bobtheump

In the early parts of this morality play called the Republican Primary we were treated to the likes of Herman Cain.  Cain’s downfall notwithstanding the most often heard recommendation for his candidacy was his “outsider” status.  Now with the field narrowed down to just 3 ½ candidates we have no real outsider except for Romney.  His political experience is as a Governor having failed in his earlier attempts to become an insider.

Those other efforts, a run for the Senate and a previous run for the Presidential nomination make him a beltway wannabe but not an actual beltway insider.  Santorum, Gingrich and Paul are all beltway boys running around trying to act as if they are not.  Gingrich is the ultimate insider. His most successful days came as an across the aisle negotiator with a President who wielded the bully pulpit with great effect, Bill Clinton. Let’s face it, Gingrich engineered enough right-wing change in Washington at the time he accidentally got Clinton elected to a second term.  Santorum has been around long enough to be one of the boys and as a member of the Senate he carries the dead weight of that corrupt body with him.  Paul has been a Congressional Representative for so long he has spent nearly as much time serving his country in Washington as he has bashing it on the campaign trail.

Now here is the problem for me with my friends and family.  I think being a Washington insider is a good thing.  I have never understood the concept that I did not want an expert in the way things work to be the guy I picked to fix it.  Washington is in great need of a complete overhaul.    If ever there was a time for an insider with a mind for reform, now is it. If we learn nothing else from the election of Mr. Obama to the highest office in the land it should be that a man with no experience in the job they are looking to land is a poor substitute for a person with experience.  Mr. Obama, while surviving on the buffet of free and biased media support, has had more political gaffes and outright failures than any first term President in the history of the republic.  There have been repeated failures to vet appointees including a Treasury Secretary who can’t do his taxes correctly.  911 Truthers to high posts and a gun walking scheme that was so poorly managed that the guns are still at large and the death toll from guns supplied to Mexican crime cartels by the US DOJ is at 323 and rising.  Shovel ready jobs that by his admission weren’t and an unemployment rate that is only below 10% because of the number of US citizens who have simply stopped looking for work.  A specious calculation at best.  At least Romney has run a state and that is a step in the right direction as compared to a first term US Senator who had never even chaired a committee.

From my way of thinking, our legislative bodies are corrupt and dysfunctional and they are the real source of nearly all of this countries malaise.  We have a Senate that has failed to pass a budget for YEARS!!!  We have a congress that shops out the writing of the laws they pass without reading them and gives regulatory power to agencies without even the appearance of oversight.  We have both houses of the Congress accepting a legal opinion that says getting rich on insider trading is ok if you are an elected official. The Executive branch of our government has run roughshod over the checks and balances provided in the Constitution and the Legislative branch lays down like a two dollar whore not even willing to stand up for themselves much less you and I.  Decades of choosing power over policy has rendered our judiciary incompetent and we the people are subjected to legal interpretations that read more like absurd hypothesis instead of juris-prudence.

Now is the time for an insider who knows where all the bodies are buried and how to play the game of politics with abandon and skill.  If my car needs a complete overhaul I take it to a shop where they specialize in just that.  I would not call the UC School of Music and book an appointment.  Our nation is under an attack on the political front and we need, more than anything else, a master politician who wants to fix it.  If you take a look at the 3 ½ candidates left on the podium, which one strikes you as the master politician?

Yeah, me too.

If you ever needed to be convinced that Harry Reid was a corrupt politician whose loyalties are more to the progressive movement than to the United States of America you have all the evidence you need. You don’ have to look any farther than his failure to stand in outrage at President Obama’s clearly illegal “recess appointment” while the Senate is not in recess.

There are more than a few folks who should be completely up in arms over this incredible action. The President has trampled the concept of separation of powers and quite literally taken a stab at the role of monarch. His actions are more than arrogant they are illegal. Clearly. And yet the President of the Senate, the obviously dis-Honorable Joe Biden, sits in silent assent to the President’s grab for unlimited executive power. The Nevada whiner Harry Reid flops on his back like the two dollar whore he seems to be as the President renders the Senate of the United States irrelevant on his watch. And, why do Reid and Biden do and say nothing? The only answer can be because Party means more to them than the Constitution they have repeatedly sworn to uphold.

It has never been a comfortable relationship between the governmental powers held in check and balance by the framers of the constitution. Presidents have regularly tried to bypass the legislature and more often and more successfully use the judiciary to their own ends. But, rarely has a President made such a blatant grab of power in such a cheerfully accepted manner. In 1937, another anti-capitalist, President Roosevelt had the senate in his pocket and was being thwarted in his efforts to socialize American industries by the Supreme Court. So, Roosevelt attempted to stack the court by adding Justices putatively to assist with the workload of Justices over the age of 70. The difference maker in the late 30’s was that the public stood up in outrage at the corruption of the plan and shouted the President down. This President sit’s in benefit of 45 years of union indoctrination in the public schools, cowardly senate leadership and without a public smart enough to stand and shout in their own defense.

If you ever felt your freedom at risk you should feel it right now. Right damn now. This President, whether intentionally or not, is set to deliver on Kruschev’s promise. When that right wing nut job you liberals love to make fun of was telling you that the Government was out of control setting up regulatory agencies whose edicts have the power of law, this is what we were talking about. If the President with his crony Senate and hapless House can create agencies with unfettered power and then staff it with radicals like Cordray or stuff the NLRB with Democrat supplicants who only do the AFL-CIO’s bidding then your freedom is under assault. When the EPA can turn off your electric with mandated smart meters and the NLRB can keep you from opening a business in any state you choose and the Justice Department can provide weapons to Mexican drug cartels doing business in the U.S. your freedoms are under assault from your own government.

The elections will get here when they get here but the time to stand up and shout is now. Write your congressman. Write your Senators. Email the White House. It does not matter if you are Republican or Democrat or Independent or nothing at all. We are all being harmed by an over-reaching executive and we can at least agree that freedom should trump any policy.

We can agree on that, can’t we?

As long as there are Marines…

They stand in formation, making lines that can be seen and felt.

They crouch in place, holding fast to ground bought and paid for.

Paid for with more than blood.

Paid for with more than sweat.

Paid for with the Spirit of Brotherhood.

There is nothing more precious than Spirit.

Spirit is singular and shared, visceral and ethereal.

Spirit fills the gaps between men in danger and men in pain and men who feel the fear they dare not recognize.

Spirit informs the soul that life is made sacred in terms of for what and whom you would risk its loss.

Spirit unifies and sanctifies.

Spirit carries with it the collective experience of all who truly share its intimacy.

Spirit is eternal.

They stand alone feeling the long lines of formation they share in time.

They crouch in place holding fast for brother’s they will never know.

They feel the Spirit that ties them to past horror and glory.

They know the price.

As long as there are Marines…

BobTheUmp

Merry Christmas to all those who do and have done that which was needed without regard to cost.  You are a blessing to the world in which you live.

I get that I am an older more conservative fellow but I really am getting tired of the familiarity of strangers.  For instance, I went to the bank yesterday and was just depositing a check.  As it happens, I bank at a large chain with a great many branches and I was in another city.  So, I went through the drive through and was greeted by a young woman with a “Hello. What can I do for you today?”  I told her and she wandered off to parts unseen.  She was gone for about 2 minutes and in that short time we had become long-lost friends. My receipt came back to me and over the intercom came, “There ya go, Bob.  Have a great day.”  Seriously?  “There ya go, BOB.”? As if we had been friends for years!  I am no one all that special but surely I am due the respect of at least a “Mr.” I coached kids for a several years and on occasion one would take the bold step of calling me by my first name.  It always ended the same way.  I explained they could call me Sir, or Mr. P. or Coach. Otherwise they could call me all kinds of names as they looked for another team on which to play. I learned from a Coach of mine who explained that when I knew everything he knew and had worked for as long as he had worked and raised kids and paid off a mortgage or two we would sit down over a sandwich and I could still call him Coach. And I do, because, he earned it. When I coach kids I want them to respect the position of Coach by using the title so that when I instruct them they accept the direction. I am not so important as to require a title but neither are the children around me my equals.  The concept of respecting your elders is an old and important one.  It is just one of the several social conventions that have fallen out of practice in the last 50 years or so.  I wrote in an earlier post about the failure of politeness by young men at a 4th of July celebration.  I believe that manners and the social niceties are the building blocks of behavior that lead a society to the opportunity for success. When I walk down the street I expect the kids to move out of my way just as I would make room for my elders because it is likely easier for me than for them.  The social graces provide more than the lubricant upon which polite society slides.  They also instruct us and require that we pay attention to our surroundings and our behavior in public.  They eliminate unintended insult and the resultant hard feelings.  They force us to respect achievement and effort.  I have a neighbor with whom my wife and I socialize who has a PHD. I call her Doctor when we are in front of children and in public and print because she has done the work and earned the respect.  I am friends with my Pastor and I call him Reverend when in public or in print because he has earned it.  Referring to them with their earned titles I hope teaches my children and reminds others that achievement is worthy of respect and that we can learn better from people who have actually done the work of learning.
Today we seem to be conditioned not to care about a person’s qualifications only their charisma.  We give credence to actor’s testifying in front of Congress because of where they testify, not because of their testimonies bona fides.  We elect public officials on name recognition and “Q” factor not on whether they offer real solutions to real problems.  And part of why we do this is because we no longer pay attention to what is going on around us enough to give respect to strangers, customers and our elders.  The teller at the bank is just an example of how marketing has triumphed over common courtesy.  I am certain that the bank has some research that says calling a customer by their first name makes them feel like family or friend and makes them feel more comfortable doing business with that bank or store or whatever.  Let me tell you, I am the exception to that study.  When the person behind the counter calls me by my first name I am motivated to do business in some other place where they respect me and show the courtesy of appreciating my business.  I am reminded of the old adage, “familiarity breeds contempt” and the FBI statistic that says 73% of all murder victims knew the person who killed them.

Gingrich is right on immigration…

There is a rule in baseball that I like to use to describe the concept of the statute of limitations.  The rule has to do with batting out-of-order.  If a batter comes to the plate and is not the hitter supposed to be up to bat and the other team notices, then he is sent back to the bench and the correct hitter is sent to the plate to finish the at bat.  If there are balls and strikes the correct hitter has to live with the count and finish what the wrong hitter started.  If no one notices or says anything until the batter gets to first, but is caught at that point, he is called “out” and the correct batter comes up to hit and the out counts and there ya go.  But, if the wrong hitter gets to first and the next batter gets to the plate and the pitcher throws him even one pitch then the guy on first stays and is considered the correct hitter.  There is a time and place to catch the bad guy and if you don’t you have to live with the consequences.  As an umpire, batting out-of-order stuff is a nightmare on the field.  You have to think through every single situation, figure out who belongs at the plate now and what do you do if the guy on first is still on first when his legitimate time at bat comes around and all with both team head coaches giving you their opinion.  Not a great spot to be in and a jackpot you did not create.  There are enough arguments in baseball that you deserve.  You blow a play at the plate or have a bad day calling balls and strikes you get an earful and well….you deserve it.  But, when the crap storm is because you have to sort out a mess you had nothing to do with well those are the days the job doesn’t pay enough.  And, what really makes it annoying is the rule book is available to the coaches, too.  Gingrich is getting a complete load of crap over his comments about not deporting an illegal alien who has been here for 20 or 25 years and has legitimate ties to the country.  He has not said give amnesty.  He has said legitimize his residency and get him on the books.  No vote.  No benefits not earned through citizenship.  Just get him on the books.  The government has had myriad opportunities to deport illegal aliens.  They didn’t.  They don’t. They said, “Stay put.”  The feds said, “Do the job you are doing and stay out of trouble and we will look into other more serious problems.”  So, he did.  It is too late now for playing the game under different rules.  There is enough to do to catch the illegal aliens crossing the border every day and send them back home.  The rules aren’t different and the illegal aliens that crossed 20 years ago and set up shop did so under the rules they were given at the time.  Just because you hit out-of-order doesn’t mean you are always out-of-order. If the other team pitches to the next guy you are safe.  That’s fair play and Gingrich is describing it correctly.  If you are trying to break into our country now we will catch you and send you back.  If you take advantage by getting benefits you didn’t earn, got to first base as it were, we will punish you and deport you. We will call you out and send you back to the bench. But let’s face it, if you have lived here for 20 plus years and have lived by the laws of our country since you came here, we pitched to the next hitter.  It is time for us to get the next guy out.  Literally.

I heard a friend complain about Cincinnati Police Department for writing tickets and presenting them to the Occupy Cincinnati protesters.  She claimed it was wrong to harass them with tickets because of course they have the right to be there to protest.  I even heard national commentators talk of the right to protest.  The problem is, of course, you don’t have a right to “protest”.  You have a right to “Free Speech”.  But, even the right to “Free Speech” and “Free Assembly” doesn’t give you the right to “occupy” land that isn’t yours.  Public land does not imply individual ownership.  You cannot occupy something without declaring an illegal intent to deprive others of the use of that same public ground.  You have no more right to live in a public park than I do and if you are there in your tent all night and all day for weeks at a time you are depriving me of my rights to also use the park.  That makes you a criminal.  The government’s obligation to protect your God-given right to Free Speech means that reasonable permits shall be given to any group no matter how disgusting their point of view and they can use that permitted time and place to say whatever the hell they want.  And, then you do like the horrifying Tea-Party protesters do. You pay your bill to the Port-A-Potty folks. You clean up after yourself. And then you GO HOME!!!!  The occupiers are…just that.  Occupiers .  Squatters.  Bums.  They have housed themselves for whatever period of time rent free and tax-free and still claim the right to live under the same protections as the rest of us?  Baloney!! Criminals forfeit rights and the civilly disobedient of the past understood and accepted this consequence.  They wore their arrests like a badge of honor.  And, those of us who were supporters of the giants like Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted those arrests not as blots on a record but as the sacrifices of a martyr to a just cause.  The liberals of today not only are unwilling to accept consequences to actions but are outraged that anyone would be so outrages as to protect the rule of law for the rest of society.  There is a reason that when you get hauled in front of the Judge the charge is made by the “People”.  It’s because your offense is against all law-abiding citizens in your affront to civility and the peace.  Now the Campus Police at U.C Davis are under criticism because protesters who purposefully placed themselves in a spot that they would have to be removed from predictably refused to be removed.  So, the Campus Police motivated them with pepper spray.  No badge of honor to these folks. Nope. These great giants of civil disobedience are gonna sue.  The liberal press runs ad-nauseum the exciting part of the video but leaves out the refusals to vacate and the warnings issued by the U.C. Davis Police.  If the police were to drag them off kicking and screaming and someone were to get hurt the pepper spray would seem pretty benign, wouldn’t it?  The pepper spray was invented and adopted in reaction to the outcry against physical restraint and motivation by baton.  If the only acceptable response to criminal trespass is no response at all, I figure the next “Occupy” location should be Joe Biden’s house in Connecticut or Nancy Pelosi’s home in Pacific Heights.  And, if occupying other folk’s property carries no penalty, let’s not occupy the front yards.  The kitchens have to be phenomenal!!

For years I have argued to my disbelieving Mother that the decline of American Exceptionalism can be traced directly to the institution of the Designated Hitter Rule in Major League Baseball.  I have long promoted the belief that telling the youth of America that you don’t have to hit or field if you are good at one or the other but not both is akin to taking the fear of failure away from the up and coming leadership of the country.

But mostly MLB Rule 6.10 is symptomatic of an attitude that crept into the American zeitgeist that refused to accept failure as a consequence of inadequacy.  The “feel good about yourself”, “do it if it feels good”, “to thine own self be true”, “anti-establishment” mentality made it make sense to have pitchers sit out their turn at bat but still have the ball in their hand to throw at the other teams best hitters. Giving rise to expect actions that have no consequence. That 60’s revolution of hedonism over discipline made it make sense that players who could no longer compete as complete players with younger more talented rookies could just avoid the glaring holes in their game and only do that which came easy to them.

This mindset leads to the DH rule and sadly, far more.  It lead to no fault divorce, abortion on demand as a means of birth control, reporting of “news” without concern about facts or sources, retirement plans without worry about how to pay for them and union heavy corporations  that are “too big to fail”.  It allowed countless university students to think it was reasonable to get a degree in music theory and that there would actually be a job for a music theorist waiting after graduation.  While there is certainly a societal need for the occasional graduate with a degree in social anthropology it turns out that the vast majority of that need is in the food service industry.  These personally gratifying decisions lead us to a world in which there are too many Poli-Sci grads to employ and construction projects delayed for years at a time because there are not enough certified welders.  Those choices to find one-self in the arts lead to national funding of the arts that cannot be cut because there are so many nationally funded artists; cowboy poets for instance.  These choices created laws that forced mortgage banks to accept loans based on what people claimed they earned; not what they could prove they earned.  Laws were created that forced banks to make loans to people based on criteria completely unrelated to the ability to pay back the loan and of course the loans were not repaid. This DH attitude allows for incredibly high unemployment among the liberal arts crowd giving them time to protest reality.  OWS’ers squatting like bums sponging off of the public are protesting the results of a society acquiescing to these same protests from 45 years earlier.  But, the DH paradigm is so ingrained that they cannot see they beg to be further victimized by the do-gooders who enslaved them in the first place.

The facts are unavoidable; there is no money to pay for feeling good about one-self.  There is enough money to pay for those who cannot survive without help but nowhere near enough money to pay for those who cannot survive doing only what they want. This DH philosophy has convinced people that they truly cannot compete and survive, that opportunity is not available to them and that without the force of the guns of government they will further founder and fail.

The facts are quite the opposite.  A bigger government only means being governed more and free less.  Less freedom means less opportunity, and less personal success and less personal validation.  Big government solutions to problems mean far fewer personally tailored solutions and far more servitude to the public good.  Big government will still need welders and regardless of your dream to study Mozart’s utilization of tonal compatibility you may well find yourself listening to the discordant melodies of a government supplied metal grinder and MIG welder.

Be careful what you wish for…

The Occupy Wall Street movement that has been astro-turfed by the left into the “Occupy This or That” movement makes me, above all else,  sad.  The Occupiers are protesting seemingly everything but the real failures they are protesting are their own.  They protest their own failure to pursue an education that offered them a chance at future employment.  They decry their own lack of personal responsibility that would have afforded them the level of savings to go to school and escape that liberal indoctrination without a crushing debt.  While I have no evidence other than common sense I am willing to bet that practically none of the Occupiers had full-time summer jobs when in high school.  I am willing to make wager that few if any of the group are able to provide for themselves absent the generosity of others, beginning with a too lenient set of parents and ending with social promotion from the schools they attended.  And, most aggravating is they are begging the government to step in and be that which they most loudly protest against. They argue so vehemently against the Plutocracy they claim exists in the structure of the Wall Street banks with their insistence that they are the “99%”. (Heaven fore-fend I should ever be so wanting of self-respect as to be a part of that group.) They claim to be so much the victims of a huge conspiracy of faceless kings and queens as to have no power to set their own course or achieve their own dreams.  Yet the solution they desperately pursue is to turn over completely their right to self-determination to an Oligarchy run by faceless administrators and mind numbed bureaucrats. A corporate head at least answers to the whims of choices made by both the free markets and the voting stock holder. Yet, proof lies in Mr. Obama’s instructions to his advisors to by-pass congress that the government largesse the protesters crave comes at a massive price in the loss of freedom. The flawed logic is mind numbing. They bemoan the existence of corporations while championing unions.  Unions like the AFL-CIO which is a corporation and as of 2010’s audited financial statements had 1.8 Billion dollars in Real Estate assets including mortgages.  (Kind of just like a Wall Street bank, hunh?)  They rage against the cost of an education and in the same breath the failure of our society to pay teachers enough. The rail against capitalism while selling T-shirts to each other with clever slogans and beg for handouts from the passing stock brokers. Lord Acton’s caution of the corrupting effect of absolute power has been proven true over and over in the history of man.  Yet these useful idiots sit in squalor chanting for revolution; A revolt against personal freedom and into the hands of a not even momentarily benevolent dictatorship.  The mere statement of it is so ironic it is absurd.  They demand, “Free me from my freedoms.”  The state motto of New Hampshire reads, “Live free or die.”  The motto of the Occupy Wall Street crowd seems , “Better to live as a slave than to have to work like a free man.”  I am nearly overcome by sadness.

We spend one day a year at the local theme park.  We are pretty lucky to live very close to a really big one so we don’t have the expense of travelling to one.  Kings Island is in our neighborhood and it has some of the most amazing roller coasters in the world  The fall Fear Fest and Halloween festivities are first class.  The live entertainment is top-notch and reason enough to go to the park.  Everything is clean and the landscaping is beautiful.  And, it feels like a place where the customer is incredibly important.  In exactly the same way the mark is incredibly important to the con artist.  The food is ball park high-priced.  The servings are normal sized and the drinks are ridiculous.  A bottle of water from the vending machines that line the miles long turnstiles is four bucks.  A 1/4 pound hot dog is $4.50 and two regular sized slices of pizza –  $6.99. (No, you can’t buy just one.  They are sold two at a time and the computer system the high school kid is running at the register won’t sell you just the one piece.)  A quarter cup of flavor free flash frozen ice cream balls is $5 and there are even rides in the park that require you to pay up more than the $52 it cost you to get past the gate.  Well, $52 plus $12 to park your car and walk to the gate.  Nope, no parking lot tram any more.  You can get the tickets on-line for a discount that slides away as you pay a $5 dollar service fee to print the ticket on your own printer with your own paper and ink.  You can have even more fun in the park with the carnival like arcade games.  You know, like the hard to make free throw at $3 for a single ball?  The football toss through a tire for $3 a throw.  The bowling ball on a ramp game for $3 dollars a try.  You might notice a pattern.  Rides are amazing and lines are up to 2 hours long.  We went to the park today for nine hours and rode 7 rides.  One roller coaster, The Racer is old tech and the lines are short so of the 7 rides 3 of them were trips on The Racer.  So really, 9 hours for 5 different rides, (four coasters and a water ride).  And in that nine hours you have to eat and drink.  You can sit at the ball park and not need to spend the confiscatory prices on the concessions.  It’s a three-hour tour.  Go to the monster park and it is an all day endeavor with no real choice but to succumb to the highway robbery of a $9.99 hamburger and $4 fountain drink.  All I could think of as I pulled out my wallet again and again was how much the folks who run Kings Island must hate their customers.  I watched family after family walk away from paying four bucks for a twenty ounce bottle of Diet Coke shaking their heads in disgust and dealing with disappointed kids.  I watched smart Mom’s keep the water bottle they walked in with and refill them at the water fountains outside the still amazingly free restrooms.  (I know, why give them that idea?)  Kings Island and, I assume the other parks run by their parent company Cedar Fair Entertainment, make me feel like a fool for paying their prices and I hate to look the fool in front of my kids.  So, even though they are right here in the neighborhood, we go less than once a year.  And, if I can find a way to wiggle out of that one I do.  I get that the coasters are world-renowned.  But I can buy 20 tickets to the I-Max for what a day of tramping around their overpriced confines cost and still have enough left over to not look like an idiot to my kids.