homo-sapiens. Therfore, that abortion doctor, and ALL abortion doctors, commit homicide.

"Daily" short: Planning and Crisis

Liberalism and socialized economies are plainly short-sighted, no matter how far-sighted they aspire or claim to be. That such a philosophy can call its opponents "reactionary" is hilarious in a pot, kettle sort of way. They intend the epithet of reactionary as a contrast to their "planned" economy, but in practice it is like Hitler accusing FDR of heavy-handedness, or Bill Clinton calling the Pope a womanizing liar. The reality is that business owners use the capitalist system "reactions" to plan ahead, while state control so quickly falls behind the pace of events that in no time at all it is merely reacting to the loudest complaint of the day, or the highest number of mouths demanding food. There is nothing efficient about this, which most people agree about in theory. That's why nobody actually claims to want socialism anymore. But even without somebody openly advocating the destruction of our competitive culture, the prevailing crisis mentality provides daily steps in that direction. Trying to plan an economy when you claim to know that it's a bad idea is even dumber than doing it on purpose.

Sitemeter

The last traffic counter I had seems to have quit working, so I've switched to Sitemeter. It's a much better known site, and the free version provides more stats. I don't know what my total was before the reset, but it was around one thousand, one hundred and... something. So I just set the "starting number" at 1,100 to guess on the cautious side.

Mock Ignorance

I've noticed a trend in relation to the TEA parties. It's not a new technique, but one that's becoming more painfully obvious as I pick up bits of news here and there, be it that painful video on New American's website, callers to Rush Limbaugh, or random statements from "administration officials". That trend is intentional ignorance about the movement. Now, don't get me wrong, there is plenty of normal ignorance to go around, but the particular subject that's vexing me right now is people who pretend not to understand that these protests and the organizing impulse behind them aren't about MY taxes. It is a flat out lie that everybody who makes less than $250,000 is going to get a tax cut, but even if it wasn't, I wouldn't care. Because I do not look at the government as a sugar-daddy. I don't view all taxes through the lens of what exactly it will do to my personal return, I look at fairness and any tax's effect on the entire economy. I am a huge fan of either a flat tax, or even better the Fair national sales tax, but the reality is that BOTH of those methods would raise my personal contribution. I don't care. That doesn't make me any less aware that they are more equitable and it doesn't make it any less true that they would help the country as a whole. Beyond any of that, it also neglects my personal financial benefits in a strong economy, and that I truly hope to someday make more than $250,000!

Never trust a liberal with your freedom, and never let the main stream media guide your thoughts on anything. They are pretending that they can't understand what those of us making less than a quarter of a million dollars are complaining about so that the less informed or thoughtful will think, "yeah!" right along with them. The protests are about right and wrong. They are about the size of government. They are about impending massive inflation. They are about the debt we're sinking our children with. They are about so much more than what's on my personal 1040 come next April 15th.