There Are Two Irreconcilable Americas

Hello all. The following is a Dennis Prager article about the strong polarization we are facing in the United States. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of what we are faced with and why it is a better idea to dissolve the union and start over. Maybe this will get you thinking about solving this problem. Anyway, enjoy! SC

There Are Two Irreconcilable Americas-Dennis Prager
It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division. There is a red one and a blue one. For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the right and left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and left share the same ends, I thought. That is not the case. For the most part, right and left differ in their visions of America and that is why they differ on policies. Right and the left do not want the same America. The left wants America to look as much like Western European countries as possible. The left wants Europe's quasi-pacifism, cradle-to-grave socialism, egalitarianism and secularism in America. The right wants none of those values to dominate America. The left wants America not only to have a secular government, but to have a secular society. The left feels that if people want to be religious, they should do so at home and in their houses of prayer, but never try to inject their religious values into society. The right wants America to continue to be what it has always been -- a Judeo-Christian society with a largely secular government (that is not indifferent to religion). These opposing visions explain, for example, their opposite views concerning nondenominational prayer in school. The left prefers to identify as citizens of the world. The left fears nationalism in general (this has been true for the European left since World War I), and since the 1960s, the American left has come to fear American nationalism in particular. On the other side, the right identifies first as citizens of America. The left therefore regards the notion of American exceptionalism as chauvinism; the United Nations and world opinion are regarded as better arbiters of what is good than is America. The right has a low opinion of the U.N.'s moral compass and of world opinion, both of which it sees as having a much poorer record of stopping genocide and other evils than America has. The left is ambivalent about and often hostile to overt displays of American patriotism. That is why, for example, one is far more likely to find American flags displayed in Orange County, Calif., on national holidays than in liberal neighborhoods in West Los Angeles, Manhattan or San Francisco. The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The right subscribes to the American formula, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions. This is what propels the left to advocate laws that would force employers to pay women the same wages they pay men not only for the same job but for "comparable" jobs (as if that is objectively ascertainable). The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality. The left wants a world -- and therefore an America -- devoid of nuclear weapons. The right wants America to have the best nuclear weapons. The right trusts American might more than universal disarmament. The left wants to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples for the first time in history. The right wants gays to have equal rights, but to keep marriage defined as man-woman. This, too, constitutes an irreconcilable divide. For these and other reasons, calls for a unity among Americans that transcends left and right are either naive or disingenuous. America will be united only when one of them prevails over the other. The left knows this. Most on the right do not.

A disgusting charade indeed!

Welcome to the new America, land of the frivolous, home of the broke. At least that's what we are on our way to becoming (the broke part). I am openly transparent regarding my politics, and I have to tell you that from my standpoint today is a sad day for the general populace of the USofA. The Imperial Federal Government has passed and signed into law the porcine economic rescue bill. Included in said bill is an estimated 340 BILLION in pork spending, including tax breaks for every special interest group you can name. The estimated cost of this bill to taxpayers was supposedly 700 billion. if you believe this will be the final costs then i've got some beachfront property in south dakota to sell you. analysts are already estimating 1.3 to 1.6 TRILLION dollars. thats 10 to the 12th power for you math people out there. i emailed my us senators as well as my us representative to tell them how i feel. i am including this email in this post. as a side note, if you are not in regular contact with your federal as well as state representatives, then you are in no position to bitch and moan about the state of affairs in this country. voting is not enough. if you are too lazy to get out and vote, and there are NO excuses, then you should renounce your citizenship and move to canada. they'll keep you filled in; they know FAR more about us politics than we do! (only joking, canadians, milk in a bag and kraft dinner are great, eh!) as for the email, it follows:

Now that the unpopular economic rescue bill, or as some are calling it, "the economic pork sausage bailout bill" has been signed into law, I wonder what your office as well as those of your colleagues are planning to do to fund this legislation. It seems that with some estimates of 340 billion in pork barrel projects, which I understand were necessary to pass the bill, this bailout is going to cost my fellow taxpayers and I far more than 700 billion. If past government spending trends hold true, we can expect this to easily cost well over 1 trillion dollars. So that's what lawmakers have saddled us with, back to the question of how is it going to be funded. I just finished reading an article about the number of tax breaks that are included in this legislation. My honest opinion is that this is some of the more ludicrous aspects of this project. I can't begin to fathom how a bill of such burdensome magnitude can be passed, and then the very funding needed for said bill be riddled with breaks.
OK, so I asked a question and then ranted a bit. I apologize. I strongly believe that if this has any chance of working and not driving America into bankruptcy, then the very tax laws that will force taxpayers to support this deal need to be changed. I strongly encourage you to take a look at S1025, the FairTax, (forgive me if I have the wrong bill number). I feel that this is the only sure way to fund this bill without placing an insurmountable burden on the average taxpayer.
In closing, I want to reiterate my previous email. I feel that our government has made a grave error by passing this legislation. It is entirely unacceptable that the only way the Washington politicians can pass a bill is to earmark almost half of the proposed amount of the bill for pork barrel spending. All this while crying emergency. Our government has truly become a disgusting charade.

Sincerely,
Sugar Cookie

of course i signed it with my real name. ok, so i want to break this down for you, in case you aren't paying attention. we, the american taxpayer, have been saddled with the burden of funding largest single spending bill in history. this will probably cost over a trillion dollars. there is no reason to expect the ifg to all of a sudden learn fiscal responsibility. are these hard times? absolutely! would they have gotten worse quickly without this bill? probably. but keep in mind that wall street was in favor of this bill. it removes the financial burden off of the few whom have made horrendous decisions, spurred along by government pandering to the uneducated, sports center, entertainment tonight generation. the burden now resides on the shoulders of the taxpayers. this is a break for the irresponsible institutions, and they were probably helping make things look worse than they were. the djia is still well above 10 thousand, with nasdaq well over 2 thousand. the first bill failed, the financial institutions cried apocalypse, then promptly went and recouped two thirds of their losses. things to make you go "hmmmmm." i stated in my previous post that i was in favor of letting the markets police themselves. most respected economists were saying the same thing (copycats!). things would probably have gotten worse for a while, but once the chaff was sifted out, what would have been left would have been the strongest, most secure companies. our economy would have rebounded as much as it could, considering the oppressive tax structure of the us. which brings me to my next point.

it comes as no surprise that the us has the highest corporate tax structures in the world. in other words, companies pay more taxes here than in ANY other country on the planet. this is a major reason for the decline in our economy. companies simply cannot do business in the us and compete. follow that with the payroll tax being the single largest burden on the average american's paycheck, and you see where this goes. our tax code could be singled out as most responsible for the overall weakness of our economy in general. i'm not referring to this current crisis, but to the fact that the canadians are doing better economically than we are. hell, the mexicans are doing better than we are, but of course they are in the process of a deliberate invasion. which is another factor. all this said to point out something i referenced in the above email; the FairTax. if you don't know the specifics, go to www.fairtax.org for detail. to summarize it, it is a system in which all federal taxes are replaced with what is essentially a federal sales tax. this tax merely replaces the embedded taxes already included in new, first sale retail goods. no more april 15, and better than that, no more IRS!!!!!!! www.fairtax.org the price of goods doesn't go up as some have said because of the embedded taxes replaced by the embedded fair tax. don't want to pay taxes this week? don't go shopping. rebates will be given on necessities of life up to the poverty level. so you won't pay taxes on milk and bread, but that 60 inch plasma will cost you. anyway, i do a poor job describing it, look into it yourself. if you feel that this is a tax system you can live with, contact your federal representatives.
ok, so i've been at this way too long and i'm getting delirious. i do however want to make one final point. you've heard me say this before. this whole mess could have been avoided if the ifg would have kept their noses out of the free market. this whole collapse started with fannie and freddie, both govt supported programs. this new pork sausage bailout bill is just the latest example of how washington has lost control of it's bowels and is currently crapping all over the citizens which it has sworn to serve. this government has become a bloated corpse of it's original intent, and as such no longer serves any useful purpose. now is the time to begin to work for change, not obama style change, but 1776 style change. it can happen. it will happen. and it will happen sooner than you think. Godspeed.
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Bailouts, Pandering, and other Government Foulups

ok, so i'm going to have to shoot straight here. while i normally like to ramble on about random garbage, i've got a serious burr in my ass and i'm gonna have to pick it out. the burr, not my ass. anyway, so this week we have seen our financial sector take quite a large hit. this has been followed by the imperial federal government proposing, then rejecting, and now proposing again some sort of bailout plan for said financial sector. couple of problems with this deal. first, this is going to cost the taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!!! the numbers currently read, including bailouts already given to previously failed institutions, OVER ONE TRILLION DOLLARS of YOUR money. one trillion dollars. 1,000,000,000,000 bucks. that's alot of zeros. hope you make good money. this of course does not include money given to the auto industry to bail them out and the government taking on failed airline pensions, as well as any other bailout schemes i've missed. the big o says that this is an investment by the government into the financial sector. these same investments got us into this mess!!! the government won't profit, as has been suggested, it will lose money as have these financial institutions and the burden will be passed along to the taxpayer. say goodbye to your job, your home, and any money you may have been placing into retirement funds. i could go on, but you get the idea; this is an EXTREMELY costly deal. second, while everyone is saying that the financial sector is doomed without this bailout, wall street recouped around two thirds of it's losses in one day. ONE DAY!!!! this mess stems from investors betting on bad mortgages, those given to people who hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of ever repaying it. i find it ironic that the five cities in the us with the largest criminal alien populations also have the largest foreclosure rates in the country. imagine walking into you bank asking for a 300 thousand dollar loan with nothing but a fake id. then you get it, even though you have no credit score. tell me where the problem lies. said mortgage is sold to a larger company, such as washington mutual, or aig, and they artificially inflate the value of said loan to increase investments in their company. then one day, the balloon bursts, and we are in the situation we are in now.

OK, so that's a brief synopses of the problem, at least my take on it. where do we go from here. my opinion is that we let the market take care of itself. evidence that this will work is in the two thirds gain in one day of previous day's losses. sure, other companies will fail, but rightfully so. for those of you who slept through economics, this is the way a free market works. there are winners and losers. it really is survival of the fittest. any businessman will tell you that the way to succeed is to structure your business to be able to fight and win. the wrong way to do this is to underwrite bad debt. this goes for a business as well as a government. the companies we see failing are those whose poor decision making allowed them to be swallowed up in an extremely competitive environment. yes, speaker pelosi, anything does go. that's the way business works. stick to politics and leave the business to the businesspeople. under no circumstances has a large scale government bailout worked. in fact, they usually only artificially inflate an already burst balloon, keeping it inflated until it bursts again with greater ferocity. another point to make is that this also stems from governmental intervention in said free market. by pressuring institutions to lend to the unqualified, the ifg set this mess up. remember the whole "everyone deserves to live the american dream" horsesqeeze that the current administration fed us earlier this decade? well, here is what happens when the government steps in a "helps" make this happen. now, this is the part where i fess up. i was able to take advantage of one of these trumped up programs, namely the now defunct Nehemiah gift program. i was able to finance my home with no money down, although it appeared that i placed a down payment. this was available to first time homebuyers, and without it i wouldn't have been able to purchase my home when i did. call it a case of "gotta have it now-itis." while i have since shown my creditors that i am a reputable borrower, it could have easily gone another way for them. i had no "skin in the game" so to speak. anyway, i though that it was only ethical to point this out.

so where does the blame lie? you can pretty much take a map, put an "X" on washington dc, wall street, and then anywhere else one of these businesses was headquartered. both sides of the isle in the congress are to blame, and equally so. the white house is to blame. the investors are to blame. the mortgage brokers are to blame. the community activists are to blame. and yes, boys and girls, the american citizens are to blame. that's you and i. i recently read an article on self defense. it stated that you and you alone are responsible for you personal protection. this is an unalienable right, and a moral responsibility. if you fail to protect yourself, you are as much to blame for your demise as is your attacker. failing doesn't mean that you did all you could and were still overpowered. it means that you did nothing to protect yourself. that's the position we as citizens are in. we have done nothing to protect ourselves from this situation. we've allowed our government to become abusive of our rights, our freedoms, and our financial well being. in other words, our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. to continue quoting the declaration of independence, "governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles and organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

you ask why i bring this up. i believe that thorough examination of the declaration of independence in it's entirety illuminates interesting parallels between the situation in 1776 and 2008. i believe that any freedom minded american citizen will tend to notice some of these similarities. i feel that we have reached a point in history where our country and it's government has outgrown the republic.

OK, so i've gone on for too long. i however hope that this has sparked a fire deep within your being, a fire that begins to burn for change. not the type of change that the big o is promising, but real change, tangible change. in a future installment we will dig deeper into this change and hopefully discover answers to the question before us. at least we'll kill a few minutes of time in the process.
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Enough for now

what, i didn't even know there was a font called georgia. so i guess it's appropriate that i use it. yes, i reside in the great state of georgia. and while there are some parts of it that are kinda scary (deliverance was filmed in the northeast ga mountains) it is mostly a pretty good state to be in. this is a far cry from the state of my previous residence, which i won't mention (alabama). ok, so i'm a sucker for detail. anyway, the good thing about georgia is that we have very nice firearms laws. not many states let you carry your holstered sidearm into a BANK. you tend to get alot of stares, but hey my second amendment rights are protected here, and by golly i'm going to exercise them. other than that it's just your run of the mill southern state.
wow, i can't believe that i just wrote a paragraph about where i park my fat ass. like you people actually care. anyway, so i'm thinking that four posts in one day is plenty. i wouldn't want to tire you people of my endless banter. god knows most of you are screwed up enough on your own without my twisted influence to make things worse. which gets me thinking.
i am a fairly large, quite handsome fellow. that said, why is it that people expect me to be some sort of role model? God blesses me with a little size and striking good looks and all of a sudden i'm the example that all of mankind should follow. do you realize the implications of this half-cocked line of reasoning? humanity as we know it would be DOOMED!!!! it's bad enough that the people that i am around daily have to put up with my nonsense, but most of them have been inoculated against my insanity. but the general public? i don't think so missy. good god, the mere thought has me trembling. this would be smallpox all over again. i can see it now....innocent folks lined up for vaccination with a picture of me with a red circle and slash on the syringe. without said vaccination the world would probably end rather quickly. folks walking around running into things, tripping over their own egos, throwing out perfectly good lunchmeat, you get the picture. which leads me to say this....
i'm thinking of running for political office.

OK, so there really isn't much to say, however I'm sure that I'll be able to fill a couple of minutes of your time with some meaningless crap that will make you wonder why you bother reading this. So far things have calmed down a bit. The surreal fact of a child entering the picture continues to be just that; surreal. Yesterday, we bid on and won the crib bedding set for the little man's room. Having my influence it is of course an aviation theme. I'm beginning to see the upside to having a boy; I get to decorate the room, which means that I get to put all MY favorite toys in there. You know, model planes hanging from the ceiling, the ceiling fan, a big train running along the wall, all kinds of cool stuff that I always wanted but considered a bit much for a thirty-something year old kid to have. So I'm already one of those monster dads who live vicariously through their son. Poor guy, and he's not even here yet.

So, do you sometimes wander around in a fog? I tend to spend most of my waking moments in some sort of stupor, which seems to be related to stupid, not sure if that's a coincidence or not. I'm fairly sure the reason for this is entirely too much animal products in my diet. Or maybe too much Jagermeister. Maybe both (my money's on the Jager). Which by the way is a very fine liquor for those of you not opposed to the occasional nip of the good spirits. Or frequent nips, I won't judge. Back to the fog thing. It seems lately that the fog has gotten thicker. I personally am experiencing some really cool things, but it seems that everything around me outside of home is falling apart. For confidentiality reasons I won't go into detail, but it should suffice to say that things are pretty shaky. Maybe that's the source of the fog. Maybe it's because of the whole surreal 'bout-to-be-a-papa thing. Maybe it comes back to the whole light and darkness thing, except mostly I am complete darkness. Not really complete darkness, just very shadowy. I don't know (I still put my money on the Jager).

I just came to the realization that a big train running around the room doesn't fit the aviation theme. Guess I may have to scratch that and put a smaller train in the basement. See, best of both worlds. Kid gets a way cool miniature Smithsonian, I get to play with model planes and finally build my train layout in the basement. IT”S FOR THE KID HONEY, I PROMISE!!!!!!! (She tends to read this garbage before the rest of you crazy people). The kid thing is definitely making me more security conscious, but that's another issue for another time.

See, I told you I could waste your time, and do it with relative ease. That is one of my talents. I also juggle and can rub my belly and tap my head at the same time (not while juggling, however). Stay tuned, I've got some stuff I want to say in future issues that you may actually find useful, informative, life threatening, disgraceful, disgusting, etc. See, I just wasted more of your time. Told ya it was a talent. Later

Preparing for Jonas

For those of you who don't know yet, the wife and I are expecting our firstborn sometime around January 19. And as you can tell by the name, it's a boy. So fortunately for the world the Ellis name is safe for another generation. Imagine if it were to end with me. Think of the emptiness the world would feel without an Ellis from my lineage running things. "Tis would be sad days indeed. Anyway, so maybe if I feel like it I'll post my random thoughts (and I do mean random) on this little site here from time to time. You have to promise not to hold me accountable to them, as sometimes they tend to be far flung and completely inundated with the miscellaneous crap that runs through my head like an out of control freight train; one of the big, heavy, long freight trains that you get stuck at a crossing by for like 15 minutes while it runs past at 60 mph causing you to experience motion sickness even though you aren't prone to motion sickness. Promise?? Ok, guess I'll have to take your word for it.

So for the first time in my adult life, there is a crib in my house. I mean come on, what the hell is that all about? I realized this after driving for an hour to another town still considered Metro Atlanta that seemed like it was on the other side of the planet. I know, there are some of you who live on the other side of the planet and I have no idea what I'm talking about....but have YOU ever driven from one ATL town to another? That's what I thought!!! For those of you who don't know, I live in the northwest Metro Atlanta area, in a smallish suburb called Dallas. It is in a county directly west of the infamous Cobb county, where the flowers are real and the people are plastic (Colee, sometime around 1997), (no offense to those of you residing in Cobb, you guys ROCK!!). Anyway, from my place to the people's place where we bought the crib it is like 60 miles, IN THE SAME CITY. So I'm driving down GA 400 in my Grand Caravan (yes the notorious red van that wreaked so much havoc in St. Pete one nite in late May). Now, the wife and I have had a van for about five years. The first one met an untimely death at the hands of a 1990 Volvo (another story). This current one we bought in July of 2004, shortly after we bought our house. We have two labs, and we make frequent trips of 8-17 hours duration, depending on which family member we are visiting. I married a Yank so the in laws all live far away, some even in other countries. So the van is great for trips. That explains the van. Where was I?

Isn't ADD great? So driving home I realize that I am installing baby furniture in my house. As yesterday wound down, and I am dosing off to switching between AUvLSU and FSUvWake, I come to the realization that I am horribly unprepared for the events shaping up in my future. So that's where I intend to take this thing, chronicling my probably ill fated attempts to prepare for the most life changing event I'll ever experience. It proves to be an entertaining adventure, more so for you people, as it is probably going to drive me to the frayed ends of sanity. Hey, that's a Metallica song. By the way, the new Metallica album rocks HARD. The boys are back and they are PISSED. Get it today. I don't work for them, just like their music. Alright people, that's enough for now. You are free to go about your business. Take care.

Good Lord Willing!

Yep, you may now welcome me to the twenty-first century. I have officially begun this whole blogging thing. I must admit that I kind of like it. OK, let's set some ground rules. These are for your own protection. First, I am not responsible for the content of every post I write. My mind tends to be kinda squirrelly, if you know what I mean. This may cause some of the garbage in my head to actually spew forth, causing maximum offending, wreckage, not to mention carnage. Second, all capitalization will be dispensed with effective immediately. i hate having to hit the shift key when i type, so this is merely for my own personal comfort, and let's face it, my comfort is what is most important. ok, i think that's it for the rules. now, let's kick this thing off with a couple of old posts from my facebook notes. enjoy.

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