An Andy Rooney Moment

Did you ever wonder why the good guys in sci-fi movies have blue lights while bad guys tend to have green lights?

Painless Giving

When I travel I tend to fly American Airlines and have found a way to give painlessly every time I do so I thought I would pass it on. Here is the information from The Center in San Diego:

Flying somewhere?

Every time you book a ticket with American Airlines, remember to take The Center with you. When making your reservations, include The Center’s “Business ExtrAA Account#: 527593.” You will still receive all your AA miles and The Center will earn airline tickets used to create vacation packages for silent auctions at our major events or to send staff to important trainings in different cities.

Flip-Side To Oedipus

I'm not a fan of Freud and especially not of his proposed Oedipus Complex but in some form it seems to exist in contemporary psychology. The idea of competition of son with father for whatever reason and the "trauma" for both when the son comes into his own and finally succeeds/supersedes the father seems to continually appear in book after book on human relationships. Honestly I have never gone through this. I have never thought of myself in competition with my father in any way, shape, or form for anything.

Recent events have made me think though of a "flip-side" to Freud's idea. Again, it isn't anything new but I have not seen this type of comparison in the books I have read (perhaps because it is too folksy or too sentimental), but my flip-side is rather than thinking about competition between father and son, focus on the moment when the father expresses his joy for the type of man the son has become. Rather than traumatic and a source of familial tension this view creates bonding and strengthening of the familial unit.

OK, so why I am bringing this up? Today I received a card from my father. As some of you know (but most don't) modern medicine has pronounced my father's condition as terminal, metastasized cancer in several organs and lymph nodes. In the card is a very simple message. My father told me how much he loves me and how proud he is to have me for his son. Now this isn't the first time he has said it, but like most fathers the message had come when I have done something or if I was sad and full of self-hatred (a common condition of mine in the past). This time there was nothing I had done, nothing going on in my life which prompted him to take pen in hand and write that message to me. He wanted me to know, once more and under no special conditions or causes that he is proud to have me for his son. When I read that I felt like I had arrived, that while we disagree, while I have not been the "perfect son", even through the "gay thing", he loves me and he is proud to have me as his son (I know that has to sound redundant but I love writing it). Because someone I view as a real man said this to me I felt like a man.

Perhaps I am so happy to have this written confirmation because I love him and an proud to be his son, but I will save that for a later post.

Thank you Dad.

I Coulda Been A Contender

Just pulled my "Motley Fools" CAPS rating for my stock picks where you select a basket of stocks and predict whether it will outperform or underperform the S&P 500 within a given timeframe. The lifetime results I have are:

tpape's rating is 96.75.

* Score: 193.88 (92nd percentile)
* Accuracy: 100.00% (99th percentile)

A member's rating indicates his percentile rank in CAPS. tpape is outperforming 96.75% of all CAPS members. A member's score is the total percentage return of all his picks subtracting out the S&P. A member's accuracy is how often that member has made correct predictions

So out of >65000 people I'm doing OK. :-)

Poor Paul Krugman

Give a guy a Nobel Prize and they think they can say anything and get away with it as we "mere mortals" should not question their pronouncements. Take the following from his editorial The era of good government appearing in the San Diego Union Tribune on 27-December-2008. Consider the following opening from the article:

... President-elect Barack Obama, riding a wave of revulsion over what conservatism has wrought, has said that he wants to "make government cool again."

What conservatism has wrought? What the heck is he talking about? As I have said time and time again on this site (and other conservatives have said before I started writing) President Bush is not a conservative. A conservative would not have done 3/4th of the things that he and his cabinet have done over the last eight years. But while Mr. Krugman doesn't name President Bush in the opening as the culprit (he does later in the article though which we will address in a moment), he says that conservatism is to blame. Mr. Krugman, please tell me how the conservative ideology is to blame when there hasn't been a conservative in power or a real conservative majority in over a decade. We have had Republicans in power in some way, shape, or form but not conservatives. For someone supposedly as smart as Mr. Krugman this is a terrible mistake to make... but of course it's not a mistake since Mr. Krugman is simply a "liberal" who is also a hack when it comes to trying to write about politics. As people who pay attention know, Republican does not equal conservative (just as Democrat does not equal liberal).

Now what about his attempted smearing of President Bush? Mr. Krugman says

Even when they failed on the job (as they so often did), they could claim that very failure as vindication of their anti-government ideology, a demonstration that the public sector can't do anything right.

Really? What "anti-government" ideology? Bush does not have an anti-government ideology. Sure, he has given a few speeches, but look at all the expanded government crap that Bush hath wrought (just for a few consider the massive drug program for Medicaid, "No Child Left Behind", and the current trillion-dollar plus "bailout"). Let's see Obama top THAT for expansion of government power and spending!

So Mr. Krugman, for a Nobel Prize winning economist and supposed "intellectual" (according to Wikipedia) please, please start getting your terms right. Such a supposedly smart man should not be making such mistakes.

Another Reason To Detest Elected Officials

As most of you know California is about to go over the financial waterfall into the abyss. Rather than face realities, what did the democrat majority conspire to do? The b*stards tried to call a tax a fee. That's right, they engaged in post-modern slight of hand. Why did they do this? In California, in order to increase a tax you need a 2/3 majority vote but with the current composition of the assembly they can't get it. They then realized that to increase a fee you need only a simple majority! With the swindler's mindset firmly in place here is how it went... they simply replaced a portion of the tax with a fee! Let's say you have a $1.00 tax. What they would do is say that they repeal 60 cents of this tax and replace it with a fee. Now to raise that "fee" they simply need a majority vote! So they put a .75% sales tax increase, er, fee increase, a 2.5% "surcharge" on income taxes, a fee on gasoline, a business fee, all to a vote and it passed in a straight party-line vote. Disgusting. All I can say is, thank God for the "Governator" who said he would not sign this package.

Evil... these people who supposedly represent the will of the people just try to find ways to circumvent the will of the people. Of course the greatest shame falls on the California voter for putting these jokers in power time and time again.

Clarence Page and Gay Rights

I have never liked Clarence Page, he's been too much of a sanctimonious liberal for me the entire duration of my political life, so my disagreement with his editorial in the 08-Dec-2008 edition of the San Diego Union Tribune isn't much of a shock, but it's just amazing how someone becomes so noted for writing virtually nothing. In the editorial Gay pride meets black prejudice Mr. Page opens with the following:


'Gay is the New Black,' declares the Dec 16 issue of The Advocate, a leading gay-oriented magazine. Well, not quite. How about "Gay is the new gray"?... I don't oppose same-sex marriage... But gay rights leaders should think twice before drawing too many compaisons to the right for racial equality. They are tragically correct to point out the murder, beatings, arson and other hate crimes that continue to be perpetrated against homosexuals. But the history and nature of our oppression is so different as to serve to alienate potential allies instead of winning them over.


Luckily I have that issue of The Advocate Mr. Page references. What is interesting is after opening with the above salvo he goes on to show two things. First, at best he skimmed the article, and second, he says nothing at all about why gay rights leaders need to think twice about making the comparison. In fact, as to the depths of his reading the article, when you do examine the contents of Michael Gross' article (titled "Pride and Prejudice", not "Gay is the New Black" which is on the cover of the 16-Dec-2008 issue of The Advocate), you almost get the sense that Mr Page simply lifted what he liked from the article and attacked the title, but the attack he proposed has virtually no substance in his editorial. In fact, had he bothered at all to read for content rather than skim for quotes he would have found Mr. Gross making the following statement:


Too many drew a simple parallel between our struggle and the black civil rights movement... There is someting to this, but it's dangerous territory, and we have to be careful not to lose our bearings here. Gay is the new black in only one meaningful way. At present we are the most socially acceptable targets for the kind of casual hatred that American society once approved for habitual use against black people... The comaprison becomes useful, though, in forcing us to consider the differences, between our civil rights struggle and theirs.


And I am sure that had Mr. Page read the article he would have liked the following penned by Mr. Gross:


Our oppression, by and large, is nowhere near as extreme as blacks' and we insult them when we make facile comparisons between our plights. Gay people have more resources thank blacks had in the 1960s. We are embedded in the power structure of every institution of this society.. Almost all gay people have the choice of passing [for straight]. Very few black people have that option.


* sigh *

Page's simple rendering of the the issue surfaces in his indignation of not only the comparison of gay rights and the Black civil rights movement (which if he had actually read the article he would have seen that was not the intent), but also that pointing out 70% of the black community voted for Proposition 8 which stripped away the right of gays to marry is mean spirited and a "bum rap". Now he does note that Mr. Gross says the same thing (wow, what a guy) but the sad thing is what typically happens when a liberal commentator writes about statistics... they speak about things of which they have no knowledge. In an effort to be politically correct both Mr. Page and Mr. Gross try to dance around the fact that ethincally blacks voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 8. So what if they are only 10% of the voting electorate, if they had voted in the same percentage as Whites or Asians (less than 50% of those blocks voted for for the proposition) Proposition 8 would have failed (after all it passed by a 52/48 vote so if Blacks voted for it less than 50% that two percentage point swing in the overall population would have been enough). Trying to make comparisons with how Mormons or Catholics or Evangelicals voted is a false comparison (especially evangelicals since ethnicity and religion here probably overlaps quite a bit and the percentage fact is focusing on race rather than religion or any other factor).

So the fact remains... 70% of people in the black community voted for Proposition 8. Now the question to ask is "Why?" I am sure that most gays had a false sense of security given the Obama affect as well as the usual support for what is often considered liberal causes (though I think a strong conservative case can be made for gay marriage), I was saying early on not to do this. Most people who have studied sociology know that there does run through the black (and hispanic community)of social conservatism (more aptly called perhaps traditionalism). Both Mr. Page and Mr. Gross point this out and use it to attack the statistic but rather than attacking the statistic with it we need to address this. Rather than dancing around the percentage of blacks voting against gay marriage we need to address their underlying reasons. If we can tie our issue to that of civil rights (and it is because civil rights means "everyone's right" or "the rights of the public"), we have the opportunity to swing the percentage around... and that is what politics has become, a game of percentages.

Everyone Can Give Something

This morning I was listening to KFI and my heart was breaking. The station is doing a Radiothon for the Salvation Army. Donations are off from last year and service requests have nearly tripled due to the situation out there. Bill Handel was telling people just give up Starbucks for one day and donate the money and that anyone, regardless of how bad off you think you are, can donate something whether it is time, goods, or money. So acting on both good conservative principles (individuals give to help other individuals) and in some part in answer to a bit of a guilty conscious (thanks Mr. Handel) I upped my giving to a couple of local charities. Now I know I am blessed in so many ways and can do this, but if you can't that does not exempt you. Maybe you can help a friend or neighbor having a hard time, maybe you can take a couple of cans of food to a local food bank or donate time at a shelter... but you can do something to help people less fortunate than you. If we all did this, if we got off our behinds and did something no matter how small and tell ourselves "This is for those less fortunate than I am" just think of how much better off the world would be.

Just to help, here are some links to some of my favorites at this time of the year (and you don't even have to search the site as these links take you right to the donate page):

National:

Salvation Army

Feeding America

Children's Health Fund

San Diego:

Mama's Kitchen

And one for you east-side Missouri folks:

St. Louis Foodbank

Words From Yeats

One of the benefits of being educated in a small, Midwest high school was being made to read and memorize famous works of literature. With all that has been happening in the news I am reminded of the following lines written by Yeats in his famous poem The Second Coming:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

How Much Does It Take To Buy The Presidency?

And here people worried about Ross Perot back in 1992. You can read the full story here.

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama, who rewrote the book on presidential fundraising, amassed more than $745 million during his marathon campaign, more than twice the amount obtained by his rival, Republican John McCain.

In his latest finance report, Obama reported raising $104 million in more than five weeks immediately before and after Election Day. It was his second biggest fundraising period and a fitting coda to a successful presidential bid that shattered fundraising records.

In the end, Obama still had $30 million left over.

Overall, Obama exceeded the combined finances of the two major parties' nominees four years ago. George W. Bush and John Kerry pulled in a total of $653 million in the 2004 primary and general election campaigns, including federal public financing money.


Of course, this was the man who repeatedly said that if his rival took federal funds so would he. First promise he broke... and no wonder.

Non Sequitur

But Hunter will understand it...

World AIDS Day

Today marks the 20th World AIDS Day... how many of you knew that? How many of you cared? I am old enough to remember, and participating in those early years of the fight. It's strange to look back at what we did then compared to the attitudes of today.

Tonight I have my own little memorial service. A glass of wine and some 15 year old picture of a young, smiling blond man I had in my life for a few years before he fell to the opportunistic diseases that is often the end of too-short life. Jerry Heard came out when he was 17 and had his first sexual encounter... six months later he tested positivie for the HIV virus. I met him right after I moved to St. Louis. We were part of a large group who met to see a local production of "Pippin" and have dinner afterward. He sat at the opposite end of the table from me but he kept looking at me and whispering to his friend. After a few awkward dates we decided to make a go of it. He was always up front with his disease and told me that if at any time I wanted out he understood (he said that was why most men didn't hang around him). I didn't leave. When his health was in steep decline I asked him what he wanted more than anything else... he said to be married. We were, if not in the eyes of any government we were in our eyes and our hearts. I was with him when he died, holding him in my arms. He was 25.

So today, as I have entered a relatively new chapter in my life, on this 20th annual World AIDS DAY I am thinking of how HIV has impacted my life. I am sure many of you have more stories you can add to mine. What we have to remember is that the fight is NOT over. There is no vaccine, there is no cure. We have no solid evidence that long-term application of the new drug "cocktails" (with apologies to Larry Kramer who says that cocktails are supposed to make you feel good while his HIV cocktails gives him severe intestinal problems) can be tolerated and while in the short term a better quality of life exists, after almost 30 years of it being out in the open we still have not beaten this enemy.

What Do You Get For 7 Trillion Dollars?

I heard this over the weekend but just in case you haven't, you're wonderful government has committed 7 TRILLION DOLLARS to clean up the mess (read about it here). Given that our current GDP is about $14.5 trillion, this means we've committed roughly half of everything produced this year, both goods and services, to this catastrophe!

Bastards!

But wait, there's more. As of November 19, 2008, the total U.S. federal debt was $10.6 trillion, about $37,316 for each U.S. resident. Of this amount, debt held by the public was roughly $6.3 trillion! Adding unfunded Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, veterans' pensions, and similar obligations we come up with (drum roll please)...

$59.1 trillion, or $516,348 per household.

I want to see bodies. I want not only CEOs do the perp walk, but those f*cking people in DC to do time as well (there's enough blame to spread around, so the ranks of both Democrats and Republicans will be thinned)... and I want my money back. I want their salaries for the last 10 years paid back for allowing this crap to happen. I want them publicly shamed and humiliated.

God help us all.

Where Rush Is Wrong

I generally like Rush Limbaugh. Call it two Missourians sticking together but after 17 years of his show I still enjoy listening to him from time to time and on many issues we are in agreement. One recent area of disagreement (and a key on regarding the identity and future of the Republican Party) is his reaction to those who are saying the Republican Party needs to move forward in several areas. An example of his reaction to people like David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, and Christopher Buckley can be found here. But as often as he is right, here I think the great MahaRushie is wrong. What helped bring this to light was a short interview on the DVD Mr. Conservative from another conservative thinker, George Will. The question put out was whether or not Barry Goldwater became more liberal as he became older. Liberals like Al Franken were giddy in saying he had but George Will put a more thoughtful idea forward. He said that issues like gays in the military were not key in the years of Goldwater's era. What Goldwater did was take his well-thought ideals of what it meant to be a conservative and applied them to these new issues and came down on the side of literal interpretation of the Constitution and freedom to live one's life with minimal interference by the government (the bedrocks of Conservatism) and said "Nothing prevents it, so let 'em do it". Conservatism doesn't mean intellectual stagnation just as the attempts by Brooks et al does not mean giving up core conservative values nor jettison the image of Ronald Reagan. The idea, which Rush seems to miss, is that we have to take our basic values and apply them to a whole new world of issues that Reagan, God bless him, never had to face as key issues. Society has moved to new issues, in part because Conservatism won several of its fights in the '80 and '90, so we have to take the idea of what it means to be a conservative and apply them to the issues of the day. We cannot just look back at Goldwater and Reagan and sigh wistfully for the old days, we have to take the tools they gave us and move onward to build a conservative ideology worthy of the 21st century.

An Accurate Take On The Current Financial Mess

This was sent to me by my friend Andrew. Generated lots of painful laughs...

Support In Repealing The Ban On Service

Here's the teaser:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – More than 100 retired generals and admirals called Monday for repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays so they can serve openly, according to a statement obtained by The Associated Press.

You can read the whole article here.

I have two political heroes in my life... my dad (for practical applications of what it means to be a Conservative) and Senator Barry Goldwater (who started what I consider "real Conservatism"). My dad has never made any statements about gays serving in the military but Senator Goldwater did. First, the man known as "Mr. Conservatism" is famously quoted as saying "You don't have to be straight to shoot straight." Nice and pithy, accurate on sentiment but not content. The "quote" comes from his famous 1993 Washington Post editorial:


We have wasted enough precious time, money and talent trying to
persecute and pretend. It's time to stop burying our heads in the sand and
denying reality for the sake of politics. It's time to deal with this
straight on and be done with it. It's time to get on with more important
business.

The conservative movement, to which I subscribe, has as one of its basic
tenets the belief that government should stay out of people's private
lives. Government governs best when it governs least-and stays out of the
impossible task of legislating morality. But legislating someone's version
of morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against
gays.

We can take polls. We can visit submarines to get opinions on who are
the best citizens. But that is not the role of a democratic government in a
free society. Under our Constitution, everyone is guaranteed the right to
do as he pleases as long as it does not harm someone else. You don't need to be "straight" to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.

With all the good this country has accomplished and stood for, I know
that we can rise to the challenge, do the right thing and lift the ban on
gays in the military. Countries with far less leadership and discipline
have traveled this way, and successfully.

When you get down to it, no American able to serve should be allowed, much less given an excuse, not to serve his or her country. We need all our talent.

This is my brand of Conservatism (emphasis on that second paragraph of his). It's time for the rest of the GOP and the rest of the military to catch up.

Lose One, Win One

Been up 24 hours straight working but I had to acknowledge this. Thanks Connecticut. The east coast is looking more attractive with each passing day.

Singing The Prop 8 Blues

Well, just in case you've been hiding in the caves with Bin Laden, Prop 8 passed and the people of California have changed the state constitution to enshrine a definition of marriage that removes the rights of same-sex couples to marry. When others were spouting early polls with glee that it was losing I was hesitant to join in. I guess I have been a student of politics too long and had paid attention to what was going on to jump to the conclusion that the proposition would lose. Sadly I was right. The ads promoting Proposition 8 were far too effective on an electorate that was not politically aware. Add to this the way the vote worked (voting for Prop 8 meant gays could no longer marry most likely did work on some... I have anecdotal evidence that this did happen) along with the racial nature of the election (Blacks and Latinos, out in force for Obama, voted heavily for the proposition) spelled a squeeker at best for us. Sadly we didn't even get 50% plus 1, enough to have defeated the proposition.

So what now? There are protests. People are upset and rightfully so, but I hope they are careful in how they proceed. One of the more effective ads was that of the idiot mayor of San Francisco spouting how "whether you like it or not" gay marriage was here to stay. I've heard on the radio and read in news papers of some protests getting ugly, people saying things and doing things that are at worst damaging and at best stupid in trying to get out their anger. But lets understand, this is no long a voting matter... the prop passed, the Constitution as of now will change. The fight, which should continue, now goes to the courts. It falls to the small group of lawyers petitioning the state's supreme court to hear their arguments against the merits of such an amendment. At this time I am not quite sure the courts will decide in their favor but we can continue to hope and pray that is so.

What if this is the case... what if the courts don't come down on our side? Our only real alternative is to put up our own initiative to change the constitution again. Now that will be interesting but given California's silly initiative process it is possible... and we could be in a war of constitutional amendments.

Post Election

Well, Obama won. I hope he really is a Christian and that he spends time in prayer because he does not have the experience necessary to lead a country like this in times of crisis. Unlike some of the people who were against Obama, I do not think Obama is evil or a "bad man", I simply think he is wrong and that many of his ideas and proposed policies are, in the words of Sarkozy, "immature".

In a related story, Prop 8 passed so no marriage for me despite time, energy, and cash contributed to the cause. Why related? Well, a majority of the people that Obama pulled to the polls voted for Prop 8. All you pro-8/anti-Obama folks needs to send him a big ol' thanks, his people put the prop over the top.

In a perverse addition, Prop 4 failed so no adult notification for abortions on young women. Murder can continue without the counsel and notification of an adult. Just goes to show you the schizophrenia of California... homos get put in their (our) place but murder of the unborn misses this one small potential impediment.

Economically the wonderful people of this state voted even more debt. I have come to the realization that people here simply do not understand the concept of a bond. People, you have to pay for it. It is not free money.

So there you have it. Now the hard work comes...

Crumudgeon Voting

Well, I voted. I got to my polling place 15 minutes early and was second in line. They reindexed the polling places and mine was moved so I was a little nervous about the state not getting the address right (what, California screwing things up?) but it went fine.

My strategy for voting this year was rather simple:

I couldn't vote for Obama. I simply don't trust him. This man broke his very first promise of taking federal financing to fund his run for office so why should I trust him on anything else?

If you are an incumbent I voted against you. If you are a Democrat incumbent I voted Republican. If you are a Republican incumbent I voted Libertarian. I just want new liars in office, I'm tired of old lies (which is why I voted yes on Prop 11). Hopefully the new liars will be more creative.

On the props, if you directly cost money I voted against you regardless of my actual feelings about the prop. Why? If you ask this you simply are not paying attention to what is happening in this state. WE HAVE NO MONEY!. I'm sorry, but this state is already $14 billion in the red and we just passed the budget less than two months ago. We simply cannot afford to spend more now and it is not right to saddle the young with the thoughtlessness of the old. We have to straighten out the mess before we start piling on more debt.

And of course I voted NO on Proposition 8.

So yes, I voted like a "crusty, ill-tempered, usually older person"... I voted like a crumudgeon, but I felt like it was the appropriate way to vote this election cycle.