Dems, Big Government, Trust

Pew Research, an organization that usually favors Democrats, has published a new poll showing the low level of trust between the American people and their government. Inadvertently, their chart reveals that the level of trust and satisfaction with government goes down when we have Democratic administrations: Carter, Clinton, and Obama. It's an interesting phenomenon since Democrats generally favor federal government solutions to every problem. So, why is the party continuing to speed toward massive government take over of auto industry, banking industry, health care, etc.?

Crush It!

Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Crush It!, discusses using the new media to reach audiences and accomplish goals. He has become something of a superstar since elevating his father retail wine business from excellent to unbelievable by starting a video blog, The Wine Library.

At a recent conference of specialists in the new media, he claimed the following points as necessary for success in any field of endeavor:
1. Love your family first.
2. Work super hard.
3. Live your passion (your mission in life).

Big Laws vs Little Laws

"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws." - G.K. Chesterton, Daily News, 7/29/1905

1. After 2012, U.S. citizens will no longer choose the type of light bulbs they buy and use. Only the florescent bulbs will be available.

2. Not content to merely outlaw the use of trans fats by restaurateurs, N.Y. Legislators are now crafting a law to prevent them from using any salt when preparing food for public consumption. This is after they prohibited the sale of pate foie gras.

3. Every state has passed adult seat belt and baby car seat laws to save lives. These laws were promoted by the same people who insist on killing babies in the womb and who openly support euthanasia.

4. Daylight savings time laws force us to change our sleep/wake patterns twice a year despite the fact that the rate of heart attacks increases 6% to 10% the first three days after the spring time change. More Americans disapprove than approve it, but it's the law in all but two states.

5. Federal BATF agents recently confiscated a shipment of toy pellet guns made of pot metal because they claimed the guns could be modified to work as machine guns. The fact that the pellets are plastic and pot metal would disintegrate before firing bullets seems to be irrelevant to the case.

6. Officials in two states have barred Christians from holding Bible studies/prayer meetings in their own homes, even though no complaints had been lodged about noise or parking problems.

7. Most Democrat Congressional Clowns are working as hard as they can to put 157 new agencies between every patient and his physician to decide when, how, and if the patient will be treated and the physician paid. There is no mention of the additional costs of the new agencies and the personnel to work in them.

8. Each spring brings a new group of lawsuits over what may or may not be said at graduation services, even by the students. Already most public schools no longer allow even a moment of silent meditation, much less a prayer, during the school day or at sporting events. Under the guise of anti discrimination laws, university level Christian organizations are being threatened with expulsion unless they agree to allow atheists to hold elected office in the group.

9. Federal regulators have developed thousands of pages of rules to "save" the environment which encroach on personal liberty even when dealing with private, not public, property. Recently they officially declared carbon dioxide (which we exhale with every breath and which plants need to survive) a menace to the environment as they prepare the Cap and Trade bill to further limit personal freedom and injure our hopes of economic recovery.

10. Other draconian environmental laws either hinder or stop Americans from engaging in ordinary production and sale of legal substances that everyone needs - oil, gas, and coal. They ignore the fact that we have so much oil that in some areas, it seeps up out of the ground and ruins the pristine beaches. So American consumers pay Muslim countries exorbitant prices for their oil while would-be American producers sit around unemployed.

G. K. Chesterton wrote the quotation above regarding government encroaching on the freedoms of ordinary citizens one hundred and five years ago. He was concerned with the growing tendency to ignore the Ten Commandments (The Big Laws) and the Judeo-Christian heritage of Western Civilization, while governments established more and more regulations that encroached into everyone's daily life. Since then the small laws have continued to grow in number and scope to such a degree that most young people have no concept of individual liberty Americans enjoyed one hundred years ago.

The world has gone mad today And good's bad today, And black's white today, And day's night today.

As I said last May, Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" is more relevant today than when he wrote it. In The American Spectator, Mark Hyman lists a few of the anomolies that drive us crazy such as:

The Internal Revenue Service -- placed in the hands of a Treasury Secretary who is a bona fide tax cheat -- implements tax policy written by a House Ways and Means Chairman who is also a tax cheat.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent purchasing foreign oil while domestic oil fields lie fallow.

Government employees are among the most handsomely compensated in America even though the public sector is the most dysfunctional and inefficient component of our economy.

Please read the whole article, then send it to all of your friends and family.

My Race Is American

Today I got the letter from the Census Bureau that they were going to send me the actual census form next week. I really don't know which is the most stupid waste of my taxpayer money:
a) Money spent on a Superbowl Ad about the Census
b) Money spent on numerous radio ads every day about the Census
c) Money spent on a letter telling me I was going to get a letter about the Census

I believe most questions on the form are none of Big Brother's business and I plan to ignore those. But I certainly will tell them my race -- I am an American. That means when I get to the question of race, I will check "Other" then spell out AMERICAN in the little boxes. I hope you'll join me in this. We are Americans. We are not Irish-Americans, Anglo-Saxon Americans, Hispanic-Americans or African-Americans. And it galls me when they keep trying to divide us, put us in little boxes, and then treat us differently because who our daddies happened to be. For more information, please read "Sending A Message with The Census."

The census is supposed to count the people in each state in order apportion the number of representatives sent to Congress. Period. There is no need to entertain dawdling bureaucrats with details such as whether we have a mortgage or not.

Join The Rebellion

Tired of mass media lies or Hollywood decadence? Choose your own entertainment instead of yelling at the television set. There's a wide world out there beyond the packages served to us by those who detest Christian values or who promote "alternative lifestyles."

If you're reading blogs, you've already started to think for yourself. Congratulations! Keep it up and encourage the ones that you like best.

If you've been there and done that, here are a few suggestions for free Podcast entertainment I've found since cutting the cable (as in TV) last fall. If you have a MP3 player, you can download the programs and listen while you drive, do the supper dishes, or walk the dog. If not, you can still listen and watch from your computer. Afterwards, you'll feel refreshed instead of tired.

1. Even if you hated science classes in school, you'll love Ian Maxfield's genial wit at The Catholic Lab (also see link at the right). He includes a bit of study, news items, biographies, and jokes with each weekly broadcast. My favorites were the one that explained some of the miracles that take place each time a baby is born and the one explaining the importance of carbon. (Yes, the same carbon the EPA recently designated as a major pollutant.)

2. Peter Kreeft, everyone's favorite philosopher, has a whole list of talks he's given that make philosophy understandable, interesting, and fun. Typing Peter Kreeft in the search box of iTunes will lead you to several selections posted under iTunes U. My absolute favorite, Ecumenical Jihad, is so good that I wish I could get everybody to listen to it and follow his suggestions. You can also go to his website and find at least 39 more favorites to download.

3. ITunes U has university lectures from all over the place on all sorts of topics. I've just begun to explore The Mises Institute's series on political philosophy from Plato to Rothberd, but they also carry many other lectures from both universities and think tanks. Last night I enjoyed Laughing with the Saints and collected about five good jokes making fun of us Catholics.

Of course, if you're willing to spend money, you can also download thousands more books and movies from iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Audible. But, I'm going to enjoy the freebies first.

Tea Bagging and Politics

For those who, like me, had no idea what the newly popular terms, "tea bagging" and "tea baggers" meant, I point you to an article by Kyle-Anne Shiver , Are Liberals Encouraging Pedophiles with Their "Tea Bagger" Epithet? You Decide. She has written and published it at great personal expense both emotionally and financially.

I warn you not to read it if you are at all squeamish about sexual perversion. But, whether you read it or not, please do not use these words or allow others to use them in your presence. The vile terms have no place in civil discourse, the public square, or polite society. Honest, patriotic, G_d-fearing Americans should never be associated with the idea, the phrase, or the practice. Do not allow anyone to titillate themselves or others by saying the words out loud. Write protest letters to the editor if you run across them in print.

*I have carried Kyle Anne-Shiver's blog, Common Sense Regained, on my blog roll since reading and admiring her work at American Thinker. Last April and last August, I wrote about specific columns she had written. Sadly, AT refused to publish her current article.

No Longer Called Congressional Clowns

After Saturday's historic vote by the Senate and Mary Landrieu's boast about being bought for $300,000,000, I think we should change their name to Congressional Prostitutes.

No wonder our national debt is so high. The leadership in both parties has been buying votes for decades instead of letting bills stand or fall on their own merits. After all, it's easy to spend other people's money.

What worse, is the their constituents mistakenly believe their very own Prostitutes are bringing bacon home. The reality is they're just adding to the people's tax burden for generations to come, often for projects that are questionable at best.

It's time for everyone, politicians and voters alike, to straighten up and become honest. It's time we all developed moral clarity in every aspect of our lives.

Thank A Veteran

Yesterday a veteran responded to the query "How can we average Americans ever thank you for your service?"

His reply: "Work to improve your family, your neighborhood, your town, and your state. Make our sacrifice worthwhile by improving the nation we are defending. "

So those our marching orders as citizens are to use our energies, talents, and influence to make things better because we were there. From gracious small talk with the check-out clerk to patience with the elderly to compassionate tough love with the recalcitrant to informed political activity to implacable personal honesty, let us continue to thank our American veterans until the next Veterans' Day.

The Left and Terrorism

J.R. Dunn has a great essay at The American Thinker about the erroneous worldview of the left in America. I highly recommend it for all readers to understand the scope of the problems we face today in America and to begin correction before the country is destroyed.

He opens with the assertion that the "Jihadis will return" and closes with the following paragraphs.

There is a difference between dissent and desertion, criticism and undermining. That difference has been lost amid a fog of relativism in the past few decades. But behind that fog, the hard stone of reality remains. It's no longer a game. People are going to die because of the actions taken by this country's leftists. Recognizing the differences lost in the relativistic fog has become a matter of life and death.

The terror conflict is a two-front war. It always has been, as reluctant as we are to admit it. The time to open the second front is coming.

What Have We Become?

Some of us have been fretting over the growth of crime and the abuse of children for years. Everytime we mentioned our concerns, we were reminded that such things have always existed and it's only because of the mass media that we think it happens more often now. References to the unlocked doors of our childhood, the freedom to play all over town without parents nervously hovering nearby, and the keys left in the ignition so they wouldn't be lost, have been generally ignored.

Today, Robin of Berkeley has a great article that explores the collapsing social mores in The Sociopathic Epidemic with the insight of a psychotherapist. Take time to read about the intertwining modern prophets of the 20th Century: Ayn Rand (novelist), Freidrich Hayek (economist), and Jules Feiffer, (cartoonist). You will be enriched and enlightened.