The Violence Worker!

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

It's getting damned old.  I am sick and tired of people equating those of us who consider themselves Tea Party members with terrorists,  Now, it's our Vice President.

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists,” according to several sources in the room.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60421.html#ixzz1Tp9PNtNx

Here is a copy of the email I sent to Biden's office: 

Dear Vice President Biden,

How dare you call people like me a terrorist!  Yes, I support the Tea Party movement 100%. I'm also a hard working, middle class, American.  I'm a retired USAF NCO, work for a defense contractor on an Air Force Base and I hold a security clearance.  I love my country and I hardly consider myself any kind of threat to my country or to my fellow citizens.

Is this where we are in this country, sir?  Is this the new civility, sir?  Because if it is, we are in pretty bad shape. Admittedly, I am a conservative , but Mr. Biden, I would never stoop so low as to call you, or people who think like you, enemies of this country!

Simply put, You owe us a profound apology for your thoughtless and inflammatory remarks.

Michael J. Pittman

According to the Politico article, he later denied saying it.

Yeah, right!

VW

Memo To The New Congress

Dear Congress - especially you newest members,

We elected you to do a job.  We don't want to hear any whining, we want you to get in there and start fixing this mess.  That is your mandate.  That is what we are hiring you to do.

I can only imagine how sweet and seductive is the call to spend money.  I know you want to help people.  We all want to help and we all want people back to work.  You will not fix anything, nor will one person find permmanent work because you spent a bunch of money chasing votes.

When re-election time comes around, understand that promises to do better won't cut it.  We won't be fooled again.

I don't care if Obama vetoes every spending cut bill you send him.  Let him.  If you cut the spending, let the veto be on him.  If the Democrats stall it in the Senate with a filibuster, let them live with it.  Don't let them get away with it.  You know will do everything in their power to make you look bad, don't fall for it.  Get out in front of it.

And for God's sake, keep your nose clean.  Keep it in your pants, don't fill your freezers with cash and don't feel like you have to push pork someone's way.  Be honest and stay honest.  And don't condone corruption either!  If you think it smells wrong, it usuall is wrong.

Bottom line:  Govern, don't rule!

Thanks, and best of luck!

VW

 

 

Tiller Didn't Deserve It

Dr. George Tiller was an abortionist and one of just a few doctors in the United States that would perform a late term abortion on a viable infant.  To me, it's immoral and unconscionable to do such a procedure, but morality aside, it is legal.  It's just as immoral or unconscionable to take the law into your own hands to murder someone who does what Dr. Tiller did. 

Regardless of how strongly an individual individual feels about an issue (and abortion is one issue that can bring out some strong feelings), you do not have the right to take the law into your own hands.  Killing  another human being by an ordinary citizen can only be justified for self-defense reasons.

I note that Dr. Tiller belonged to an ELCA Lutheran Church.  It's interesting because I  belong to an ELCA Congregation here in Tacoma.  I don't know how I would react to someone like Dr. Miller in the congregation.  I do know, that I would cause him no harm or be uncivil.  It's not Christian.

To those of you who think it was justified to kill Dr. Tiller, you are no better than he was.  Those of us who are anti-abortion, our cause was not served by this idiot's actions.

My sincerest condolences to Dr. Tiller's family on their loss.  He did not deserve to be gunned down in cold blood.

VW

Corporate Corruption

I don't have much time to post much this evening so I shall point you here for an excellent treatise that pretty much describes what went wrong in Corporate America and the subsequent meltdown that ensued.

Here's a teaser:

Mediocrity breeds corruption. The business world is crawling with affable, industrious, intelligent people with nothing to distinguish them from ten thousand other affable, industrious and intelligent people, but who very much would like to be rich. Except by winning the equivalent of a lottery or marrying up, their chances of becoming rich are quite poor. They joint a fraternity at college to make contacts, and went to business school to network. They have no friends, only contacts, as their entire social life from freshman year onward has been a struggle to get to know people who might help them. They live in silent terror that they will fall off the corporate gravy train and never have the chance to clamber back on.

It gets better and the solutions make sense.

By way of Blogs for Victory

VW

Who's A Coward?

It seems that Eric Holder, our newly minted black Attorney General, thinks that Americans are afraid to discuss race.  He thinks that the topic is so touchy and charged that people shy away from it.

To a large degree, he's right.  We don't discuss racial issues much because the fact of the matter is, it IS a touchy issue.  People are afraid of it because it is a no win subject.  You either agree with the politically correct line, or risk being called a racist.  No one wants to be known as a racist so we all just shut up and color.  Even voting turned into a racial issue this election with more than one loud-mouthed liberal proclaiming that if you did not vote for Mr. Obama, you were a racist.  Most people are a little bit gun shy.  I wonder how many white people either voted for Obama or said they did just because they didn't want people to think they were somehow racist?

I'm not intimidated.  I'm not a racist and I don't much care if you think I am.  As a matter of fact, I think most liberals find it difficult to grasp racial issues outside the plantation mentality.  Most white liberals view minorities as unable to make it without their help.  It's the "white man's burden" white liberal style.  The race hustlers depend upon white guilt and guys like Holder are nothing more than hustlers, exploiting race for their own gain.

Holder can talk about race any way he pleases.  White people, to include white liberals, have no such luxury.  We are only allowed to talk about race within the bounds of white guilt.  If we so much as stray one millimeter from that line, we are racists.

I don't care if Holder is black.  I don't care what color the President is.  It never mattered to me and it probably doesn't matter to most people.  I called down several people who accused me of voting for McCain because he was white.  When I pushed back, some admitted that they were voting for Obama because he was black.  When skin color is your main reason for either voting for or against someone, it equates to the same thing - racism.  What's the difference between someone who voted for McCain just because he is white and someone voted for Obama just because he is black? Nothing, Nada, ZILCH!   Racism is not  monochromatic.

If the discussion about race is ever allowed to be two-sided, we just might be able to come to terms with some of the issues that revolve around race.  We might be able to get beyond liberal identity politics and deal with some real issues that effect us as humans as a whole instead of categories.  We might be able to get beyond the plantation if we allow for honest inquiry and reasoned discussion without fear or of the dreaded "R" word.

Until that happens, no one is going to talk about race in any kind of substantial way.

VW

Satire? Yeah right....

Thanks Instapunk.

THE AMERICANS WITH NO ABILITIES ACT

Washington, DC - Congress is considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans.

The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real ambition or skills...

'Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,' said California Senator Barbara Boxer.

'We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.'

In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the Transportation Security Administration, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. 

Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U. S. employer of Persons of Inability. Private-sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement 'warehouse' stores (65%).

At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (63%).

Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees.

The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.

Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, 'Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?'

'As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,' said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, due to her inability to remember righty tighty, lefty loosey. 'This new law should be real good for people like me,' Gertz added. 

With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Said Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL): 'As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen,   regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so.'

On Greed - Part II

Part the second of my thoughts on greed.

The other day, I started a discussion about the concept of greed.  Greed is considered to be one of the “seven deadly sins” by much of Christendom and committing them (according to some) will send our souls to eternal damnation.  The 14th century poet, Dante Alighieri, described to us in his “Divine Comedy” the various harsh punishments God had in store for us if we committed one or more of the seven deadlies and did not repent. It’s indeed a frightening vision.

I also reasoned that the desire to better one’s station in life was not necessarily an act of greed as long as your achievement is the result of honest labor and not from stealing it from someone else.

I gave Saint Thomas Aquinas’ definition and said that it didn’t necessarily work as a complete definition because people can prosper without someone else suffering.
I think we probably all agree that stealing or making money illegally meets the definition of greed.  However, I suggest that there is another dimension to the Cardinal sin of greed – a dimension that most people might not think of as greedy.  I would venture to say that many people might even think that what I’m about to write is usually thought to be more the antithesis of greed rather than its definition. 

Simply put, greed is thinking you are entitled to a share of the income of someone who is more successful.  Most people wouldn’t walk up to a successful person and demand a portion of their income; it’s against the law. However, if that person demands it under the aegis of the state through taxation, it suddenly becomes legal and even a point of morality.  One is legal and the other is illegal, but they are essentially two sides of the same coin.  Both are taking something by force and if you don’t think you are forced to pay taxes, stop paying them and see what happens.

Taxation is not a bad thing and using some of it to benefit  others is not entirely evil.  We all pay taxes to run schools even if we have no children because an educated people (theoretically) are less likely to require assistance.  I also don’t think a safety net for people is a bad thing.  Some may argue that everyone should be prepared for a job loss or a death or some other disaster and in a perfect world, I’d agree.  But this isn’t a perfect world and stuff happens.

Government welfare is not necessarily evil, but the dependency and entitlement mentality it creates is no different than trying to gain wealth just for wealth’s sake and trying to get it by cheating others.
There is no sin in being poor and there is no sin in accepting help when it is offered.  There are a couple of times in my life when help was offered and I gratefully accepted what was offered.  It wasn’t from a government source; it was from my church from funds that were donated specifically to help members in time of need.  Over the years, I’ve donated to that fund more than I ever received and it was understood that it was stopgap.  The sin would be to continue to expect the help and not seek ways to improve my circumstances.  I also understand that not everyone has access to that kind of help and I’ve long supported the idea of temporary aid to people in need. 

Greed, envy and covetousness are all based upon selfishness and so is socialism.  Socialism maybe wrapped up in some idea of fairness and compassion, but it is entirely based upon the idea that no one should have more than anyone else and if someone has more than me, I should expect a share. 

Essentially, socialism is just our old friend greed dressed in different clothes.  It’s not compassion, it isn’t fair and it isn’t justice.

VW

On Greed - Part I

This is the first of a two part series exploring the concept of greed and an attempt to define it a little differently than most people.

PART I

Greed - It's one of the seven deadies.  It's one of those sins that Christian tradition says will get you a reserved spot in one of the more roastier-toastier places in Hell.  Dante Alighieri imagined the greedy eternally pushing huge stones against another greedy soul who is pushing back against the other in his work, "The Divine Comedy".  I've been thinking about greed since Mrs. VW and I watched a History Channel mini-series few weeks ago that exposited each of the seven sins from several different faiths. 

What is greed?  Is working hard and trying to better your station really greed?  Am I really taking something from someone else when I make more money? 

Greed is one of those things that seems to be as hard to define as it is to nail gelatin to a wall.  Modern life demands that I need to make a certain amount to sustain myself and my family.  Back in Alighieri's day, existence was more precarious and it took much less to eke out an existence.  Back in the 13th and 14th centuries, greed and covetousness were often linked together under the Latin word for avarice - avaritia.

Part of the problem is that we've been defining greed in the same way since the 13th century.  In Summa Theologica (written 1265–1274), Thomas Aquinas said this about greed or covetousness:

Covetousness may signify immoderation about external things in two ways. First, so as to regard immediately the acquisition and keeping of such things, when, to wit, a man acquires or keeps them more than is due. On this way it is a sin directly against one's neighbor, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them, for temporal goods cannot be possessed by many at the same time.

In other words, if I have more than I need, then someone else is without.  That seem to be a prevalent thought still today. If I achieve a certain amount of wealth or status, it must be at the expense of another less fortunate person.  Although Aquinas' words have some truth to them which we will explore in Part II, that's not necessarily how things always work.  Bill Gates didn't become wealthy by making me poorer.  We traded.  I got something of value for my money and I considered it a fair trade.  Read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" if you have trouble understanding that idea.  Smith understood the relationship of trade and labor.

If my wealth or status was ill-gotten, then I would not deserve it.  That, I suppose, is my delineator.  Simply put, if I came by wealth dishonestly, I really would be making someone poorer.  Their loss would be my gain and that would be wrong.

A desire to obtain wealth is not necessarily greed or wrong.  Without that desire, we might still be living in a cave hunting with a spear.  Certainly, we wouldn't be near as technologically advanced.  What would be the incentive?  We benefit when someone decides they can do it better, or cheaper then the last guy.  Sometimes, it's someone who gets a stroke of genius and comes up with something completely out of the blue.

Whatever the case, bettering humanity and gaining from it is not necessarily greed unless you succomb to the idea that it's all about the money and getting more money becomes your sole motivation.  Then you might have a problem.

Part II will deal with a different interpretation of greed.  What I have to say may surprise you.

VW

Blagojevich Appoints A Senator

Illinois Governor Blagojevich certainly sports a set of of grade double-A, extra large huevos.  He's been accused of not being very bright and he may not be when it comes to some things, but he knows the art of the political street fight.  Blago is the consumate dirty pol and he knows how to wage dirty political war. 

Although he said he wouldn't appoint a successor to Obama in the Senate last week, he turned around and appointed Roland Burris today.

A defiant Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday appointed a black political trailblazer in Illinois to Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat, a surprise move that put race front and center in the ongoing drama surrounding the scandal-tarred governor.

Like I said, Blago knows how the game is played and he knows that the race card is a pretty powerful card in Democratic circles.  He knows that by appointing Burris, he's upset an apple cart full of Democrats. 

The decision put his opponents in the uncomfortable position of vowing not to seat a veteran politician who would become the Senate's only black member.

Blagojevich isn't about hunkering down in his bunker and hiding behind a battery of defense lawyers.  He will counter attack with some pretty big guns.  If he ever does go down, it won't be because he surrendered and he won't go down alone.

This is the stuff of classic opera buffa.  It's hilarious to watch the Illinois/Chicago political machine spit and sputter, ultimately incapable of dealing with a monster of its own manufacture.  The Illinois Democrats wish he would just go away gently while Blago deftly does end runs around their clumsy attempts to subdue him.

Please pass the popcorn!

VW

God And Government

In the on-line UK Guardian, some young fellow by the name of Matthew Harwood thinks Christianity in America doesn't advocate enough for social justice like it used to do in the good old days.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, Protestant intellectuals looked less toward Jesus of Nazareth as a means to their own salvation and instead tried to apply the teacher's radical principles toward the inequities of industrial American society. Adherents of the social gospel were quite simply liberal Christians who favoured social action. Some were even daring enough call themselves what they undoubtedly were: socialists. When liberal Christians thought about a social problem, they tried to answer one question made popular by the Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch: "What would Jesus do?"

As the US slid into the spectre of deep depression, nothing exemplified the social gospel movement more than Fritz Eichenberg's woodblock print, Jesus of the Breadline. Eichenberg, a German artist who fled to the US from Hitler's Germany, portrays Jesus, halo and all, standing amid the destitute in a Great Depression breadline. The message is simple and stark: the poor carpenter comes to the lowliest of us first. And for a while, it seems, the US synthesised some of this ethos into the New Deal.

In other words, if we were real Christians over here, we would charge headlong into socialism.  That is, according to Mr. Harwood, what he thinks Jesus would do. Note, if you will, that Mr. Harwood is not a Christian, but he deems himself sufficiently saintly enough to tell the Church how they should behave. 

I'm no longer a Christian, but I still consider myself a follower of Jesus, the man. I hope Christians are too, because as history's dialectical somersaults show, what was once passé once again rises. And it's on this that I hinge my Christian wish, if an unbeliever is so allowed: that Christians once again dust off the social gospel and join with today's progressives like they did during the labour and civil rights movements to bring a little bit of heaven to earth.

I don't believe Mr. Harwood understands Christianity.  Christianity is not some social theory developed by some "Mediterranean Jewish peasant" in which heaven is a some sort of socialist utopia on earth.  Indeed, Christ taught us that we must help those of lessor circumstance and He did teach us not to be selfish with our worldly goods, but He also did not teach us that we must force this belief on everyone through some sort of governmental or legislative fiat.  By the same token, it's the church's right to fight encroachment upon their moral turf by government as with proposition 8, but that's another issue.

As I understand Christianity and my responsibilities to God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a collective faith.  Christianity is about a personal relationship with God.  Indeed, Christ taught us to care for the sick, the poor and the afflicted.  The Gospels are replete with admonishments and lessons for us to help others in some sort of need. 

Critics of Christianity often point to grand scale mega-churches that are often more of a monument to the preacher than a House of God.  They also like to highlight pedophile clerics and Elmer Gantry evangelists that sometimes infiltrate the ranks of priests and pastors.  Evil people have always been drawn to the ranks of the religious because of the power it affords them.  Some start out with the best of intentions and are later corrupted and some start out with evil intent, but their sins are theirs, not mine.

The truth is that Churches, through their members, do more good for more people then most government can do - person to person and dollar for dollar.

So-called "Social Christianity" relieves one of personal responsibility.  Enact a law, pay the tax and you are absolved of any personal liability.  Somehow, I don't think when my time comes, who I voted for or what laws I supported are going to be the main topics of conversation when I meet my Maker.

God will not ask me how much I was willing to give to the government.  God will ask me what I did with what he gave me.  The parable of the talents come to mind.

VW