The Tom Reid View of the World ...

Updates from September, 2009

• 

  Let's Politicize the Arts

  Tom 6:33 am on September 23, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  

  Here’s something that I am quite sure has flown under your radar. And why not? You certainly won’t see anything about it reported in your local paper or on network TV. How about we get the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank, of which you should be a member) to meet with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in an effort to get a few art displays developed and promoted that reflect how global warming is a piece of science fiction, how the Christian religion has performed charitable efforts for centuries, how the American system of health care has produced the vast majority of healthcare advancements, and to commission certain art works that are favorable to Reagan, Bush (1 and 2), and paint both Pelosi and Reid in a bad light. Pretty neat, huh?

  And I trust that your reaction is – “No way! That would be completely inappropriate! We would never do that, or have any expectation that the NEA would cooperate in such an effort.” Ahhh yes, naiveté reigns supreme.

  So I suppose that you would be surprised to learn that on Thursday August 6 the NEA held just such a conference call that was orchestrated by a liberal think tank called United We Serve and also included the White House Office of Public Engagement. The subject of this call – to get “cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change.” The goal was to engage the arts community to inspire civic service by the general public in four key areas. Two of them were “health care,” and “energy and environment.” One participant asked a very cogent question – Is this the role of the NEA?  See his full report at BigHollywood.Breitbart.com. His research revealed that the NEA was formed in 1965 under President Johnson as “a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.” No where could he find a mandate to proselytize on public issues that are currently under heavy political debate.

  This participant reports that the session closed with these statements from the NEA: “This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally? … bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…”

  He closes his blog with another cogent question: Is the hair on your arms standing up yet?

  See yesterday’s blog about the negotiation tactic where you overload the opponent and he will give in to much of what you want just to get rid of you. Alternatively, engage the cultural agencies, along with the regulatory agencies, to brainwash and indoctrinate the population until they simply say “ENOUGH!” and allow the public option, the forced transfer of even more productive wealth without effort on the part of the recipient, and the use of the empathy vote in the administration of justice thus removing her blindfold. Even if the radicals don’t get everything they have wanted, they get enough to completely change the complexion of the America as it was founded and as we all grew up knowing it to be – warts and all.

  Do you still think that the current administration is NOT trying to socialize this country and indoctrinate its population with its Godless view of the world? Ahh yes, naiveté does reign supreme.

  
   

  Reply Click here to cancel reply.

  Name (required)

  Email (required)

  Web Site

   
• 

  Boil it Out of Them

  Tom 9:28 am on September 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  I am greatly troubled by a trend that is happening and no one seems to be noticing. It is like the parable about the frog that is put in a pot of cool water and then the temperature is slowly raised until the frog boils to death. If you had plopped the frog into hot water to begin with, he would have immediately jumped out. While I have never known anyone who has actually tested that hypothesis by boiling a frog, it does illustrate the point that if dangerous change happens gradually, we often fail to notice until it is too late.

  In a similar vein, there is a very popular negotiation technique where you go all out to get everything you possibly can, even the most outrageous of demands, because what the other side will ultimately agree to will be far more favorable to your side than if you had acted reasonably in the initial phases of negotiation. You plant in the other party’s mind the thought that they are glad to have lost only what they lost since you raised the stakes so high that they could have lost a lot more. It can be a very effective negotiation tool when you either a) do not care whether you ever do business with the other party again (since they will hate you), or b) you rely on the absolute stupidity of people who will fall for that ploy time and time again. It reminds me of the reason that so many spammers from Nigeria continue to spam us. There are enough stupid people falling into their ploy that simply by overwhelming the system they will net a few gullible people. And a few gullible people are all you need to make the tactic work.

  What is happening in politics in America is quite frightening. The pent up socialist ultra liberal agenda has burst like a dam. By flooding the system with every conceivable radical idea some portion of them will actually get passed and implemented. This will move the country closer to a socialist temperament and the losers will be glad that they didn’t lose more. Wow, we beat the public option, and only got “triggers”.  Wow, we beat abortion on demand for any reason whatsoever, and only let them get away with abortion on most every demand as a birth control method. Wow, we didn’t get a true ultra liberal on the Supreme Court; we only got a racist who admits to making policy outside of the legislative process. Wow, we didn’t let unemployment go to 14%, we were able to keep it just at 10%.

  Go back and read the “but only” portions of those statements. The fact that we are accepting them as minimal losses is just frightening. They are dooming America. And when people finally do wake up and find themselves in boiling water, their reaction will be interpreted as excessively reactionary since, after all, we’ve now been doing things this way for YEARS!!!! The radical agenda becomes the norm until the next great crash and burn negotiation ploy wends its way through our political system.

  The critics of Rush and Beck and Hannity say that we should not listen to them because they are speaking in hyperbole, i.e. extreme examples such as saying to your child “I’ve told you a MILLION TIME” not to do that.” Clearly you have not said it a million times. You speak in extremes for effect. What is actually happening, as many of us fall asleep at the wheel, is that the hyperbole is in the radical policies being implemented, not with those who are calling these socialist politicians on what they are doing. They are practicing an age-old, discredited philosophical argument called ad hominem. Literally “against the man.” When you can’t fight the logic, you attack the messenger. These advocates of socialism (going back to the Alinsky mode of agitation and “community organizing”) have no soundness to their arguments, so they attack their detractors.

  In my view the only way to prevent this is to know clearly what you believe and why you believe it. Beneath every public policy is a linkage to a philosophy. If you have ever donated to charity you believe in some level of socialism, but at that level we call it charity. And the distinguishing mark is that it is voluntary – not a forced tax. And helping your neighbor IS a good thing to do. But should it be mandated by the government under the threat of prison? And should it be given to just anyone, whether or not they are working to improve their situation? And should it be given to support causes that you simply do not believe are appropriate? And should it be given to support the religion of humanism when our government is not supposed to dictate any particular religion?

  Spend some time today thinking about what it is exactly that you believe and why you believe it. What is your underlying philosophy for that belief? Where is your moral center? Where is your anchor against which you calibrate right and wrong? I assure you that there is an ongoing assault against your beliefs with the intent of legislating what you should believe. The ultimate endgame is thought police. You will ultimately be told what to think. Do you believe that this is hyperbole? I only wish that were true. There is a conspiracy out there and it has nothing to do with Hanger 51, a second shooter on the grassy knoll, or whether or not we actually put men on the moon. It has a lot to do with shaking your underlying beliefs and slowly boiling them out of you. The temperature is rising and you are accepting things today that years previously you would have rejected out of hand. If you think seriously about this, you will see it is true. The parallels to history are real. And rather disturbing.

  Just because you are NOT paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get you. And even the paranoid have real enemies. The threats to our belief structures are very real. Step one is always to get God removed as a factor. While it only succeeds for a little while, living in those times is a terrible fate.

  
   
• 

  You are Known by the Company You Keep

  Tom 9:18 pm on September 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  Charlie Tremendous Jones is famous for (many things, one of which is) saying that who you will be in five years is driven by the books you read and the people with whom you associate. The truth to that statement has been proven over and over again; those who doubt it are cheating themselves. Read the right material to feed your mind and give your subconscious something to chew on, and then associate with those who can mentor you and spurn you on to greater dreams and goals. It is a simple formula for success.

  What many fail to realize about this simple fact of human nature, however, is that this system of subliminal influence is constantly at work – no matter what you are reading or with whom you are associating. Like we say about computers – GIGO; Garbage in – Garbage out. One blogger has asked a very prescient question: How many Marxists, Communists, Domestic Terrorists and raving racialists does the President get to associate with before reasonable people can assume that the president on some level shares their particular vision of America?

  The associates of Candidate Obama were scrutinized carefully by only a few and it is clear that the White House Czars have not been vetted at all. The appointment of Van Johnson, an admitted “’rowdy Black nationalist’” and ‘communist’ who was also a co-founder of the communist revolutionary organization STORM: Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement” is just the latest of these. Some have written books where they openly admit that natural selection must he helped with various forms of euthanasia – be it abortion, denying medical treatment to the elderly, or other radical idea that compassionate people just don’t share. They try very hard to make moral issues into political issues and then deny morality completely. Everything becomes political and to create their distorted view of the “perfect society” (which you must realize denies that there is any God at all other than their own humanism), they assume that a central political bureau (call it a death squad, or any of the other already existent federal agencies) to make the decisions for all of us since we are simply incapable of making correct moral… oh excuse, the correct political decision.

  It seems the entire world knows about the association with Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, ACORN, and all of the early communist mentors to young Obama as revealed in his two “autobiographies.” It is simply not plausible to believe that these people had no effect on him, even if he did not want them to. Take a look at Congress. Have you ever seen such a batch of group-thinkers? They associate with each other. They sink to the lowest common denominator.

  So think seriously about the books you read and the people with whom you associate. Choose the best. If you want some book suggestions – ask. Find a quality mentor. Hang out with the right group. Feed your mind with the right food. It will respond with the right thoughts. It can’t help itself.

  And of course the corollary is an absolute truth as well. The reason the president surrounds himself with radical leftists like Van Jones is because he is in fundamental agreement with their view of the proper world order. I can’t speak for you, but I am not.

  
   
• 

  The Whole Foods Solution

  Tom 2:48 pm on September 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  Have you read the op-ed piece that John Mackey, chairman of whole Foods, put in the Wall Street Journal on August 12? He’s gotten a lot of grief for telling the truth (truth-tellers often do!) with some ignoramuses spouting off about how they will boycott his stores since it is “their” money and they will spend it where they want. I say ignoramus with the utmost respect since they appear oblivious to the irony of their position. First of all, Whole Foods is the epitome of the liberal left establishment. Their parking lot is full of cars with Obama stickers. Fair trade products; two aisles of vitamins and supplements; “total” recycling programs; natural foods. You name it – if it helps the environment or liberal causes, they are on it. So withholding your money from his stores will negatively affect like-minded liberal employees first. Smart move. Second, these nimrods fail to realize that their complaint against Mackey is EXACTLY the same complaint that conservatives have against the health plan being pushed by Obamamaniacs – spending someone else’s money on a project they don’t want. After all, isn’t it your tax dollars that they are planning to spend (and the tax dollars of your children, and their children, and their children, and their children,…….)?
  In the Wall Street Journal piece, Mackey makes some very sane suggestions. He promotes:

  •?Removing the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible insurance plans and health savings accounts. The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees’ Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.
  Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.
  •?Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.
  •?Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.
  •?Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.
  •?Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.
  •?Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?
  •?Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.
  •?Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

  I would add one more. When you visit a medical facility, they have 48 hours after your discharge to give you a complete bill for every service you received while there. Not 15 different bills from people you are not sure even saw you. If it’s not on that bill, you don’t owe it. But that’s just a personal issue.
  So once again, someone who has been there, who has run a company, who has wrestled with health insurance issues on a national scale has come forward with very sane suggestions that are FAR SHORT of any socialized medicine plan. Don’t most rational people believe that working on issues with targeted solutions is a much better approach than a complete destruction of the current set-up with questionable viability of the new solution? Mackey was right. Mackey is right. We should not boycott his stores; we should support them.

  And disagreeing with the liberal solution does not make us racists, radicals, or Nazi’s. It makes us sane rational people.

  
   
• 

  The Sucker's Choice

  Tom 9:27 am on September 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  There is so much to say about the speech last week to the joint session of Congress. And while Joe Wilson was inappropriate, I can certainly understand the frustration of listening to liars lie to the point that you just HAVE to call them on it. Much has been written already, so I won’t restate it here. I just want to make one point. Obama’s constant and completely inappropriate use of the Sucker’s Choice ploy.

  In the midst of the speech last week he said, “Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing.” He has repeated that phrase often. Earlier this week he said, “I will not accept that we simply do nothing.” NO ONE HAS EVER SUGGESTED THAT WE DO NOTHING. Read the book Crucial Conversations and see what I mean. He puts that straw man up there as if the Republicans are saying that we should do nothing. Are you aware that there are SEVERAL bills pending that have been proposed by the Republican side of the aisle? Take a look at HR 3400 was introduced on 7/30/09. Yet Obama outright lied (as the SC congressman pointed out in the middle of his speech on the issue of illegal immigrants getting free health care) when he said earlier this week that the Republicans have not submitted any proposals. The man is a pathological liar! I am certain that if he were put to a lie detector test regarding the lies he has told, he would pass. He actually believes what he is saying. He is so narcissistic that he knows he is anointed.

  He is correct that doing nothing is inappropriate. But we are not faced with a choice of either/or. There are more than two solutions on the table. And doing nothing is NOT one of them. He poses it as if he is a huckster sales man – “Do you want the blue one or the green one?” Who said I wanted one at all? And blue or green are not the only choices.

  Yes – we need to reform health care. It’s been in need of reform for some time. There are disincentives to the insurance companies; there is a lack of competition across state lines; having 51 different regulatory bodies for one industry makes no sense; the billing process is a fraud; and doctors are going broke from malicious tort lawyers getting rich. Just to name a few. The choice is NOT, as Obama suggests in his continuing campaign of fear mongering, simply between doing nothing and having a full government takeover. There are many, many other options. But the ruling party has issued its edict – agree with us or be a Nazi (as Nancy Pelosi has called the protestors). Once again, those are not the only two choices. Things aren’t always black or white. There are many shades of grey.

  
   
• 

  Miscellaneous

  Tom 9:14 am on September 16, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  

  I’ve been collecting information on a variety of topics and written most or parts of about a dozen postings. In typical fashion I am having difficulty considering them “finished” and so I am sitting on them. That is one trait of mine that I really need to work on! So what I am going to do today to start is to give you a list of sites to check out. We’ll see if I get any others posted today. You will find each one enlightening and not very rant-ful. Feel free to comment on any of them here.

   For a really excellent analysis of the coverage given by the three major networks on conservative vs. liberal authors (gee…guess who wins!) take a look at:

  http://www.cultureandmediainstitute.org/articles/2009/20090908115345.aspx

   For a really interesting analysis of the “47 million uninsured” using the government’s own census data, which conclusively shows that the government and Obama are lying, and they know they are lying, they just hope not too many people catch on (the media certainly isn’t going to bring it to anyone’s attention!) take a look at:

  http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1449

   For a good review of the misrepresentations made by Obama relative to the two congressional bills dealing with health care reform look here:

  http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/11/correcting-misinformation-about-obamacare/

  and here:

  http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/12/morning-bell-obamacare-pep-rally-fact-check/

   I found a kindred spirit here and you might enjoy her blog as well:

  http://angryfemaleelephant.com/Blog/

   This next one was enlightening and rather short, so I am copying it here for your enjoyment as well. Anyone take debate class in high school or college? There really is an art to how you present your material, and Obama is pretty good at it, but anything taken to an extreme is just BS and eventually it becomes obvious to everyone.

  it ain’t the message

  Associated Press:
  …Obama is altering his message…
  …White House is retooling its message…
  …highlighting the upside of health overhaul…

  Translation: “It walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck.  And beginning today, we’re gonna start calling it a chicken, because calling it a goose hasn’t been working.”

  This is the same statist crap that it was yesterday – the same nonsense that it always is:  Politicians have decided what they want to take from you, and now they’re just experimenting with different ways of selling it.

  Think about it.  The White House could be announcing how Obama is rethinking certain elements of his plan in response to public outrage; how he’s going back to the drawing board to address America’s concerns that the healthcare legislation currently working its way through Congress is too intrusive, too expensive.

  But no, they’re not gonna actually change anything.  After all, the parts you dislike the most are the centerpiece of this legislation.  Instead, what we hear is how Obama’s going to start rationalizing it a different way.   

  Obama already knows what he wants to do to you, and now it’s just a matter of coming up with a way of stripping your freedom that doesn’t sound like stripping your freedom.  I’d like to think that’s an impossible task, but then again we did vote for this idiot.

  http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/2009/08/it-aint-the-message.html

   Here is a good posting about the five biggest myths being pushed by the left – all of which are false, at least as applied to the right. They are actually using an Alinsky tactic of blaming the opponent of doing exactly what they are doing!

  http://www.redstate.com/jeff_emanuel/2009/08/13/5-liberal-myths-about-health-care-reform/

   And this is the best saved for last – I just LOVED this – Obama getting a taste of his own medicine. Very original and very insightful!

  http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/08/open_thread_346.html

   

  So there you have it – eight sites to peruse and enjoy. And then come back here and make some comments about them.

  
   
• 

  Remembering 9/11

  Tom 8:54 am on September 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  This is a part of Project 2996 – a project designed to recruit 2996 bloggers to post a blog about one of the 9/11 victims. I am proud to participate in this worthwhile project.

  I fully expect that at some point in our future we will, as a nation, realize the impact of the events of 9/11. As the government report told us, just because we did not believe that we were at war, there was an entity out there that has been at war with us for many years. It is naive to think that they have just “given up” or that sitting down and talking to them peacefully will change their hearts. As hawkish or dovish as you might be personally, there does come a time when we must fight to protect the freedoms that others wish to take from us. Sadly we can lose them just as easily, perhaps more easily, by letting them drift away slowly rather than be taken away by force and violence. When the time comes to fight for those freedoms, and violence becomes necessary for our protection, count me in.

  There were 2996 victims killed in the war of 9/11. Today we have been selected to honor one of them. Today we honor the memory of Joon Koo Kang. He was 34 on that fateful day and was working as a systems analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald – a global financial services company that lost a great number of its employees and senior executives that day. In fact, they occupied the 101, 103, 104, and 105 floors of WTC 1 and had about 1000 employees housed there. There is no telling just what he was doing. It was a normal business day in World Trade Tower 1. People on the 104th floor were making coffee, booting up their computers, catching up with co-workers, looking at their schedules and to-do lists, and taking care of the myriad tasks we all tend to each morning.

  Joon’s wife, Dohee, met him when she came to New York in 1994 as a college student. Although she returned to Korea, he followed her to Seoul and proposed to her the day she graduated in a very unique way.

  “He gave me a thousand origami cranes, and said when he missed me, he would make a crane,” his wife once said. “He also showed me a photo album of me growing up. I don’t know how he got the pictures. At the end of the album, there was a card, which said, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”

  They settled in Riverdale, NJ where they had a very normal suburban life. He left behind two daughters, Ariel, who was 4 at the time, and Diane, who was 2. According to reports at the time, he used to take them to swimming pools and parks and read them the Bible every night. “I told my little ones that Daddy is in heaven. Then my older girl asked me, ‘Could I call him?’ ” Mrs. Kang said. “I said no. If you wanted to see Daddy, you had to pray.”  The younger one will probably have no direct memories of her father, and even the older one will strain to recall his love. Clearly taken too soon for his family and for us all.

  I never knew Joon or any of the other 2995 victims. I confess to a curiosity of why anyone would work in a building that tall. I’m not a big fan of heights, but we do what we must when earning a living. I am guessing, obviously, but I think I would have been a better person for having known him. There may never have been an opportunity to meet, but he was clearly a strong family man. Because of the actions of some radicals who have been at war with us for so many years, I will never get the chance to know him.

  How long should we remember this day? Some suggest that excessive mourning is just too fatiguing. Perhaps. And clearly there are days that we never forget such as Pearl Harbor and D-Day, while there are others that fade as a remembrance of a specific day such as the sinking of the Maine and the fall of the Alamo. What we must remember is that we are still at war, even if we want to deny it. Our enemies will use that denial to their advantage, and it is just stupid to give your enemies any advantage whatsoever. Until the jihadists are defeated entirely, the war continues and unlike Viet Nam, we must fight it to win. Remembering the awful attack on our home soil by these vile creatures should serve to cement our resolve against them. It is not a remembrance of terror – it is a tribute to the unwavering courage of the American people. The grieving has ended for most of us, but certainly not the families who lost loved ones. They live with the loss every day. And as a society we feel that loss even if we can’t define it. So it remains a day of remembrance for most of us. Let us not forget that there are those who seek to destroy our freedoms and way of life. Remember that.

  Some of the victims, both in the towers and on the planes, grabbed their final seconds and called loved ones – most just to say “I love you.” Some reached a voice; others just a machine. But they said what was important. What will you do today that captures those final seconds? Who will you call just to say, “I love you?”

  On this day of remembrance, we look to the short life of Joon Koo Kang. May he not be forgotten and even in death may he inspire us to be the best we can be. We can still make a difference in this world. May none of the victims have died in vain. Think about what you can do today, and every day for the rest of your life, to capture the good traits and disciplines of those who have gone before us, such as Joon.