Life Ain't Fair - Deal With It

Obama is on the campaign trail again talking about eliminating inequality and establishing fairness. Doesn't that sound wonderful? But you know what, life ain't fair. And trying to make things fair is just bringing unfairness to a different group of people.

It was the government trying to eliminate inequality in the banking industry that got us into this financial mess in the first place. They thought it was unfair that only people who actually pay their bills should be able to get a loan. Oh the horror. Oh the travesty of justice. So the government forced the banks, through legislation, to loan money to people they shouldn't have. And then shock ensued when the people who shouldn't have gotten the loans defaulted and the banks had no more money to loan out. Now people who day pay their bills are having to fund those who don't. Is that fair? And the government is blaming the banks for making the bad loans that they were legislated to make. Is that fair?

If we want fairness in the country then why don't we start by treating Congress and Presidential appointees to the same treatment the rest of us get. Subject to the same taxes, held to at least the same if not a higher standard of ethics, and with the same retirement benefits as the rest of us.

Why aren't we encouraging people to take responsibility for their own success? Nobody can improve your lot in life except for you, and if you're waiting for the government to do it, you'll find their methods just aren't fair.

May I Have Some Term Limits Please

Today Senator Arlen Specter, realizing that he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning his primary, switched parties so that he could run as a Democrat. This is reprehensible. Not because he changed sides, but because he did it not for matters of principle, but in order to keep his seat. He accuses the right wing of the Republican party of hijacking it so that moderates such as himself could not be re-elected. But how did they hijack the voters. The problem is not where the Republicans in Congress stand, but where the Republicans in his district stand. And they were not happy about where he stood on the stimulus package.

What I find the most disturbing about this switch is that Sen Specter has been in office for nearly 30 years. He's also over 70 years old. Why then, when faced with the loss of his primary, does he not bow to the voice of the people and retire? Why fight to hold on to his seat and his power with such a death grip that he switches allegiances? If he decided to run as an Independent that would be one thing, but running as a Dem (so he could get their help in fund raising) is reprehensible.

With his behavior Sen Specter has illustrated exactly why term limits are an absolute necessity. It's bad enough when we have Congressmen so ill that the can't fulfill their duties still running for re-election or still holding on to their seats. But now, knowing you'll lose the election appears to not be a valid reason to give up your seat either. After all, what does the will or the voice of the people have to do with anything. Just because the people don't want him in office doesn't mean he should leave.

The tenacity with which Congressmen cling to their power is a sad commentary on our government. It's no longer about serving the people but about serving their own self-interest. And nothing illustrates this more clearly than Senator Specter's party hop.

Healhcare Is My Top Priority - Except For Appointments

Our current president ran on a platform that stressed the importance of health care for all Americans. He thinks it is so important that he and Congress are trying to rush through legislation on creating Government run health care with very little debate. However, although he has had the time to appoint 9 different Czars (including a car Czar), and he had time to create positions for Czars which didn't exist under any other president, what he didn't have time to do was appoint the cabinet and sub-cabinet positions that have to do with health care.

His protestations that ensuring health care for every American rings a little hollow when he has yet to appoint even a Surgeon General. In this current Swine Flu potential crisis, we don't even have a director of the CDC. Obama hasn't gotten around to appointing one yet.

Czars - 9, Approved Health care appointments - 0. Perhaps President Obama needs a Czar on cabinet appointments to advise him on how to get them done.

The Unbalanced Branch

The writers of the constitution thought of additional rights that were so important that they immediately added them to the articles they had already written; thereby giving us the Bill of Rights and the first 10 amendments to our Constitution. Several of these amendments have been getting pummeled a bit, but one has been all but pounded into dust. This is the 10th amendment and a very important one. In fact, it was the violation of this amendment in the abolition of slavery (a very good violation but a violation all the same) that caused this country to split and erupt into civil war. But did we learn from this? Nope. And who has been the most guilty in the violation of this amendment? Why the very branch of our government whose sole purpose is to protect and uphold it. And now the Legislature, which the Judiciary is supposed to keep in check, has also decided that the 10th amendment no longer exists.

The wording of the amendment is, as you'll see, so very complicated that it's easy to understand how it could be misinterpreted. The amendments states; "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Easy to see how this could be misinterpreted isn't it? Perhaps this is why the Supreme Court and Congress read this to mean that anything not prohibited by the Constitution is covered under the Constitution and any state law against it is in violation of the Constitution. Perhaps this is why Congress now thinks that they can give money to the states and tell the states exactly how that money should be sent. Perhaps this is why Congress thinks that they have the right to dictate what programs the states will have and how they will be run. Perhaps.

Each branch was set up with a check and a balance by our founding fathers in an effort to keep any one branch from gaining too much power. However, the balance we have for the Judicial branch is simply who is appointed. The problem with this has become pretty obvious. The Executive branch has appointed Judges that will interpret the Constitution in these broad terms and these appointments are approved by a Congress who wants the same. Therein lies the lack of balance. When the other 2 branches appoint Judges who will rule in violation of the Constitution instead of in support of it, then our system of checks and balances is out of balance. And when that amendment is violated by our Supreme Court, who do you complain to? What recourse do we have?

The only control we have is to pay attention to who is appointed and to speak out. Let your Congressmen know how you feel. Absolutely let them know whenever they do anything you don't agree with. They are there to serve as a representative for you. They are supposed to be representing your views. How can they do that if you don't let them know what they are. Read the Constitution. Know it. Teach it to your children for the schools may not. Educate yourself and those around you. Serve as the final balance in our system to counter that out of balance branch.

Chicks with Chainsaws

Is there a truer image of what makes this country great than seeing women with chainsaws clearing brush. The perfect image of independence, ownership and accountability, plus the willingness to work hard. My morning was exactly this image. I had some brush in my back yard that needed to be cleared and 2 of my spinster friends came to lend their aid. One brought a chainsaw and the other brought a trailer. My parents are visiting so my 66 year old mother helped out by pruning trees and weeding the garden while my father went fishing with his brother. To be fair to my Dad, he didn't know the women were coming over to help with the yard when he made his plans, but not having a man around didn't stop us either.

Since we had the trailer we even stopped and got more gravel for my driveway and one friend and I spread one half ton of gravel in my driveway while the other continued cutting down trees in my backyard. The gravel was a side thought since we had the trailer, but I was surprised to find that there was a load and go landscaping supply store very near my house. My friend and I pulled the jeep in and got loaded up with a half ton of gravel. I went inside to pay and was flirting a bit with the man behind the counter. Just having a good time. Then when I walked out I realized something humiliating. Since I was planning on sweaty yard work, I hadn't taken a shower this morning. I also still had the residual of last night's make-up on my face, and with as much sweating as I'd been doing that make-up was in all the wrong places. But oh well. I was still having fun. We unloaded that first half ton (the trailer could not hold more weight than that) spread out the gravel and took a break for lunch. When we went back to get the rest of it, the guy at the landscape place remembered us and just hopped into his CAT tractor with the big scoop and loaded us up another half ton. We were pretty impressed with him remembering us so clearly, great customer service, but then how many people paint their trailer to match their Jeep?

My friend has a Jeep, of course she does, a very nice white one. The trailer that she has was modified by my spinster friends (a spinster ain't what she used to be) to have a smooth bottom and sides added. They then painted it so now the trailer has a black metal frame with white panel inserts. Exactly like the Jeep. But of course who wouldn't want their trailer to match their vehicle. You can't have them clashing. Color coordination is very important. As you're driving down the road hauling brush you don't want people to look at you and think "now isn't that color combination tacky!" We got back with the other load of gravel and the chick with the chainsaw had finished up and was piling the brush up to load into the trailer to haul off. We had almost all of the gravel out of the trailer, and the brush piled and ready to load, when the men came back. They had the audacity to grin at us as they pulled up from their fishing trip to see women with shovels and rakes spreading a ton of gravel. My father did help with the last of the spreading and loading, my uncle waved and drove away.

Independence and ingenuity are what this country is all about and my spinster friends display this in spades. This is not the first time they've assisted me with a brush clearing. Last year they did the same and the chick with the chainsaw actually had to shimmy up a tree to tie a rope around the top so the other lady and I could pull it as it was cut with the chainsaw. This was due to the power lines running very, very close to the tree. We had to make sure it didn't fall on those lines, but the ingenuity was displayed and we got the tree down with the power lines intact. We did what needed to be done.

These women will not sit around and whine about what needs to be done and that there's nobody to do it. They just do it. They might covent large construction equipment (one was commenting today on how handy it would be to have a back-hoe), but they do what needs to be done. We work together and help each other out so big jobs are smaller. This is what America is all about. Chipping in to help your neighbor and your neighbor chipping in to help you. Unfortunately we've gotten away from taking care of each other and started expecting the government to do it. An exercise in futility. But as long as there are people like my chainsaw chicks out there, this country will always be great.

Candy Ass and Chief

It's become plainly and painfully obvious that our new president does not have the backbone to stand up to the extreme left wing of the Democratic party. This was one of my main concerns when he ran for president but I hoped (vainly it seems) that he would rule as a moderate since he ran as one. But he's not doing that. And he's caving in to any pressure from his own party. As inexperienced as President Obama was, there's one critical part of being President that he was wholly unprepared for. It has nothing to do with domestic policy or foreign policy, but basic management policy. Any management course will tell you that you have to be prepared to be disliked. President Obama based so many of his policies on his confidence in his likability that he doesn't know how to deal with criticism from his own party. Being criticized by the other party he can attribute to partisanship, but from within his own? Oh my gosh! How could this happen? Say it ain't so Joe. He's so afraid of not being liked that he's doing things he should not be doing and releasing information that he should not be releasing. He's putting his own personal popularity ahead of national security. And he thinks we're pretty much too stupid to figure out what he's doing.

This is a man who is totally unprepared to be questioned, second guessed, vilified, criticized, disliked, disapproved of, despised and downright detested. Did he honestly believe that the love fest that the media engaged in during the campaign would continue indefinitely? I guess he could count on NBC for the continuation but eventually reporters and the media would have to start doing their job. So now, people have stopped singing Kum-Ba-Ya in a circle around him, and have stopped hearing angels sing when he speaks, and they're actually paying to attention to what he's saying and doing. And his personal popularity is steadily decreasing. Not dramatically, and not quickly, but steadily. He still has a very high popularity rate, so he's still hanging in there, but eventually he's going to realize that personal likability is not a reliable policy cornerstone. But never fear, I'm sure he'll appoint a Czar of Presidential PR to take care of that.

I hope that Pres Obama will find the strength and the leadership to stand up to the extreme side of his own party and lead from the middle where most Americans reside. I hope that he does not continue to let the ACLU and Moveon.org dictate the release of classified information. I hope he can stand by promises he made to look forward and not look back. I hope he can become the leader of his party and not just their rising star. I hope, I hope, I hope.

In the next 4 years we have 3 possible outcomes. First, Obama will take control and refuse to let the far left dictate national policies. He'll put his foot down and really become the leader. This is becoming more and more unlikely. Second, he'll continue to cave in to pressure and the country will end up being led by a minority of extremists. If this is the case we can only pray that the moderates in Congress will object and actually put the best interest of the country in front of party loyalty. If they don't, then the third possibility will occur. And that is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed will rule our country until the next Congressional election. If they take us too far to the left, then the Democrats will potentially lose their control of Congress. So the next 2 years will tell the tale.

But lucky you. You have me to give you my opinion on what's going on. A different perspective to help you make up your own mind. Which is exactly what we all should do. Gather information on what's going on and then make up our own minds. And act on those decisions. Speak up and speak out. Our democratic process only works for the people if the people stay involved.

Punish the Innocent and Protect the Guilty

There's a rule, which most of us know, that states that Congress cannot be prosecuted for any decision they make in the execution of their duties in Congress. They did not pass this law to cover themselves. They did not pass this law at all. It was written into our Constitution. This was done by our founding fathers because there was a history, in Great Britain especially, where the monarch would file civil or criminal charges against Parliament for disagreeing with them. It was used for totally punitive and political reasons. It was a good thing to have in place and a smart thing to put in our Constitution.

Now, in the calling for prosecution of Bush officials for the "torture" issue, has Congress become the Monarchy? This is being called for by certain Congressmen for punitive and political reasons. That's it. So they are now exhibiting the exact behavior that they are Constitutional protected from. This was set up to preserve the integrity of the legislative process. Well where the bloody bloomin' hell as the integrity in our legislative process gone?

They say that this is to preserve the principles on which this country was founded. I'm all for preserving those principles, but most members of our government pick and choose which of those principles to preserve. We don't seem to be worrying too much about personal accountability and that with hard work and determination you can benefit from the fruits of your own labor. Nope, those have gotten tossed out the door. They say we, as a people, don't engage in torture. But there are some anomalies in their standing.

We're awfully worried about how enemy combatants are treated. What is considered humane. The same thing applies to our convicted murderers and rapists. They're so worried about how these people are treated. Concern for our fellow man is a good thing and I don't denigrate it, but it's applied inconsistently. These are the same people who support abortion, including partial birth abortion. No matter your stance on the abortion issue, it's inconsistent to say that we must preserve the life of a serial rapist and yet allow the destruction of someone whose only crime is being inconvenient. And partial birth abortion is indefensible. If you're unaware what it is, the baby is forced into a feet first birth, when nothing but the head remains in the birth canal the doctors hold it in there by force and then suck the brain out. The child has entered the world with everything but it's whole head and it is killed for no medical reason. No reason at all. This is something Obama supports. So these statements that we have to preserve our principles is bogus.

So now, we may punish people for making a legal decision (but of course not Congress for their culpability because they're immune) in order to protect terrorists. In essence, as we do in so many other areas in this country, we are willing to punish the innocent and protect the guilty.

And shame on Congress for hiding behind their Constitutional protection while exploiting an other's lack of the same protection. If you add on their attitude on taxes, their disregard for the voice of the people and their behavior regarding the anti-tax tea parties, you'll find that the 111th Congress is beginning to bear a striking resemblance to King George III. Especially with the insanity they display.