161: Gotta Love That Putin Guy

I can't imagine any real American who doesn't have a grudging respect for Vlad Putin.  What a wild and crazy guy.  He sizes up the geopolitical landscape, sees a stunningly weak and inept opposite number in BO, and makes his move - successfully.  He does all of this on the heels of hosting the Olympic games, another feather which BO sought, and lost.  It reminds me of the Celebrity Boxing match between Tonya Harding and Paula Jones.  Vlad is wailing on BO, and BO is just running away with his gloves in back of his head.  Real Americans should respect Vlad, and be very ashamed of BO.

160: Why I Don't Contribute To Public TV or Radio

I have never contributed, at least directly, to public TV or radio, and I probably never will.  The reasons I don't give, are the same reasons I don't give to NBC or Fox, or any other broadcaster - they get plenty of dough from other sources, and even the so-called "public" stations get the lion's share of their money from corporate, government or large trust targets.  Even if I was tempted someday to give something to a local public station, the pledge drives they conduct are so disingenuous and obnoxious that any urge to give is quelled.

159: MLK And His Day

I have nothing against Martin Luther King.  I have read significant amounts of history related to him and his work.  I don't know why any rational person would argue or take issue with his philosophy of non-violent demonstration in pursuit of a cause.  I just don't know why the country needs to take a day off for him.  If we followed the logic that gives us MLK Day, we would never work.  How many others are as deserving or more deserving that King?  What about Jonas Salk, Edgar Allen Poe, Clara Barton?  There are probably a hundred arguably deserving individuals.  We used to celebrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but now they are lumped in with Hoover, Nixon and Clinton for "President's Day."

Here's my problem with the whole issue of race in America:  As far as I can tell, no one in my family tree going back to before they arrive in North America ever owned a slave or participated in or benefited from the economics of slavery.  Yet radical blacks and MSNBC thinks I somehow owe something to atone for injustices done to blacks in America.  This doesn't seem right to me, and I'm sure it doesn't seem right to millions of other Americans in the same position as me. 

I propose that we change MLK Day to "A Person You Look Up To Day."  There will surely be certain individuals who draw a crowd of admirers, and they will get more attention.  That's fine.  But all Americans will have the opportunity to honor someone they choose.  Make it a federal and state holiday, everybody gets a day off, and no one gets his nose out of joint.

158: My JFK Observations

It was right after lunch in Miss Moral's sixth grade classroom.  Miss M had not come back yet.  Tom Snaider, the class clown was the last pupil in and was saying that the president had been shot.  No one believed him because no one ever believed anything he said.  Then Miss M returned and between sobs told us that the president had been assassinated.  I do not remember any particular sense of disaster or loss or sadness.  Just that the event was BIG and important.

My family was not a "Kennedy" family.  I'm sure my parents had voted for Nixon.  Kennedy was catholic after all, and while there was some good catholics, you certainly did not want one of them running the country.  My personal memories of Kennedy as president are really limited to just two - the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination.  Both involved a day off from school.

Since 1964 I have grown up from a sixth grader to a 62 year old man.  I have lived under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and BO.  I would classify only two of those - Reagan and Bush the First - as first rate presidents.  All the rest are dopes and egomaniacs.

Other than my personal memories, the rest of my knowledge of JFK has come from what the east coast media wants me to know.  While the murder of JFK was a terrible crime like all murders, I don't think the country was deprived of an indispensable leader.  He was just another political animal who chose to be supported by taxpayers.  His legacy would not be nearly as stellar if he had not been killed.

157: BO The Innocent

This, from the BO press conference just concluded:  "What we discovered is that it is difficult to buy [health] insurance."  Stopping the freaking presses!  BO has made a discovery!  After three years, a half billion dollars for a shitty website, and countless billions of other wasted government assets, BO has "discovered" that is difficult to buy health insurance.  This is what happens when a community organizer with zero executive experience gets elected president and decides to take over 16% of the GDP.  We would have been much better off with Michelle at the helm.  At least she, as the family bread winner, knows something about health insurance and balancing a checkbook.  How many other "discovieries" has BO made on our dime?

156: My Dear, Dumb, Democrat Friends

The persons I refer to in the title above, are: white, educated, affluent, living in suburbs, and have every economic reason possible to want less government intrusion into their lives.  Yet they vote for BO and believe everything they hear on MSNBC.  These persons, and of course all of the very dumb and poor Democrats, somehow actually believe that Democratic policies will take from the rich and give to Democratic constituencies.  In this my dumb friends are a little less than half right.  Democratic policies attempt to take from the rich, but in fact those policies end up taking much more from the middle class.  Upper income folks obviously have the means and smarts to limit what they give to government.  If some rich bastard like Warren Buffet decides to give a shitload of money to the government, he does.  But you can bet your boots that he also has thousands of employees at various entities owned by Berkshire whose sole job it is to limit tax and regulatory costs.  The dumb Democrats don't have the means or desire to do this, because they somehow think they are getting a good return on their government largess.  Nothing could be further from the economic and practical truth. The smart Democrats are the Kennedy/Clinton/BO types who soak their own constituents to build their fiefdoms.  They keep the dumb Democrats content by giving them crumbs.

155: BObamacare Hits Keep Coming

Today, its a notice from BCBS of how to calculate the ACA fees that will start January 1, 2013.  So it's not just increased premiums for coverage I will never need, or a cancelled policy which was working just fine, or allowing the uninsured to stay that way until a catastrophic illness hits, now there is a "fee" being charged presumably to help pay for those incompetent bureaucrats who have screwed up what used to be an acceptable system.  At least it was acceptable to the millions of immigrants who have been fighting to get into this country and stay here.  I don't see that happening in Scandinavia.