Monty Python is Alive and Well!

The Demonization of Dick Cheney

When I first listened to Dick Cheney, he was a representative from Wyoming. He was calm, assertive, conservative, and able to convey a sense of clarity in his foreign policy position. I strongly believe that Dick Cheney understands the concept of being at war with islamist extremists. He knows that they don't put on uniforms and conduct all out assaults using armies and tanks and that they use our weaknesses against us.

I've been dissappointed in Dick Cheney several times. The first time was when he advocated decreasing our defense budget. It took me several years to understand his philosophy of leaner, more responsive armed forces. I disagreed with him on several decisions he made to cancel weapon system's I believed should have been developed. He also became the director of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that I believe is based on an evil concept, and one that should be disbanded. I think, however, that Dick Cheney understands, better than most, the world's economic structure and that he needed to run in these circles in order to obtain information. He has always been a information hound, and we need a few of those in our midst.

I think the reason that I like Dick Cheney the most is his strong insistence on state's rights. From issues like gay marriage to health care, Dick Cheney has believed that state's should make their own decisions; a wise philosophy.

The media has consistently demonized Dick Cheney for his relationship with Halliburton. Though he divested his holdings, they latched on to his involvement with the large, private, military contractor, from which he gained most of his personal wealth, like leeches to skin. There are far more interesting things under the surface here than Halliburton, folks. Why is there no outrage that he was the director of the Council on Foreign Relations? Because progressives approve of it, that's why. Why did they not publicize his policy of decreasing our military forces by half? Because they approve of it! The hypocracy of these positions is evident.

The media have to have someone to vilify, and Vice President Cheney is the perfect guy. He's white, he's old, he's rich, and his life started with scandal in the form of draft deferments for the Vietnam War and will end with scandal with the undoubtedly sensational vice presidential papers that will one day be published. It doesn't matter that when you get to Washington D.C., they all have sensational and scandalous secrets that will eventually out, he's a conservative and that's enough.

It will never matter that he understands how to maneuver through the world economic nightmare controlled by only a few of the very rich. It will never matter that while understanding the hideous truth, Dick Cheney managed to float the dangerous waters and hold true to his conservative roots. And it will never matter that he protected the American public from islamic fundamentalist nutcases using what I truly hope were methods of interrogation resembling torture. We put caterpillars in rooms with these monsters, water-board them, and might even bash a few upside the head: well, good for us. And for these efforts, which could not have been very much fun, we have been rewarded with information that has kept us safe.

Dick Cheney is one of those few rich, old, white guys whom I believe have kept us safe, kept our economy from collapsing, and kept true to his conservative roots while navigating the minefields of global finance; so, find someone else to vilify for awhile. We know both the good and the bad about Dick Cheney and we accept that we need someone like him to provide leadership and do some of the dirty work in order to keep the rest of us working, living, and hoping for the future.

Just Say "NO!"

You can tell by the constant repetition from the talking heads on the left that the talking points have been handed out: the Republicans are the party of "No." "No," to health care for women and children, "no," to saving the earth, "no," to anything that our vaunted leader was elected accomplish. I wish I had a cartoonist to show the party hacks bashing their heads against a wall labeled "leftist agenda," because Barack Obama did not run as a leftist. He ran as a centrist with one fatal slip during his conversation with Joe The Plumber. They knew how to get him in, but they are far less sure about how to get him out.

You're darn right it should be "No." In fact, it should be "Hell, No!" Never have the Republicans been so united; a fact that has been overlooked by most. "Hell, no," we don't want a health care system riddled with special interest perks and massive intrusion into our private sector, more than already exists by miles. "Hell, no," we don't want a system of energy taxation that will devastate our economy and funnel dollars to the richest in our economy (look into Cap and Trade, it will shock you), and "Hell, NO!" we do not want further intrusion into the private sector by government bureaucrats who are motivated by self-interest and party affiliation. And finally, a huge "HELL, NO!" to the politically correct treatment of enemy combatants and giving constitutional protection to stone-cold killers who have clearly stated that they would like to see nothing less than the destruction of the Great Satan, the United States of America. They want to kill you, my fellow Americans, and they will use our weakness for "law and order" against us to do it.

I am proud to be in the company of those who have decided to say, "Hell, no!" to the destruction of the greatest country on earth. And make no mistake, once the government gets control of 1/6th of our economy, we will be well on our way to looking exactly like the socialist economies of Europe, with no growth and limited opportunity for innovation. If you are still unconvinced, take a hard look at where the innovation is taking place in the world today. It is still in the good 'ol U.S.of A., (and then China manufactures it all: Fair Trade anyone?). So, join us in the party of "Hell, No!" and preserve your children and grandchildren's future because it is clearly in jeapardy and the call to action is upon you.

Compromise

Most liberals are fairly conservative in their thinking; but, they don’t want to agree with anything a conservative has to say for fear they will then be stigmatized. God forbid, my mother-in-law, who is more conservative than I am, admit that there might be conservatism in her thought processes. Fiscally, she is far more conservative than most Republican’s I know, but she spent 35 years as a member of the NEA and, to her, Republican is a bad word. Those nasty Republican’s, they want teachers to suffer. They want to pay teacher’s less and spend more on defense, it’s just the way they are. Obviously, I could get into the argument about why it is important to spend money on defense in order to have an economy that is stable and, thereby, money to pay the teachers, but it will never get that far. The level of polarization is beyond our ability to bridge those gaps anymore.
At least my Dad admits that he is a progressive. He comes right out with it, unapologetically, and says, I think government should take over the health care system, run the Arabs out of the country, and nuke Iran. Well, isn’t that a breath of fresh air? We’re all so busy accusing each other of our perceived faults that we can’t reach any common ground. And do we want to really? In Massachusetts last month, most Democrats said they voted for Scott Brown because they didn’t want one party in control. Democrats in Massachusetts voted for a Republican…what has the world come to? My favorite liberal friend laments that they will lose everything they’ve worked for if they lose the health care package currently before the senate due to Scott Brown’s election. But what is it the Democrats/liberals/progressives have really put in to this bill? All that work includes: an extension of HIPPA (really, at the center of it) in the form of Max Baucus’ contribution, pay-offs to the unions who don’t want their Cadillac health plans taxed, pay-offs to the service unions for the same, no public option, which most liberals will say was the point of their efforts to begin with, and some bribes to the good folks of Arkansas and Kansas that will exempt them from these efforts. Yep, that’s a lot to lose, alright. So, a crappy plan will get tabled, a real tragedy in the liberal world.
Why, however, did they not get it passed during the last several months? They had the votes, or they were supposed to have had them. We conservatives don’t have the ability to stop this, it’s all in their court, but they couldn’t get it done. My question is this: why is the first reaction of the politicians who couldn’t get this done to blame the Republicans for obstructing the bill? We didn’t have the votes, we didn’t have the ability to stop anything from passing, but the accusations started flying almost immediately. We are hip-deep in the hypocrisy of it all. But it’s not even the accusations that piss me off. It’s the elitist, we know better than you attitude of any politician who thinks that they can take my money and tell me what I need from them. It truly makes me sick. I’m so tired of the regulation, taxation, and the cradle-to-grave mentality, that I think I’ll just throw up on it all. I want to find the middle ground, I want to find a way to agree on basic principles with those who feel strongly one way or another, but it will never happen. It’s the end of communication as we know it. Debate is out the door. Conservatives are constantly being called “closed-minded,” defeatist, obstructionist, hacks and we’re tired. We’re tired of being the ones to compromise.
Yep, I know, we never compromise. Well crap on that. We spent the entire Bush administration compromising our core values, and we’re seeing the result in the tea party movement. The age of compromise is over, and if my prediction is correct and we are a “middle-right” country, as I suspect, we will no longer be interested in compromise. We’ve spent too much, done too little, and the progressives are going to have to run away again into the dark closet of history, because we, as small business people, are the only hope for the economy.
We are the only hope for the teachers, firemen, police and all the other public servants who get paid using tax dollars. It never seems to get through to the partisans: tax dollars pay teacher’s salaries and there is a limit to what people are willing to fork over as a percentage of their take-home pay. A very small percentage of the total taxable population in this country are truly rich; so, the liberals can blame them for everything from getting big bonuses (which they spend, generally, in our economy) to just being rich, but when it comes down to brass tacks, the numbers don’t lie. The rich will take all their money and go elsewhere or decide that it’s just not worth it if you take more than 50% of their money! Since that leaves us with the middle class (us poor saps who earn under $100k a year) to pay for all the services, the tax rates will skyrocket. Where do you think this is all going? To hell, that’s where. And we’re sick of it, we’re sick of it to the point of no longer wanting to find common ground. So, although this was supposed to be about finding common ground, I guess I’m no longer interested.

The Boy King

I didn't have to listen to all of it to know what he would say. The Boy King, in deference to himself, knew where to put the blame. You could see that he clearly believed that "it" was not his fault. "It" is our economic depression. We are losing our home, my husband and I work 60-80 hours a week, seeing our children for two very tired hours each night, yet, we're barely making ends meet. Without my second job and a business we've spent 15 years to build, which, once dug out, is now dug back in, we'd be sunk. But he was concerned whether America would blame him, you could hear it in the unspoken words.
You could hear it in the cadence of his voice: each sentence began with a tone of conviction and then the words blurred together toward the end as if to force them into an attempt at believability. Or maybe he thought it sounded intellectual to speak more quickly at the end of a sentence than at the beginning, like William F. Buckley, only without the elite vocabulary. He was nervous. The once glorious messiah of the down-trodden and the one who would deliver them from the evils of the Great Satan, with the roar of the cheering crowds in his ears, was nervous. He lashed out like my child lashes out at me when she knows she has committed an offense. “I’m right!” she screams at the top of her lungs; but I know better, because, well, I’m an adult.
He was speaking to adults, but talking to himself. He was angry, lecturing, as if the adults weren’t paying attention. The people are turning away and the child king is stomping his foot, “You not doing it right! Why won’t you listen to me?” We’re all trying to survive and we’re watching our king and his minions fly on jets to stay in hotels that cost $2,200 a night in order, they say, to save us from ourselves and our polluting ways: we’re done listening now. The king is no longer as important as he once was; the grownups have woken up and now see that he isn’t what he said he was: wise, seasoned, and centered. He was just what he was when all the adoration and joyous praise began; he is still just a boy.

To My Bestest Liberal Friend in the World

I know I get a little rowdy sometimes with my conservative bents, but every once in awhile, I temper my writing and really try to deal with the issues so that someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum can understand that conservatives are not evil, we're as lovable as they come. We're environmentally conscious, we get mad that too many things are made in China, we believe that we have the right to carry firearms, and we're scared to death that our children will carry the burden of an exploding debt that nobody seems to understand because it's TOO BIG! Count to a Billion, I dare you. It will take you 250 or so days. It takes 900 years or more to count to a Trillion. So, I received a nicely worded letter from a dear liberal friend via facebook e-mail recently and thought I should respond in kind.

Dear Lisa,

I don't think this plan is going to bring us affordable health care; my party has NOT been taken over by the Pat Robertsons of the world, in fact, it's being taken over by people like my husband, Lance, who cannot fathom the thought that we are printing fiat money in order to make promises that we can never fulfill and passing social programs that may or may not work and will most certainly take the money that we so desperately need to survive. The Tea Party movement is full of us, those who believe in rugged individualism, personal responsibility, and, yes, taking care of those we must care for in our society. That doesn't mean that we think we must de-incentivize the majority of our small business people who will be required to give up 30-50% of their profits in order to pay for health care for all.

We have tried none of the things that might work, i.e., tort reform, true competition among insurance agencies (across state lines), which is actually a big deal. Those who have suggested it have been poo-poo'd by the left for suggesting it, but think about it. Why can you buy a life insurance policy that will pay out $200-$500,000 if you die for $30/month when health care, if you have a pre-existing condition, which I do, will cost $1,200 (or more) every month? Why? Because the insurance companies have only certain areas over which to spread their risk. I researched this when I was told my health insurance would cost $1,800/month because I have a degenerative disk. Apparently, the pool of risk is only Montana. Well, hell, if I were an insurance company who had only 850,000 person risk pool (full of alchoholics!), I'd charge a fortune for it too! We've never had a situation in the U.S. where health insurance has been offered free from regulation and limits on the insurance companies abilities to spread risk over a larger pool of applicants. And if there is one thing that I have learned in now twenty years in business and teaching, it is that we need to try things on a trial basis before implementation on a national basis. It's as risky as any entrepreneurial venture in that it can bankrupt our country, yet there is no fear of that very real threat. In fact, I find that Massachusetts is a fabulous example of the attempt to offer its citizens health coverage. I've read a few articles in preparation for debate and they found that when they didn't address costs, they weren't able to make it work. They had to go back to the drawing board more than once, and it still isn't balancing. That could be why the citizens of MA will think twice about sending a yes vote to the Senate for this particular plan. As usual, I believe that freedom of competition in all things brings not only freedom, but the innovation that is so sorely missing from most bureaucracies.

And why would we want to emulate countries that have no entrepreneurial incentives in their economies and whose people have to come to the U.S. for medical care they can't find in their own countries? Why do liberals constantly refer to the "rest of the world" when comparing our system of health care in an effort to deride our system when social medical programs worldwide have been dismal failures and have depressed otherwise thriving economies? I've written a great deal on my blog on this topic, and I won't repeat it here for fear that I'll bore you to death (because bureaucracy is ALWAYS boring).

Your liberal laundry list is impressive, recycling, big banks giving huge bonuses, protectionism, etc., but in each and every case, there are good, solid reasons why freedom, not protectionism or socialism is the answer. I recycle everything in my house. I spend every other Sunday chunking plastic bottles into the recycling center bins and my beef with that is that with all the attention on global warming, why can I not recycle glass? Different types of plastic? Etc., Etc. I'll tell you why, because it's not related to global warming! It's the most important issue that we face in our environment, far more important than whether the U.S. participates in lowering our carbon emissions which are per capita far less than China who will be exempt under the "accord," but where are the grants? Where are the attempts to make sure that we don't clutter our world with crap? No where, that's what...because it's not sexy, and there's nothing world-shaking about it. We are finally going to get rid of paperboard boxes by using an innovative material to pack dry food stuff so we can stop stuffing our landfill with trees. So, my best liberal friend, there are many of us who have cared about our environment for years and years who don't want our industries ruined, but DO want our environments cleaned up. There, that's the recycling issue, now for banking. No really, I'm done. I think that private companies should be able to give their executives any compensation package they think is necessary to retain top talent. If the government owns it, that's different, but if it's private, you have the choice, don't use that bank. And while you're looking at the huge bonuses, be sure to look at how much that company contributes to charities and, for that matter, how much the executives contribute to charity.

Freedom, personal responsibility, incentives to build businesses and create jobs by getting out of the way (i.e., not taxing us to death), ya, that's all really terrible stuff. We created 45 million jobs in the U.S. from 1948 to 1982, that's astounding! And do you know who did it? Small business, that's who. Entrepreneurs, who brought us out of what is called the Kondratiev wave where an economy can be ruined by the passing of older technologies, created the jobs that were necessary to employ so many people who otherwise would have been desperate. Look at your economy: tax receipts are down, state and county budgets will have to be cut. I think when the first round of teacher and police lay-offs happen, people will finally wake up and realize that you can't have it all.

NFIB, the small business lobbyist in the U.S. does not believe that this health care plan, or any plan to raise taxes on small business in any way will help us, not out of this recession (which I predict will continue for several more years, and which we will be lucky to survive), not out of very high unemployment rates, and not out of the pure and simple fear that my small business colleagues have of high taxes (which are inevitable with huge social programs) and debilitating government regulation. What WILL work is to get out of the way! We need to rock the small business world and make their day by stopping the insane amount of government spending using pre-printed money and let them roll. They can do it, I know, because I'm one of them!

We're not crazy, we don't hate poor people, we don't want those who are sick to lose their homes, and we don't hate black people. We're conservatives! We're proud to be the descendants of those nasty white boys who believed in freedom, guns, and the right to own property. And before you go off on Jefferson, he asked for the right for slaves to be freed from the very beginning, but the southern states wouldn't budge, so in order to save the union, he capitulated; but he did manage to make the north free from slavery during the process. I believe in the founding fathers, I believe in the right to be free from tyranny (of any kind), and I believe in the Constitution of the U.S. of A. That's not a bad thing, not bad at all.

Conservative Summary of Health Care Bill

Pick whichever health care bill you want to talk about and apply this man's statement. Everything the politicians have been doing to develop legislation affecting our free markets in the health care sector is a complete waste of time (as Sen. Rogers puts it: "a missed opportunity." The only benefit we will gain is to have a few more million people covered by lousy health care insurance in a high cost market. Brilliant. Again: why can we buy insurance that will pay $100,000 when we die for $60/month when we can't get health care coverage for $1700/month that is riddled with high deductibles and big chunky co-pay percentages? Ask the question! It's the free market, stupid! It doesn't exist, never has. They've never tried a free market with health care and they're telling you it doesn't work! Wow. The worst part is, you're buying what they're selling, America. Think about it.