March 25, 2009
Bailouts are wrong, period.
I worked my butt off to get through college. Granted, the expensive private university I attended wasn’t a requirement. Choices were made, perhaps mistakes. Typically, I worked two jobs in college, approximately 40-45 hours a week, while overloading my schedule with six classes a semester. I did whatever it took to pay for school. That included student loans.
I am a little disgusted to see anyone asking for a bailout on their student loans. I share in the outrage of fellow bloggers American Power and ReTake Education at Allahpundit and through guilt-by-association HotAir, for calling for a student loan bailout.
At the time I was taking out these loans, in sums so large I could have bought a house, I couldn’t understand what I was getting myself into. Still, I got myself into it and got myself in further with my (not yet received) MA in Government from Johns Hopkins. As I reap the reward from these degrees, I should also be responsible for the costs, especially since I knowingly took them on, agreeing to pay them back in full, with interest.
It is my fault and my responsibility. I did borrow federal money. I borrowed from my neighbors, my fellow taxpayers, and I do not have the right to reneg on my promise and not pay them back. Why should I leave them on the hook for my education?
This would be one the problems I have alluded to in the past when it comes to Republicans. When did it become about where to spend the money rather than should we spend the money? You can’t be against TARP and these bailouts on one hand and then argue on the other that you think student loans should be bailed out.
What you are really saying is that you’re not against the bailouts, generally, you’re just against who is getting bailed out, specifically, because you aren’t amongst those people.
As Alexander Fraser Tytler famously said, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. “
Is this what we have come to in America? Is this truly where we’re at? If so, we’re standing on the brink. We really do have some tough choices to make. And, the time to make them is now.
It is time that as individuals we stand up for what is right and stop looking to “get ours.” It is time to take responsibility for ourselves and our nation. It is time to distinguish between what is a necessity and what is a want; what is a right and what is a desire; what is right and what is wrong.
Bailouts are wrong, period. Allowing your government to steal from your fellow citizen to support you is wrong. I can’t believe this even needs explanation.
Comments (1)March 24, 2009
“Filter-Free News”= Obama’s Propaganda Machine
According to an article on Politico.com, this morning, Obama has launched a strategy of “filter-free” news. As John Stossel would say, “Give me a break!” He wants left-leaning news, that will support his left-leaning (now, there’s the understatement of the century!) agenda. I guess the MSM hasn’t been doing enough fawning over The One, so he’s just going to talk to those press outlets that will keep declaring their love for Him.
President Obama, I didn’t realize you were so needy. What kind of (wo)man are you? You’re the leader of the free world and you can’t handle being questioned. When forced to step away from you teleprompter, are you only comfortable talking to those who agree with you? You are much weaker than I thought.
What exactly is filter-free news? Is that where you just provide your talking points and we all accept them with the blind faith that you have so obviously become accustomed to?
He is not looking for “filter-free” news. He is looking for a pat on the back from the people who should be putting him under the most scrutiny. In short, he is looking for a propaganda machine.
Politico claims his honeymoon with the press is over, and that now it is turning into a hazing. I wouldn’t say that his honeymoon with the MSM is over, just yet. Let’s see how his second primetime news conference goes before we declare the press unimpressed.
Predictably, he’ll call on the reporters that were selected in advance, and then be asked questions that were pre-approved. This all screams of a free press and legitimate democracy!
Unfortunately, I have a prior engagement this evening that will keep me out most of the night. In the interest of full disclosure, yes, that prior engagement is a Britney Spears concert.
I will DVR the lecture press conference, though, and try to get my thoughts and responses up tomorrow morning. If there’s much left to say that hasn’t already been covered by the blogosphere. Who wants to be more white noise? Not me. In today’s racial climate, who even wants to be white?
Hey Little Girl, Would You Like Some “Birth Control?”
In another move to promote sex to children, a federal judge has ordered the FDA to rethink its position on making Plan B, the pill women can take up to 72 hours after sexual intercourse in order to prevent pregnancy, being sold as an over the counter drug to seventeen year olds:
A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to reconsider its 2006 decision to deny girls younger than 18 access to the morning-after pill Plan B without a prescription.
U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman in New York instructed the agency to make Plan B available to 17-year-olds within 30 days and to review whether to make the emergency contraceptive available to all ages without a doctor’s order.
In his 52-page decision, Korman repeatedly criticized the FDA’s handling of the issue, agreeing with allegations in a lawsuit that the decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and influenced by “political and ideological” considerations imposed by the Bush administration.
This is just another attempt to cut parents out of the equation, while promoting (unsafe) sex among children, ordered by judge who thinks he can legislate from the bench, all while labeling opponents as those politicizing the issue casting those who support it as the legitimate, science-based intelligentsia. How this order not a political move?
All of this when sexually transmitted diseases have already been reported to be on the rise among teenagers. Currently, one in four girls has been infected with an STD. Great, give them another excuse not to wear a condom or avoid sex altogether.
I do realize that much of this falls to the parents. They must not abdicate their responsibility when it comes to sex and talk to their kids about it, and talk often. But, why must the government make these conversations so hard and keep allowing our children more ways to leave parents in the dark? What will we hear next? Promiscuity is your duty!
Comments (0)
Is that lead in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Is China really the country you want to outsource the production of condoms to? I mean, we have had some problems with their products in the past.
If Bush had done this he would have been in trouble for outsourcing 300 American jobs. Nevermind the fact we are living in a time when President Obama has pledge to “save and create” American jobs, not chinese. I guess these workers in Alabama don’t count:
For Bush, this would have been the birth of a conspiracy theory that this was all part of his plan to wipe out the rest of the world, through the spread of AIDS, by handing out defective condoms made in China.
(H/T: The Other McCain, Memeorandum, Instapundit, and Reason Hit & Run)
Comments (3)
The American Swedish State is NOT Prepared to Own Car Factories?!?
I think Sweden may just be on to something here:
TROLLHATTAN, Sweden — Saab Automobile may be just another crisis-ridden car company in an industry full of them. But just as the fortunes of Flint, Mich., are permanently entangled with General Motors, so it is impossible to find anyone in this city in southwest Sweden who is not somehow connected to Saab.
Which makes it all the more wrenching that the Swedish government has responded to Saab’s desperate financial situation by saying, essentially, tough luck. Or, as the enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, put it recently, “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”
Wait, can you repeat that last part. I want that to really sink it. “The American Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”
March 22, 2009
Chapter One: The Chronicles of Testaclese
As promised, your weekly edition of The Chronicles of Testaclese. For more on the trouble we got into over this, this might help. Don’t forget to read the Introduction! As I have stated before, this is (almost) exactly The Vagina Monologues.
I bet you’re worried. I was worried. That’s why I began this piece. I was worried about what we think about penises, and even more worried that we don’t think about them. I worried about my own penis. It needed a context of other penises—a community, a culture of penises. There’s so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them—like the Bermuda Triangle. Nobody every reports back from there. Except for Monica Lewinsky, she reported back from President Clinton’s.
In the first place, it’s not easy to even find your penis. Men go weeks, months, sometimes years without looking at it. I interviewed a high-powered businessman once who told me he was too busy; he didn’t have the time. Looking at your penis is a full day’s work. You have to pull down your pants. You’ve got to get in the perfect position, with the perfect light, and pull out a mirror. There are sides of it you may never see. You get all twisted up. You’re slouching over, killing your neck. You’re exhausted by then. He said he didn’t have the time for that. He was busy.
So, I decided to talk to men about their penises, to do penis interviews, which became The Chronicles of Testaclese. I talked with over two hundred men. I talked to older men, young men, married men, single men, gay men, smelly men, homeless men, male prostitutes, male strippers, fat men, ugly men. At first men were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn’t shut them up about their penises. They got very excited (which I could tell by their erection), mainly because no one has ever asked them before.
Let’s just start with the word “penis.” It sounds like an weapon of mass destruction at best, maybe a fungus: “Hurry, Nurse, bring me some antibiotics to kill that penis.” “Penis.” “Penis.” Doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say. It’s a totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word. If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct—“Darling, could you stroke my penis?”—you kill the act right there.
I’m worried about penises, what we call them and don’t call them.
In Great Neck, they call it a “snake.” A man there told me that his father used to tell him, “Don’t wear tighty-whities underneath your pajamas, son, you need to let your snake breathe.” In Westchester they called it a pole, in New Jersey a hose. There’s “stick,” “pee-pee,” “wee-wee,” “thingy,” “python,” “pipe,” “rod,” “shaft,” “mushroom,” “harry,” “little (insert name here),” “carrot stick,” “dip stick,” “poker.” I’m worried about penises.
Comments (1)