Muslim-to-Christian convert update

It looks like I was wrong on this one. She's full of Shiite. Haha. Clever. Sunni enough she'll get what's coming. OK, OK, I'm sorry - I'll stop.

If you've never read Eyes for Lies, do yourself a favor and get acquainted with the site. It's well worth your time. Then read what she has to say on the girl who I thought would be the next Elion.

http://eyesforlies.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-thoughts-rifqa-bary.html

Reagan on socialized medicine

I guess Reagan gave this little speech in the 60's. Funny how relevant it is today:

REAGAN: Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

There are many ways in which our government has invaded the precincts of private citizens, the method of earning a living. But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this trip is with us and at the moment is more imminent.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.

So with the American people on record as not wanting socialized medicine, Congressman Ferrand said, if we can only break through and get our foot inside the door, they can we can expand the program after that. Well, let's see what the socialists themselves had to say about it. They say once the Ferrand bill is passed, this nation will be provided with a mechanism for socialized medicine capable of indefinite expansion in every direction until it includes the entire population. Well, we can't say we haven't been warned.

James Madison in 1788, speaking to the Virginia Convention said: “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Now in our country under our free enterprise system, we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.

But let’s also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being.

In this country of ours, took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in world’s history. The only true revolution. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. But here for the first time in all the thousands of years of man’s relation to man, a little group of the men, the founding fathers for the first time – established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the God given right and ability to determine our own destiny.

This freedom was built into our government with safeguards. We talk democracy today. And strangely we let democracy begin to assume the aspect of majority rule is all that is needed. Well, majority rule is a fine aspect of democracy, provided there are guarantees written in to our government concerning the rights of the individual and of the minorities.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms and that you demand the continuation of our traditional free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen, even if we believe that he's on our side to begin with, write to strengthen his hand. Write those letters now. Call your friends and tell them to write. If you don't, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country... until one day as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.

Of course, this only matters to you if you don't want socialism to begin with.

New job start date: 6/16

Can you tell?

I wanted to rant a little about my favorite religion, Islam. Read this lovely little bit of evasiveness and tell me if you can read the "we're going to kill her if she doesn't recant" that's barely concealed:

"It is not Islam for the father to bring harm upon his blood daughter or any other human being because of anger," he said. "Our position is to exhaust all measures that would bring peace and harmony back to the family," Hamidullah said. "Being angry and threatening the life of someone is not one of those methods."

That was Imam Imgonnakillyah's response when pressed as to whether or not the father of a seventeen year old muslim-to-Christianity convert would harm the girl. Well, fuck it - I'm convinced! I mean, it's not like there's anything in Islam that states one must die if one converts away from Islam, is there? Noooo... that's crazy talk. It says right here that it's actually possible to not die when converting to Christianity from Islam! So I should just stop H8ing. Isn't that clever? The H8 thing? Yeah, I know you think it means "Hate" but it actually means "If you don't agree with every little thing I say then you're filled hate." So - you were close; the word "hate" does appear in there!

Spoiler Alert!!

This is going to be another Elian Gonzalez case. She'll be thrown under the Greyhound she took to Orlando by the U.S. Attorney General.

It's almost like markets work ...

How can that be though? The news has been telling us all our lives that free markets result in horrible consequences due to greed.

Someone forgot to tell NYC that markets don't work. They don't correct themselves. Only huge govt. intervention can save you!! Repent, repent!! Oh, sorry. Got a little carried away in messianic revere.

http://newledger.com/2009/06/is-the-housing-bust-about-to-take-manhattan/

So who's being greedy now? The renters, I suppose, asking for lowered rents. Weird. It's like, no matter what we do greed just keeps lingering. Why can't we all just agree not to be greedy? Are we asking too much, America? Is it really so much to ask to cast aside your own self-interests and do what's right for everyone?

A sad, sad point of view

This article, written by Joseph Stiglitz really bums me out if true. Not his "points" about capitalism, but that are so many in the world who delude themselves into believing his essential premise: that so called American "style" capitalism has become a proven failure to much of the third world.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, marked the end of Communism as a viable idea. Yes, the problems with Communism had been manifest for decades. But after 1989 it was hard for anyone to say a word in its defense. For a while, it seemed that the defeat of Communism meant the sure victory of capitalism, particularly in its American form. Francis Fukuyama went as far as to proclaim “the end of history,” defining democratic market capitalism as the final stage of social development, and declaring that all humanity was now heading in this direction. In truth, historians will mark the 20 years since 1989 as the short period of American triumphalism. With the collapse of great banks and financial houses, and the ensuing economic turmoil and chaotic attempts at rescue, that period is over. So, too, is the debate over “market fundamentalism,” the notion that unfettered markets, all by themselves, can ensure economic prosperity and growth. Today only the deluded would argue that markets are self-correcting or that we can rely on the self-interested behavior of market participants to guarantee that everything works honestly and properly.

Wow. How can a seemingly intelligent person make so many mistakes? An aside: we need to, as a civilization, learn how the "other side" thinks. Because this guy's thinking, in my estimation, is fundamentally flawed.

First, Communism is anything but dead. Second, there will never be an "end of history" as described by Hegel, Marx, et al. Societies will always experiment with differing forms of government, trade, monetary policy, etc. Third, our markets were anything but "unfettered". Freddie and Fannie were specifically instructed to buy up billions in subprime loans. Also, I would dispute the notion that American-style capitalism is about "unfettered" markets. That can mean different things to different people. A zero-regulated economy is not capitalism, it is anarchy.

Stiglitz throws out the baby with the bathwater in this article. Or rather, he suggests everyone but the deluded have done so. Count me among the deluded then. American capitalism continues to evolve. We're going through a financial crisis now that we can learn and grow from. But we can't do it by lying to each other and ourselves about the who, what, and how of this mess.

My response to Theresa's "Forced Tarp" comment

I agree with you - the govt. created the same crisis they are now pretending to be the saviors of. The Community Redevelopment Act (I know that's not what it's called) passed in the 90's lowered (some would say forcibly) the standards of lending. Of course, it seemed like a good idea for a long time. It was almost a decade in the making. And to be sure, that while Clinton may have passed the original legislation to make the lending rules looser, NO ONE ever expected the govt. to bail out Bear Sterns. There was never a reason to. "Too big to fail" is obscene and absurd. Whatever happened to Monopoly busting?

Now, from what I understand of the situation, this was far less a bank bail-out than a Wall Street bail out. The securities market doesn't reside in the banks - they're traded on the floor of the stock exchange. And the securities are what brought the house of cards down. Despite being hedged with many prime mortgages, the actual value of homes - whether the loan was prime or not - were simply not in line with their price.

That being said, I have to wonder if this whole thing is even a tenth as complex as they make it out be. Had they let the free market do what it would, things would have corrected themselves by 2010. So says leading economist John Sullivan ;-) Really though, this isn't rocket science: housing prices should roughly follow inflation. It's very easy to graph out inflation and home values side by side and I've seen websites do it. So all you have to extrapolate the two lines starting from 1981 (our last recession). What we would have seen is that housing prices would have dipped BELOW the inflation line. These would have been all of the foreclosed homes and their resulting impact on other home prices. After the foreclosure dust settled, we would have seen a normalization in home prices.

I mean, really - we have THOUSANDS of first time home buyers flooding the market, driving up prices. People take advantage and speculate. AND they make money hand-over-fist. This is the "greed" that everyone complained about. It wasn't greed, people, it was smart. You don't pass up opportunities like that because you think it will create a systemic failure. The idea would have been laughed at in 2005 and should still have been laughed at in 2008.

See, I'm not the only one who's crazy

Kevin Hassett from Bloomberg also believes Obama is out to create a quasi-socialist state.

June 8 (Bloomberg) -- I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

I'm glad I'm not the only crazy out there.