BluegrassBulletin.com

When Does Discretion Equal Cowardice?

I was having a discussion the other day with a fellow who was struggling with some of Ron Paul's views on foreign policy.  This man is very well read, very well connected and very involved in the development of conservative candidates for public office.  He is also a very big Ron Paul supporter.  But he was struggling.

He firmly believes that radical Islam is presents a clear and present danger to our American way of life.  He is convinced that countries like Iran foment hatred for the West and have the capacity to do considerable harm to our economy, to our infrastructure and to the health and lives of our people even if they cannot currently deliver a nuclear weapon to our shores.

And while he agrees with Ron Paul on most things he has a very hard time with the "non-interventionist" rhetoric.

Today I read where Hillary Clinton has said that we cannot take any action against Syria.  Yet by most accounts, if there were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they were moved in the dead of night to Syria, and we all know that Syria is a danger to our interests.

But what has me asking some hard questions today is the news that the Asad regime has murdered tens of thousands of its citizens and yet we sit idly by.

I know the argument: They are a soverign nation and we have no business interfereing with their internal affairs.  Well the same could be said about a married couple, unless of course I see some husband beating the snot out of his wife.  Maybe it is their marriage, maybe it is non of my business but only a coward would stand by and watch some man beat his wife.

When we see brutal dictators murdering their helpless citizens and we just stand by saying "we must be non-interventionists" it makes me want to puke.

No, I'm not if favor of being the world's police force.  But you tell me, when does discretion equal cowardice?

Mortgage Fraud Case Settlement = More Home Seizures

The Obama administration took control of the news cycle yesterday with the announcement that a settlement had been reached in the lawsuits between lenders and the Attorney's General of 50 states over faulty and fraudulent loans.  What they didn't tell you though was that home seizures now have a clear path.

The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may result in a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.

Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. With yesterday’s agreement, banks are likely to resume property seizures.

A surge of home seizures may drive down values, at least for a while, in a fragile market.

Home prices have dropped 33 percent from their July 2006 peak, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of values in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas. About 11 million U.S. homeowners have negative equity, or owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to CoreLogic Inc. (CLGX), a real estate data provider.

The total value of the agreement with lenders including Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. may grow to $40 billion if the next nine largest mortgage servicers sign on to the agreement,

Separately, Fannie Mae, the mortgage company under U.S. conservatorship, invited investors to apply for a new program to buy foreclosed homes in bulk to be managed as rental properties, under another program announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. [Bloomberg]

There remains a danger that “a wave of foreclosures” may destabilize the housing market, said Susan Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

The Death Panel Down The Hall

I've tried to awaken people to this problem for some time now so I was glad to see affirmation of my concerns today in the last paragraph of a blog post on HotAir dealing with the entertainment preferences of the "Millennial" generation of voters.  Let me first set the stage and then remind you of its importance.

The blog was talking about how politicians are not reaching out to younger voters as much this cycle as in 2008 primarily because statistics show that so few of them vote.  However, what the article also pointed out is the fact that reaching this group is so incredibly cheap that any candidate who did not try to mine those votes was passing up a golden opportunity.  The question the current crop of politicians seem to be unable to answer is "what could possibly interest them?"

That's where this comment in the last paragraph of the article caught my attention.

It shouldn’t be hard to frame the issues in a way that resonates with young voters, either: We are, after all, the debt-paying generation. Just a day ago, a very non-politically-engaged friend of mine about my age was examining his paycheck and commented offhand, “I hate that I have to pay Social Security when I know I’ll never get that money back.” Bingo. Voters under the age of 30 have the largest stake in entitlement reform of all — and entitlement reform is arguably the most important issue facing the nation today. [HotAir]

Bingo is right.  And the attitude of that young person regarding social security taxes should scare the living crap out of all of us.

Obamacare is not about care, it's about control.  It's about insisting that the health care decisions for every American will be made by the government.

We baby boomers represent a huge number of people who will soon be the largest expense in the US budget.  We will  no longer be productive taxpayers.  We will soon be a drain on the treasury. Our needs will not be self-sustaining but rather require a very heavy tax burden on your younger generation.

Do you think they will want to pay maybe 70% or more of their incomes in taxes to keep a bunch of old people alive?  If the government gets to make that decision, then the voters will be the ones presumably telling the government what they want it to do with millions of ancient people in warehouses.

Oh, and don't forget, we baby boomers are the last generation to remember what America "used to be like".  The world we grew up in was shaped and formed by people with a completely different set of values than what prevail today.

We said the pledge of allegiance in school.  We said the Lord's Prayer in school.  We had dress codes and disrespecting your teachers got you a whack or two on the butt with a fraternity paddle or worse, expulsion.

We wanted to go to college and worked our way through.  For the most part we married and THEN had children, but when we got it backwards, we still got married and raised a family. 

We saw Communism in real time, in real places.  Our parents knew the horrors of Hitler, we knew the horrors of Viet Nam.

What kind of world have we now?  What great things about America are we teaching our young people?  How much of our history do they get and how much of that is accurate?

We not only represent a drain on the treasury, but a threat to those who would like to see the American we know and love cease to exist.  The sooner we are gone, the better they would say, and now they want to have the final say over how long we have until we are gone for good.

The next time you hear somebody talking about death panels, don't be so quick to dismiss it by imagining a group of Dr. Evil types sitting around in some far away bunker stroking hairless cats. 

No, the next time you get up to go to work while your adult son or daughter is sleeping in, think about a mobilized group of voters with world views similar to the one behind that door, down the hall from your own bedroom.

"Teach your children well, their father's hell, will slowly go by."

Islam And Ignorance

Who or what is Allah?  Many people think that Allah is just the Muslim word for God, you know, the same God we all worship.  Wrong.  Allah is the name of the pagan moon god of the nomadic tribes of Arabia.  Like Thor, Woden, and Sol, Allah is the name of a figure born out of superstition worshipped by pagans.

Others will tell you that there are any number of references in the Koran as to why this interpretation of what Allah means, is wrong.  But that source of history would be a little like citing Larry Flynt in church as a resource on what the Ten Commandments say.

The Koran is the collection of teachings of Muhammad, who claims that at about the age of 40 while on a trading trip he met an Angel who revealed to him the will of "Allah". 

Apparently that will included some "teachings" which are utterly offensive to western culture.  For example, Muhammad married his wife Aisha when she was six.  Muslims will say this is okay because Muhammad did not have sex with her until she was nine.  Followers of Muhammad get very angry when someone calls Muhammad a pedophile.  You decide if having sex with a nine year old girl fits or not.

Many sources will confirm that other sexual practices within Islam are considered acceptable which are directly inconsistent with Western culture.  Evidence of widespread "man-boy" relations in Islam is quite readily available.

Women are not only relegated to a status which is beneath that of animals in Islam, but in order to both punish and control them, genital mutilation is estimated to be performed on about 90% of young girls in some parts of the Islamic world. 

If you have never seen what this involves, you ought to force yourself to look.  Performed often without any anesthesia, using a razor blade while four or five grown men hold down a young girl, the practice itself is utterly barbaric.  The negative health consequences are substantial, and the ultimate goal is the continued pain and mortification of females.  Oh, and they think this is required by "religion".

Seeing how powerful Christianity was becoming by about 600 years after Christ, and witnessing how powerful the power of God had been among the Jews, it is no wonder that Muhammad took his form of tyranny to the people under the guise of religion, co-opted the name of one of their Pagan Gods and built a set of rules and predictions around it to keep his followers under control.

For example, in Islam it is taught that only one of three things can be done with non-Muslims.  They must first try to convert that "infidel", or they must kill him (preferably by be-heading) or they can keep a certain number alive to use as slaves. While many Muslims will tell you that theirs is a religion of peace, beware.  The peace of which some speak will only arrive at the "end of time" after the world has been thrown into chaos and the "twelfth Imam" arrives to save us all.

Some sects within Islam, notably the Shi'ites in Iran, believe that they can spark the kind of world chaos which will then bring forth out of hiding Muhammad al-Mahdi, or the twelfth Imam.  And while they believe that he will come to Mecca and will be joined by Jesus, what many scholars now believe is that the twelfth Imam could be perceived as the anti-Christ throwing the world in to deeper conflict as the battle would then be described as nothing less than that of good versus evil.

Recent talk of war between Iran and Israel must be seen from the perspective of these radical Shi'ites.  They welcome this war not only to satisfy their bloodlust for kiling Jews, but because it could spark a world wide conflict thus triggering the arrival of the Twelfth Imam.

Couple all of this "good versus evil" talk bubbling up in the Middle East with the lurking worry that Mayans could have been right about 2012 being the "end of times" and the upcoming presidential elections which often inspire the beating of war drums, and you should at least be aware that the dangers which lie ahead this year might be far more deeply rooted in fact than the Y2K scare.

I'm not saying the Mayans were right, that Obama will wage war to stay in office or that if Israel bombs Iran that the whole world will go up in flames, just that things are much more of a powder keg than you might be thinking about on a daily basis.

And in light of the fact that radical Islam has world domination as its ultimate goal, you might want to consider what the world would look like if they succeed. 

Be alert, become informed, and share what you learn with others.  Ignorance is the breeding ground for disaster.

Elite Ignorace Residing In A Suburb Near You?

Thanks to Professor Volokh for bringing this to our attention:

In his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, Charles Murray argues that a new elite class has emerged that is much more ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans than were the elites of earlier generations:

As the new upper class increasingly consists of people who were born into upper-middle-class families and have never lived outside the upper-middle-class bubble, the danger increases that the people who have so much influence on the course of the nation have little direct experience with the lives of ordinary Americans, and make their judgments about what’s good for other people based on their own highly atypical lives...

Many of the members of the new upper class are balkanized. Furthermore, their ignorance about other Americans is more problematic than the ignorance of other Americans about them. It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisers cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers. It is inevitable that people have large areas of ignorance about how others live, but that makes it all the more important that the members of the new upper class be aware of the breadth and depth of their ignorance.

As this year's elections approach might it be a good idea to examine how much in tune, or out of touch, the candidates are with the everyday lives of the people they seek to represent? 

It is my belief that informed voters make better decisions.  By the same token, informed elected officials make better representatives.  What do those who seek to represent us, really know about the lives we lead, the struggles we face and the things we need?

Those would be good questions for them all.

Sex In The DC

Newt Gingrich has an ex-wife problem.  She has accused him of wanting an open marriage. He says it's false.  CNN thought it was such a big deal that they opened  presidential debate with a question about it.  Newt blew them out of the water to a standing ovation.  My question is, what were they all applauding?

Could some divorced people in the crowd have been empathizing with Newt's rusty ball and chain?  Might some of them been open minded republicans who favor same sex marriage and think that on balance Newt's problems are very tame?  Might there have been some folks who looked over at their spouses and wanted to show their support for Newt's bold idea?  Might some in the audience liked the fact that Newt was the kind of guy who, unlike Clinton, at least had the manners to ask first?

Who knows?  Odds are the audience stood up for Newt because he stood up to the media, but that conclusion ignores the fact that all of the people in that audience have the right to private thoughts, private lives and personal choices.  How many conservatives would stand and applaud if any of their private thoughts were called upon for public approval?

I'm not here to advocate for a public policy favoring open marriages.  But I am here to advocate for defending at least one place on earth where people have the freedom to choose the private life they want, to live it as they see fit according to their own faith, their own morality and the covenants they reach within their own relationships.

I happen to live in a community where the Baptist church is quite influential.  As you know, the Baptist church strongly opposes the consumption of alcohol.  Would it be fair, in an effort to slice out of the support base for a candidate, to ask his ex-wife if he ever drank?

Some faith groups refuse to take an oath, but will "affirm" that their testimony is true or that they will faithfully uphold the office they assume.  At what level should a person's preference in such things be dissected in a public debate?

You might say to me "Well, infidelity is a disqualification for all people."  No it's not.  With the divorce rate in this country at around 50% for first marriages and 65% for second marriages there are a lot of people out there who might have "fooled around" themselves.  Now of course among cuckolded husbands and women "done wrong" a strong aversion to open marriage would probably have had them sitting out the standing ovation, but infidelity is hardly rare.

What is really at work here is exactly what Gingrich said.  For the sake of sensationalism the media trotted out a gasp inducing story designed to derail Gingrich's candidacy but in the process accomplishes something far worse.  The politics of personal destruction is the reason good people, with solid ideas, who might become great leaders in difficult times, refuse to run for office.

I hate to keep beating this same tune out on my keyboard, over and over, but we need to wake up to the fact that we are not going to elect someone to sainthood.  When we choose a president, we hire someone to do a specific job.  We are not electing role models, that job belongs to parents.

There are plenty of reasons you might find to disqualify Newt from receiving your vote.  But when a disgruntled ex-spouse vomits up tales of private conversations we all get splattered.

Newt handled it very well.  The blame lies with the main stream media. 

Oh, and in case you missed it, or one who believes in guilt by accusation, he denied it too.  

 

Got $6,000 For A Camera With No Lenses?

If you have $6,000 for a camera and no lenses, then you ought to take a look at the new Nikon D4.  Here is a video shot exclusively with the camera.  It is, I'm told, the best thing on the market.

 

Gentleman Attorney Pete Summe Passes

Prominent Northern Kentucky attorney Peter Summe has died. Pete is the brother of Kenton Circuit Judge Patsy Summe and Kenton County Clerk Gabrielle Summe. According to early reports he passed away while driving. Throughout his career Pete was regarded as one of the true gentlemen lawyers among his peers. Further details will appear here as they become available.

Gentleman Attorney Pete Summe Passes

Prominent Northern Kentucky attorney Peter Summe has died. Pete is the brother of Kenton Circuit Judge Patsy Summe and Kenton County Clerk Gabrielle Summe. According to early reports he passed away while driving. Throughout his career Pete was regarded as one of the true gentlemen lawyers among his peers. Further details will appear here as they become available.

Gatewood Galbraith Dies In Sleep

Several news sources are reporting breaking news that well known lawyer and familiar candidate for Governor, Gatewood Galbraith, died over night at his home.

Details to follow when they become available.