Cognitive Dissonance

I thought I better post something before everyone started thinking I was taken by the black helicopters and the X ray vans (sad we know for sure one of them exists) but I havent been abducted yet.

So the other day I was watching the new show on Discovery called Swamp People, where people who look a lot like some of my family, friends, and neighbors are chronicled as they hunt gators in the swamps of Lou'sanna.

One of the people I was watching TV with said, "It is surprising that the Animal rights folks and other Liberal Whackos let them put this on TV since they are actually killing alligaotrs" Without missing a beat another person in the room said, "well you know it is because Alligators are not cute. A besides they are far from endangered."

So a third person speaks up and says, "I had never thought about the cute facotr before, but you are right."

Finally I joined the conversation and said, "well proving the exception to the rule, Babies are cute, and if they were doing a show on aborting babies the liberals would think that was great empowering educational television."

Which kind of got me a lot of looks from around the room. But it is TRUE. Just this week a lot of you probably saw that crazy old bat in England saying on the BBC that she would smother her child if it was disabled. If only someone had smothered her.

Picture that for a second though...not the aborting of babies...but lets say the aborting of Panda bears. I want to see a show where a bunch of people sneak into a zoo and abort a panda bear. Why the outrage from PETA would be deafening. There would be boycotts and lawsuits, and save the Panda's concerts everywhere. That idiot from U2 would get up at an awards show and say something stupid. There would be black and white ribbons worn on liberal lapels everywhere. For what? According to them a lump of cells.

Maybe we could get a show demonstrating partial birth abortions to fur seals? Why not, they are ok for a woman to do in a lot of people's minds.

Disturbing mental images aren't they? These are the people we are dealing with... People who think it is ok to kill a baby human but will chain themselves to a tree to keep it from being cut down. Or will boycott a KFC for the treatment of chickens. Or will put commercials on TV showing them blowing up adolescent kids who do not believe in global warming but would have you thrown in jail for chaining your dog in your yard.

That is cognitive dissonance.

So Where Do I stand on the issues?

My partner in crime asked Where do you Stand on issues the other day, and it is a great question. I started to answer just to clarify MY positions and it got too long for the comment section.


When I started this blog I would have to say I thought I was what commonly passes for Republican these days. The more I have discussed and aired my thoughts here and studied and read, the more I realize I am Constitutionally Libertarian. So in a nutshell here is my stance on the issues:
Fiscal Policy - Leave us alone. Free Market Capitalism is the way, the truth, and the light when it comes to fiscal policy. The government is the problem not the solution. Audit the Fed, Get rid of the Fed.

Freedom of speech - this means freedom of all speech even that which we disagree with and do not like or that which makes us uncomfortable. This means Fox news and even MSNBC news.



Freedom of Religion- not freedom from, even those ideologies that we do not agree with , as long as those people believing those ideologies can live peaceably with us and not blow up our planes, trains, automobiles, and buildings, or Kill our kids. Free to choose any religion, even none, realizing that this nation was founded on strong Judeo Christian traditions.



Second Amendment - Leave us Alone. It is plainly said in the constitution and there is a reason why. I have perfect gun control thank you: the ability to hit the target, and a good two hand weaver stance.


Abortion- LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Duh. I do not know exactly where life begins, but in lieu of knowing I will side with Life. It is totally illogical to be pro-abortion and anti-KFC


Taxes - will never be low enough.


Entitlements - breed cultures of dependency and need to be slowly and methodically scaled back and controlled. OASDI will not be there when I need it anyway, start letting me pay for my ancestors as well as save for MY future.


Anthropogenic Climate Change - Good story, right up there with Hansel and Gretel and the Three Little Pigs. All three are to get children and mental midgets to do something someone else wants them to do.




Wars- IF...IF, they are important enough to fight, fight hard, win decisively and come home quickly. Strike fear into the enemies heart and break his will to wage war and you won't have as many people trying to start stuff with you.


UN - keep them here and keep an eye on them, but never take them seriously.




Immigration - I am for all the LEGAL immigration we can stand. I am in favor of making it easier to obtain work authorization. But the line forms over there and no cutting, the rest of you go back the the end of the line, cross our border illegally again and we will shoot you.


Education - leave my damn kid alone, you can't run the post office, DMV, balance a checkbook, read a bill, tell the truth, obey the law, or pay your taxes. Leave my Kid alone. Vouchers are a good idea, let parents vote with their feet, and their school tax dollars. Then the schools that PERFORM will SUCCEED.


Unions- there was a time, fifty years ago, when Unions were a good thing. Now they are just PACs and Criminal Organizations that feed off of hard working people like a tick. They need to go the way of the dodo.



Healthcare - Leave me alone. Tort Reform, Entitlement reform, EMS reform, less insurance restrictions. That would help healthcare. What the Fed wants to do is not about healthcare or health insurance but about consolidating control and power.


Energy, for heaven’s sake drill here, drill now. All the Cars running on wishful thinking is not going to happen this decade or probably in the next two. So let's quit running ourselves into bankruptcy and prevent our economy grinding to a halt. Let's stop funding those entities which do not have our best interests at heart. Let's create some jobs in this country. No Smart grid, that is just like Government Healthcare, a joke and lever of control. Build some Nuclear power plants, they are good enough for China and France, why are they not good enough for us?
-Kook

Life on a Farm and Intellectual Dishonesty

I was reading BNGFan’s post regarding Sherriff Joe (America's sheriff) and the inmate who wanted an abortion. It is a great little post and it made me think. I spent a great portion of my youth on Pa’s farm. We still raise cattle there. We raise them to eat. Now we know that we are raising Beef cattle and to some that would mean that we are the world’s worst barbarians. My grandpa would have been in his late sixties and I in my early teens. We had an old cow who was in labor and she was down and we were trying to help her but it was not going well. Here is a, not completely, domesticated (at least in the way you think of horses or dogs) animal who does not really want your help, she weighs somewhere around 900 pounds and she is down. Calf coming out all upside down and backwards. To top it all off this has got to be the biggest calf I have ever seen trying to fight his way into the world. So picture this, she is lying out in the field, it is muddy, wet, filthy, and bloody, it is getting twilight, she is down, she is hurting, we can’t get her up, we can’t get the calf turned, and it is about to die, and her chances of living are falling fast too, because the thing is just too big. Now if we were evil barbarians knowing that the calf was as good as dead, and the cow was rapidly losing her chances you would think we would cut our losses, and just shoot her, right? Well I cannot speak for every rancher/farmer but I was taught that,when you raise animals, although we kill them and eat them when it is time, we also have a responsibility to protect and care for them. Just like in the Lion King, the circle of life. We don’t just let a cow die, we have a responsibility. We own it, we probably raised it, it depends on us for food and health and although it is not a pet, we do see them as more than meat or money on the hoof.

So we get the truck and the trailer and the tractor and we proceed to lift and push her into the trailer. We call the vet, Doc Baker will meet us at his office, it is an hour drive. An hour later we arrive at the Vet’s, it is past supper time now. We fashion a ramp and tie her off to the barn and drive the truck out from under her. Somehow we get her on her feet. She has been in labor since sometime right after lunch, we realized she had trouble mid afternoon, we worked on her until dark, it is now over an hour past that. The calf is in a bad position and is huge. Doc reaches it and feels around and sure enough the calf is dead. What follows was one of the worst experiences on the farm I have been through. If nothing is done the cow will die shortly. Her hips are already so disjointed she can barely stand, and if she was not in the chute she would fall. Doc gets a piece of cable saw and reaches in and positions it between the front legs of the calf and on one side of its neck and then cuts the calf in half back through the shoulders and pulls that piece out. A little repositioning and a repeating of the process and one hind leg comes out. Lastly he pulls the other leg and abdomen out. It looks just like a calf, but it is lying in a pile in three pieces in the dirt. It has hair, and eyelashes, and big brown eyes, and it is, although very large for a newborn, still a baby calf. It should have been walking around and lookin’ all cute the way baby’s of every species do. Instead it is lying like meat in three pieces on the ground, it might have lived if we had gotten her to the doctor a few hours previously, then again, it was so big I am not sure. Then Doc has to retrieve the placenta because the cow gave up pushing hours ago. Pa asks Doc, “you think the mama will make it?” Doc says “I don’t know, she will not be able to stand but if you can keep her on antibiotics and get her to eat and drink a bit she might.” Some painkillers for her and some stitches and then we spent another hour getting her back in the trailer and another hour driving back. Pa attended to her for about a week, and gradually the ol’ gal got better. I am sure Pa sold her not long after that and she probably ended up hamburgers. The point is this, that was almost twenty years ago, and I still remember. Doc Baker was at home, he didn’t have to get back out that late at night to do what he did. We didn’t have to pay all the money hauling her and medicating her, and the vet bill notwithstanding; she was just a beef cow right? I remember that baby calf lying in the dirt, flies buzzing around it, it was all wet and it had a pink little nose and big long eyelashes and it was lying in three pieces…dead. I remember it still.

These same assholes that think Partial Birth abortion is fine and dandy are the same people that think clubbing a seal and wearing fur is abhorrent. The only two differences between my story with the calf and a partial birth abortion is the calf was dead and the baby isn’t; and Babies are humans. I am not one of these people who say that all lives are equal. If it was between my hunger and a cow dying, I’ll take my Steak medium well, thanks. But some of the idiots we have in the White House actually believe that there is no difference between one life and another, and they think that abortion is ok, yet hunting wolves that are decimating the caribou herds is akin to the genocide in Darfur… I am intellectually honest in my position. All lives have worth, and yet some lives are going to have to be lost to provide for the circle of life. On the other hand I am saddened by the needless death of something that only a few years later I would have killed myself to provide food for me and mine and remember it plainly twenty years later. We spent far more on the old cow than she was worth, treating her and caring for her; and yet she still ended up as meat. Where is the intellectual honesty of people who say that aborting a child, and some even say up until he has the concept to understand his place in society, is acceptable; and culling predators who are driving other animals to near extinction thus preventing famine of the predators themselves, or the outrage over whales, seals, chickens, etc. used for food and clothing is barbaric? Abortion ok, killing animals for food bad? I love beef but feel remorse for veal. I Like eating goose, but I am not really wild about what it takes to make Fois Gras (and it is gross anyway).

I say all lives have the right to be born and be lived to the best of their ability, we have the responsibility to care for the animals and not treat them cruelly, at the same time we should not Humanize animals to put them on equal terms with our own species. How can we elevate a good dog, a seal, or a beef cow above that of an infant? Some people actually believe that the dog that is trained to get the newspaper’s life is worth more than a newborn baby’s and some of them are in the White House. Not only is that plainly crazy, it is intellectually dishonest. I think if everyone grew up on a farm raising animals they would understand. Instead we have people who think abortion is ok, and KFC is a sin.

-Kook

The Right Stuff

Hat tip to Blackandgoldfan for this great post.

Cap and Trade: Got Earmarks?

I know lots of people are saying "Get off the cap and trade thing already!" I won't. It's poised to be voted on in the Senate, and that is our only hope of this monstrosity being killed. If people stay angry, maybe the pressure will be put on the Senate.
Eight House Republicans voted for the Waxman-Markey bill (shall henceforth be the Wacky-Marxist bill) despite what the constituency wanted. The following is a list of the earmarks those eight put into the legislation they voted in favor of. Grab a cup of coffee and get ready. Duct tape is also recommended.
"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful bill..."

1. Mary Bono-Mack (R-CA) -- It seems Mary secured a $500,000 earmark (that's your money, folks) through the Bureau of Land Management for land acquisition. The project? The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. But this had nothing to do with her voting "yea", did it? She also had ANOTHER half-million dollar earmark for groundwater protection in Cathedral City, CA. That earmark goes through the EPA.
2. Mike Castle (R-DE) -- From the spreadsheet I saw, he didn't put in any earmarks. That doesn't make him any smarter for voting for it.
3. Mark Steven Kirk (R-IL) -- No earmarks listed, but still a chucklehead. Co-chairman of the moderate GOP Tuesday Group.
4. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) -- Lenny got $500,000 for the city of Califon, NJ, for stormwater improvments, also acquired through the EPA. Where's my thank you note for the money, Lenny?
5. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) -- Mr. LoBiondo did not get any congressionally-directed earmarks. Instead, he got a presidentially-directed earmark of $2 million for the Cape May National Wildlife Refuge for land acquisition. Evidently, we have to protect the wildlife. They'll be running the treadmills to power this nation should cap and trade become law.
6. John McHugh (R-NY) -- The folks at Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, Canton, NY, are probably just oozing mush from their ears due to the $150,000 earmark McHugh got them. The money is going for restoration of Village Park. The National Park Service will be cutting the check. This has to do with energy how???
7. Dave Reichert (R-WA) -- Dave got lucky. He received a $333,000 congressional-directed earmark through the EPA for the City of Buckley to get a new emergency intertie booster station, and he also prostituted himself to Dear Leader for $2.15 million of our dollars to go to Mt. Ranier.
8. Chris Smith (R-NJ) -- Evidently, there are no conservatives in New Jersey. The National Park Service was nice enough to give Mr. Smith a $200,000 earmark for Georgian Court University in Lakewood, NJ, to restore the Georgian Court Mansion. You would think that for what a college education costs that taxpayer funding wouldn't be needed. Go figure!!!

These are earmarks that came through the House Interior and Environment Appropriations bill. I'm going to try to break down and organize all the other earmarks by who got what. The spreadsheet is 276 lines long on the congressionally-directed side and 189 lines on the presidentially-directed side, so please bear with me.
We all wondered what the promises were.... This is just the beginning

The Right Stuff

Left Coast Rebel: What's Really Causing our Malaise - Carnival of ?

LCR is GOOD.  I just get Irritated and rant in my bitter clinger way.  LCR has a way with words.

What's Really Causing our Malaise - Carnival of ?

Decades of excess being wrought out of the United States financial system, our markets, our economy. Sharply lower real estate prices, market indexes still 40% off. A national gloom, a fog over our can-do collective spirit. Such things would point to a national grumpy economy, hard to get by, much less excel. But we have fought implosions of our system and markets. 9-11, the dot-com blowup, October 1987, many others. And we snapped back, ready to exceed, excel, innovate - to be the best in the world.
18 months into this thing, this recession; the real cause of our malaise.
Investor's Business Daily -

Why is this job decline happening? The private sector — the real engine of economic and job growth — won't hire because it's scared of what it sees coming out of Washington.

On the horizon, as far as the eye can see, are higher taxes, uncontrolled spending and layers upon layers of new regulations.

Who would hire new workers faced with that?

Also, the federal government is meddling in the private sector as never before — in essence, nationalizing two of the three major carmakers with $200 billion in subsidies and capital infusions, turning our banking system into a fourth branch of government through the $700 billion TARP program, spending $200 billion to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and put them back in the business of lending to people who can't pay their loans — which is how we got into trouble

in the first place.

Socialism - not a normal, or unusually bad recession is causing our malaise. A literal Carnival of socialism. Our Obamanation is causing our malaise. Our pathetic, corrupt congress is causing our malaise. Never let a good crisis go to waste is causing our malaise -

• Ambiguous so-called health care reform is spooking business and the markets. Howard Dean thinks that private insurers are destroying America. 46 million so-called uninsured, 10 million of which are illegal aliens. Ambiguous costs range from $1 trillion to $3.6 trillion. Socialized medicine thrust by this corrupt regime is causing our malaise.
• Cap and Tax, a massive reshaping of our energy policy, replete with myriad new taxes and regulations, a regressive monstrosity thrust upon the middle class. Average family of four - $1800 per annum. Small business is confused and irate. Huge, new regulatory schemes are causing our malaise.

• Stimulus II. No I'm not kidding. When something fails as miserably as the so-called $787 billion stimulus bill, Washington sees fit to add insult to injury. I vote for repeal of the first one. Spending future generational wealth through debt-financing is causing our malaise.

• Wealth creators are being stigmatized, the engines of the economy - the entrepreneur. Every socialized scheme under the sun is put on their collective backs. Envy and hate of achievement is causing our malaise.

• California would be the canary in the coal-mine for any sensible government. The Golden State is teetering on bankruptcy. The reason? Progressive Obamanomics of the Left Coast. California liberalism on a national scale is causing our malaise.

I want off this carnival ride in perpetual nightmare-motion. Ignoring the Constitution is causing our malaise.

Left Coast Rebel: What's Really Causing our Malaise - Carnival of ?

The other two groups it is ok to "hate on".

After those other two groups of people it is ok to hate without limits, the Rich and the Smokers, the only other groups that are ok to bash on a bit are Christians, and White Men.

Christianity is scary to a Liberal becuase Chritianity has these things called Morals and Principles and Values...whatever those things are. And they get in the way of what a Liberal wants to DO. Once you know that the rest is easy to figure out.

White Men are just sort of the last guy standing there after the teams have been picked. Boy I feel sorry for White Christian Men who Smoke under the age of 65. Those poor buggers, they have to feel about as loved as cockroaches. I have noticed for years if there is going to be a dumb person on TV it is a white person, and most of the time it is a white GUY. In fact the Dad most of the time on TV is the dumbest guy. You just sit there and think of all the sit-coms and reality shows. The Dad is always the dumbest, and if there is a particularly dumb guy it will be a dumb white guy. I have also noticed that good lawyers are women, or black men, and white guys are always the slimy defense lawyers or inept. White guys can be good cops, but they usually have bad home lives or are otherwise flawed. Many times they are violent or morally corrupt. Most of the good judges are black women, or asian people. I also find it curious that black people make up about 15-20% of our population but make up abotu 50% of our television characters. Hispanics are between 30 and 45% of the population and make up far less than that on TV. Asians are about 10% of the population, and just about the only time they are TV characters is when they need a smart guy, or someone needs their ass kicked karate style. Interstingly most of the time the military is shown as being very white, when in reality is is very light and dark brown. Hey, I am just saying... you watch tv with a critical eye and you tell me. What we see on TV is not even close to an accurate representation of what we see in real life. Well "Duh!," you say. "it is for entertainment". There is truth in that, but it is also how an extremely small segment of the population of NY and LA see the world, and that is what they present to you 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Abortion - Guaranteed to be the shortest post

Abortion.
I am going to keep this extremely short. I agree with Ronald Reagan (surprise surprise surprise) he said “Until we can definitively prove when life begins I prefer to err on the side of life”. –nuff said. This Should, if Liberals were logical creatures, fit right in with their belief in the sanctity of life. I thought that was one reason they were against war, torture, guns, etc.