Confucius say....

Why, you ask, do I illustrate this post with the Chinese characters for "beef" and "flesh" from left to right. Well, because Manderin Beef is the take-out dish I had for dinner Saturday night from the Mandarin House in my neighborhood. My wife had the Kung Pao Scallops....quite tasty!

I don't know about you but I enjoy eating my fortune cookie...with just a hint of lemon, they're delicious! Until now, I've only gotten one fortune that was in any way meaningful to me. It said..."Get help! I'm being held captive in a fortune cookie factory!"

Yeah, I went with that old joke. It's the only fortune cookie joke I know.

My fortune on Saturday said this, "Life is funny to those who think, and tragic to those who feel. Now that's not exactly a fortune but, it resonated with me since that's the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, being generally rational and logical, think their way through life, assigning appropriate levels of alarm to the things we encounter, and using our sense of humor to dismiss the rest. Liberals, being irrational, ungrounded, and humorless, feel their way along, constantly being led this way and that by their emotions, always alarmed by the next boogey-man, concluding that there's no hope, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and all is lost.

Maybe Confucius said that, maybe not. But who ever, he was on to something.

Fundies can be as bad as liberals

OK, I just posted earlier, my complaint against liberals who want to regulate every facet of the lives of free Americans. Now it's the fundamentalists' turn to experience the sting of my whip...

Raleigh | Citing the controversy surrounding the Dakota Fanning film Hounddog, the leader of the state Senate Republicans says he wants the government to review scripts before cameras start rolling in North Carolina.

That system, said state Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, would apply only to films seeking the state's lucrative filmmaker incentive, which refunds as much as 15 percent of what productions spend in North Carolina from the state treasury.

"Why should North Carolina taxpayers pay for something they find objectionable?" said Berger, who is having proposed legislation drafted.

It seems North Carolina's fundies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to give filmmakers incentive to use their state to make movies but then they want censorship rights over content. I'll bet 99% of the people with their shorts all in a bunch over the Dakota Fanning rape scene haven't even seen it yet. Their knee-jerk outrage probably comes from the mass e-mail they received at work from their sister's boss's cousin's neighbor whose boyfriend is the second assistant to the key grip on the set, who swears there were child-safety and obscenity laws broken in the making of the scene.

Please!!! What did they expect when they invited Hollywood liberals to make movies in their state? The problem here is you have a bunch of irate soccer moms whose daughters worship Dakota Fanning, but who can't go see this movie because of the subject matter.

This reminds me of when I was a teenager and a weatherman in Atlanta, Guy Sharp, out of the blue called for a state-wide boycott of Proctor&Gamble products because there is a mysterious crescent moon and like 7 stars on their labelling(look on the can of Comet under your sink and check it out). Without any evidence more than a rumor flying around his church, he claimed it was satanic symbolism or something or other.

I'm not saying that Dakota Fanning's rape scene isn't very disturbing and uncomfortable to watch...I'm certain that it is. But if it's integral to the story, not gratuitous, and doesn't violate child endangerment laws, which I understand is the case here, really, as conservatives shouldn't we be willing to allow expression, even if it's disturbing and uncomfortable?

Milton Friedman -- RIP

Economist Milton Friedman passed away yesterday. His contributions to conservative thought are unmatched in my estimation. His professional accomplishments in economics and general social policy include:

-pursuading President Nixon to abolosh the military draft, reasoning correctly that an all volunteer fighting force would fight harder and stay enlisted longer.
-advancing the notion of laissez-faire capitalism...that is, the government should stay out of the private market and let men acting in their own self-interest determine market dynamics. Example: it was traders who discovered Enron's crimes, not government regulators. And traders, operating in the free market, punished Enron within days of the discovery by driving it's stock price down to nothing. It would have taken the government years to figure it all out and dole out punishment.
-advocating school vouchers long before it became en vogue to conservatives. He reasoned that free-market competition in education would quickly eliminate bad schools and elevate productive schools by letting parents choose which school their kid attended. He was absolutely right.

These three things stand out to me as Milton Friedman's greatest contributions to American society. He championed the ideas of individual liberty and freedom when few others were. Reading about his philosophies stands as a reminder to me of how far the Republican party has fallen from it's conservative roots.

America needs some more Milton Friedmans.

See, I'm not the only one who thinks like this

Just in case you people think I'm a lone, right-wing nutcase, go over to Right-Thinking and take a look at this post which came about an hour after mine on the idiotic, nanny-state, internet gambling bill that will be law soon...

http://right-thinking.com/index.php/weblog/a_question_of_morals/

See, I'm not such a zealot afterall.

The Liberterian Party looks better and better every day

I'm not a gambler so this doesn't affect me personally but any loss of personal freedoms at the hands of compromised government officials is cause for concern whether or not you are personally restricted...

US President George W. Bush this week is expected to sign a bill making it harder to place bets on the Internet, a practice which already is illegal in the United States.
Bush was expected to act quickly after Congress approved the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making it illegal for financial institutions and credit card companies to process payments to settle Internet bets. It also created stiff penalties for online wagers.

Billions of dollars are wagered online each year and the United States is considered the biggest market.

"It is extraordinary how many American families have been touched by large losses from Internet gambling," said US Representative Jim Leach, the bill's main sponsor in the House, in a statement after its passage early Saturday.

The bill's chief Senate sponsor was conservative Republican Jon Kyl, who, like Leach, has said he believed Internet gambling was a moral threat. He has called online betting as the Internet version of crack cocaine.

Republicans tucked the measure into a bill aimed at enhancing port security, which passed early Saturday.

Here's where I have a significant departure from the current Republican Party...legislating morality. My problem is that it absolves the individual from having to exercise personal responsibility. If the measure is so strong and necessary for public protection, why "tuck" it into a sure to pass security bill? Why sneak it in under the radar on Saturday morning when nobody but a bunch of bloggers are paying attention? And, if gambling is so horrible, why is it practiced and condoned in one form or another in nearly every state in the country?

The bill's sponsors are Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) and Jim Leach (R-Iowa). A quick search of gambling in those two states reveals that Harrah's (a big casino developer) owns huge resort casinos in both states. Internet gambling is taking a lot of business away from casinos and you know Harrah's contributes big-time to PAC's of representatives in states where they want to do business, in return for legislation favorable to them. The obvious question is if gambling is so evil, why did these two guys allow casinos in their home states? Kind of hypocritical isn't it?

So it's not about morality, or addiction, or crime. It's about stroking deep-pocket constituencies. Bottom line: indebted congressmen can legislate anything their big-money contributors want under the pretense of protecting morality. And the individual voters have to live with another small loss of freedom all because some legislators have to do what their big donors demand. Sometimes I wish I was able to not care about politics, my blood pressure would certainly be lower. This kind of underhanded, freedom-robbing, tactic sickens me...expecially when it comes from my own party.

Newt's got a plan?

I know this is sort of a long article to read but it's well worth it. Newt Gingrich has a plan of 11 things Republicans should do to re-win the American people back to conservatism. Check it out...

http://www.humanevents.com/winningthefuture.php?id=16863

I know Newt is considering a run for President and whether you would vote for him or not, he's clearly one of the smartest men in Washington. He's got some personal baggage that would probably squelch a serious bid for the big house but then again, since when did we Americans care about honesty, integrity, morals, fidelity, or class in our national command authority...we voted for Bill Clinton....TWICE!!!

Seriously, this is a sure-fire plan to win back the confidence of the American people if only the Republicans in Washington had the guts to push for these things in an election year.