"Erection Day?" Yeah - we're all gonna get fucked. Hard (unless I'm wrong. Please let me be wrong! However, I've a reputation for being right far more often than I'm wrong, and - sadly - I tend to be right because I'm a pessimist. Being a real-life Cassandra is not happy-making, believe me...)
So, we've got Obama in office for another four years. Can we survive?
- I didn't vote against him because he's billing himself as Black (he's half-black, but I honestly don't care what colour he is anyhow. It's his politics I don't like)
- I did vote against him because he's a statist Democrat - worst kind.
- I did vote against him because I can't "read" him.
- I did vote against him because I don't like his backers.
- I didn't vote for him because he didn't have a record he could run on - he didn't finish his first term in either the Illinois Senate or the US Senate (such a meteoric rise says something - something I don't care to think about. The last politician who rose so quickly? Adolf Hitler...)
Barack Hussein Obama II is a statist Democrat who leans heavily Socialist. This is evidenced by his policies - he's pushed up the cost of petroleum to the point where working will impoverish people. The first step in a Socialist conversion is to impoverish the people - this primes them to receive government aid.
You're probably asking yourself, "What's a statist?" A statist is an individual who firmly believes that government has all of the answers and should be responsible for the day-to-day lives of its constituents.
I'm far from being a statist. Truth be told, I'm a mild-mannered anarchist - but I'm also intelligent enough to realise that we're not grown-up enough, as a people, to function in a true anarchy. So, some government is necessary. Politically, I'm somewhat farther to the right than the typical Libertarian - government should be the minimum necessary to ensure the following:
- Public safety - law enforcement, fire protection
- Public security - military forces against threats from without
- Preservation of knowledge and culture - libraries and musea (NB: Government should not be involved in the generation of art or culture, that's the province of the private artist. Nor should government be in the business of sponsoring generation of art/culture, the National Endowment for the Arts is a phenomenal waste of money.)
- Co-ordination of assets and response efforts in the event of a major disaster (they claim to do that now, but FEMA has screwed up its responses over the last 20-30 years. I can't wait to see how they're going to screw up response to Sandy...)
- Protection of commerce (this means maintenance of a level playing field - no preferential or predatory regulation or legislation. Minimal regulation passed to protect the customers.
- Protection of monetary system/economy as a whole (this would also mean that fiat money is right out - they knew this 230 years ago, but we seem to have forgotten this in my lifetime. Whatever happened to nothing but Gold or Silver to be used for money? We can expand that - I don't see any reason why platinum, diamonds, or other similar durable and assayable resource can't be used, but we essentially have the "petrodollar" - "fixed" to the price of petroleum, which is a limited and dwindling resource (metals and gems may be finite, but they're not being consumed anywhere near as quickly.)
- Provision of the "health and welfare" of the Nation as a whole, but not to the point where it becomes destructive to the economy (no multi-generation "welfare families," no-one should be able to live their entire lives on welfare and handouts. Yes, we should have pensions for the aged, funded by slight deductions from economic production. Similarly, we should help to provide for the disabled. I don't even have a problem with the idea of Medicare, but the wheels seem to be coming off in practise - largely because Congress looks at SSA and Medicare as places to borrow money from. What to know why Social Security is going broke? Blame Congress - they've stuffed the SSA treasury with IOUs. Congress should not be able to borrow from SSA unless such project to be funded can be shown to benefit the country or the human race as a whole - so far, the only case where that was proper was putting men on the moon. Speaking of - why haven't we done that in forty years?)
Not much else needed past that - safety, security, limited welfare, protection of commerce, protection of the consumer, preservation of knowledge and culture.
Now, look at what's happening under latter-day Democrats - how many of them are exceeding their directives?
Don't even get me started on riders, and stuffing crap into bills that can pass on popular pressure. If it can't pass on its own, it probably doesn't need to pass, and should be left out.
(Do you honestly expect me to believe that a bill over 2,000 pages is composed only of stuff that's strictly necessary? What are you smoking, and where can I get some? Obamacare is only the most recent example - I'd tried to read the versions of the bill that came out before it got to a vote, but I was thoroughly confused <5 and="and" couldn="couldn" figure="figure" i="i" in="in" out="out" pages="pages" parts="parts" t="t" the="the" what="what">did
read had to do with healthcare in general, or healthcare funding in particular!)
Taxation. We were told that taxes wouldn't be raised on households making less than $250K per annum. So why is there a new line on 1040 that tells me we're going to get W-4'd on PayPal payments? It's a pain for me because I run a business, but that means that anything you're going to sell on eBay is going to be subject to taxation - whether you do it as a business or not. Hmm...
Leaving aside the simple fact that any money removed from the economy through taxation is money removed from productive use. Taxation is theft, overtaxation is a mugging. Frankly, since God only wants 10% of what we make (cf: "tithing,") why do we give .gov 17% and up? (No, I'm not counting state-level taxes, nor am I considering all of the "incidental" taxes or "taxes that aren't, but are" - examples of both are: excise taxes, vehicle registration "fees" (an annualised sales tax, when you break it all down,) bridge tolls, sales tax, any government fees for licensing or permitting, ... Don't even get me started on the 55% "haircut" for any significant inheritance - even the IRS admits that the "estate tax" programme doesn't even make enough to fund itself...)
I take some small heart in the fact that the Right seems to have held onto the Senate, but the House is a close thing. Problem there - the money bills all start in the House. But, they can be blocked by the Senate (I'm not a big fan of partisan politics, but I hope that the Right can put the brakes on the Left enough to give us time to reach for the K-Y. As I said, we're gonna get fucked. Should I just go ahead and drive nails through my balls now?)
The good news? Unless they manage to change the rules, Obama is now ineligible to run for POTUS again. The bad news? Who is the Left going to run in 2016, and will the Right be able to fight them off then? (Given that the Republicans are moving toward the Left, I'll probably vote Libertarian by then. They're not as far to the Right as I'd like them to be, but they're better than the Republicans...)
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