Nurturing Freedom

Whether they are in grade school, middle school, high school, or college, they are 'students'. Students are students because they are in a structured environment for learning. The future of this nation depends on students to learn and mature. At every graduation ceremony, you will hear the phrase "You are the future". These are not idle words. Those words express a reality which is undeniable.

Lately however, our students have interpreted 'the future' to mean now. It is natural for a student to question their elders on the way that certain problems get resolved. The inequity of wealth distribution is an issue that students insist on solving.

If the idealists ever gain the power to pass laws redistributing the nations wealth to the poor. They would learn one of the lessons that they do not teach in school. For starters, the entire premise of equal wealth distribution is fatally flawed. Most recipients of unearned wealth do not benefit from having it and for most of the poor in the United States, being poor is a personal choice not a chance dealing of the cards. For instance, family "A" receives money from the government, according to the wealth redistribution plan.

We can say with certain reliability from observing the winners of the lotteries that the first things that will happen is that Family "A" will start purchasing things that they were never able to obtain without that money. A new car, a Plasma TV, a big house, a boat, and even quit their jobs. But the money is soon spent. Family ties strain to the breaking point because related family "B" members think that family "A" should share that money since family "B" have already spent their money. Very few will invest and save. The sad thing about unearned wealth is that it is unappreciated.

The idealists are well meaning. Their efforts to have everybody enjoy some of the worlds bounty was one of those well-intentioned efforts. But they could see that the poor were using the money irresponsibly. And, instead of being grateful for their new bounty, the ex-poor demanded more. It became an impossible pit to fill. The solution was to stop the redistribution of unearned wealth. But the idealists really believe that they can make the world a better place. To make redistribution work, they attach strings to its use. The wealth redistribution advocates had to either take control over how the recipients spend the money or face riots from the people that they were trying to help. Every string attached to that money, erodes freedom. The ex-poor will no longer have the freedom of choice about their life and those who had their money taken for the redistribution plan lost their freedom of choice. When people can no longer use money as they see fit, they lose some of their precious freedom. The value of having money is to be able to use it to trade for something. When others dictate what you use money for, then what good is it? But from the idealist point of view, they want everybody to be happy. To them, making everybody equal monetarily equals a balanced world. Our students are immature and idealistic but they are not alone. A lot of adults also share this simplistic view of the world. We all go through stages of idealism on our path to maturity. But some never get past the idyllic dream of Utopia.

The power wielding elites of our society want your support so they can maintain their power. They play on the hopes and desires of people with the promise of fulfilling their dreams. Better jobs, no more wars, no more pollution, and government backed medical care - all of the usual carrots dangle in front of the voter at election time. But just as in unrequited love, the promises go unfulfilled.

The young idealists make perfect targets for unscrupulous politicians. The idealists hope for a Utopia that can never be but willingly follow a politician who sings the wooing songs of building a Utopia. But do not sell these wayward youths short, these idealists do have power. Their power is in their numbers, they hold your freedom in the balance trying to make a Utopian dream come true. More and more of our young believe that the heavy hand of government is the only vehicle that can solve problems. You can do your part to help the situation by supporting a balanced curriculum in our colleges, or things will continue to get worse.

Cheers,
-Robert-

Gore to the Rescue!

As unlikely as it sounds, Al Gore could actually wind up being the top of the Democrats ticket this fall. Even though
Al Gore has repeatedly said, he is not a candidate for the Dem's nomination; circumstances could very well put him in the driver's seat.

How could it happen? Sooner or later, it will dawn on the Democrats that Obama is a damaged and unelectable candidate against McCain. What works for him in the primaries, namely the race issue, works against him in the main fall election. No matter how strong his support from the Black community, there is not enough of them to elect him.

Obama's negatives have been on the rise ever since the Reverend Wright affair and there is more to come out about his relation with domestic terrorist William Ayers. Barack Obama has had a knack for surrounding himself with extremists over the years. Although nobody can peer into the heart of a man, the company a man keeps speaks volumes about that person. The Reverend Wright has proven himself a racist by his own words. Barack attended the million-man march sponsored by the Nation of Islam leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan. Barack also attended a Moslem school in Indonesia as a youth. Why is the Moslem school important? Because it begs the question, how much of that environment still lurks within Barack?

A lot of circumstance reinforces the doubts about Barack Obama. His refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin and his wife's statements about how bad this country is all point to a man that has been less than candid with the American people about who he really is. These issues will be exploited a lot more in the upcoming Presidential race.

It is hard to see how Barack Obama can survive the questions about his patriotism and win the election. However, there is another option. Obama can release all of his delegates to Gore. Gore would then choose Barack for the second spot on the ticket. Gore, a rock star among the Liberals was just narrowly defeated in the Electoral College in 2000 although he won the popular vote.

By accepting the number 2 spot on the ticket, Obama would have the opportunity to shed those negatives that surround him. The Vice President's position would give Barack the necessary platform to demonstrate that he is a loyal mainstream American and not an extremist in disguise. If all goes well for him, he would be in the driver's seat following a Gore Presidency.

Hilary's negatives are also too high to beat McCain and there is nowhere for her to go. She would be an unlikely choice by the Democratic Party even if things go bad for Barack before the convention in Denver. Gore is the only candidate with the gravitas to beat McCain. Look for Gore to emerge as the candidate for the Democrats..

Cheers,
-Robert-

Obama the Salt Salesman

It is clear that Obama has kindled a fire with the young voters of America. It was the young and the Black vote that enabled Obama to ride to a 14-point victory in North Carolina yesterday. He has managed to sell our young and idealistic youth on his vision of change. Blacks see him as the first Black candidate to have a chance to win the Presidency, and Obama captured 92% of their vote. Blacks turned out in record numbers to support Obama.

With the Blacks voting only for skin color, and the young White population mesmerized by his rhetoric, Obama is assured the Democratic nomination unless something drastic happens. In my search for an analogy to Barack Obama to spotlight his conquest of these groups, I thought of Ron Popeil the inventor of the Veg-O-Matic. Ron has been mesmerizing T.V. audiences for years selling different products from kitchen knives to the "Set it and forget it" rotisserie oven. But Ron Popeil is not the analogy that fits Obama. At least Ron Popeil, being a talented salesman, sells things that are useful. Then I remembered the old 'Salt Salesman' joke. Obama's ability to sell to the idealistic young and capture the almost 100% loyalty of the Black population can only be attributed to his talents as a salesman. The old Joke goes like this:

A man goes to the grocery store to buy a bottle of Ketchup.
Searching through the store, he finds nothing but salt. There was rock salt, block salt, ice-cream salt, and seasoned salt. The store shelves were packed with every kind of salt made. But he could not find any Ketchup or other groceries.

He walks up to the storeowner and inquires if this is a grocery store or a salt store. The storeowner proclaims it to be a grocery store and asks what the man needed. "A bottle of Ketchup please." said the man.

The storeowner opens up a cellar door and quickly retrieves a bottle of Ketchup. After thanking the store owner for the help, the man commented to the store owner, "You must sell a lot of salt!" to which the store owner replied, "No, I don't sell hardly any salt, but the fellow who sells me salt, really sells the salt!"

The moral here is that Obama has nothing useful to sell, but he sure does a good job selling it.

Cheers,
-Robert-

Computer Gaming

Computer Gaming:
The computer games of today are rich in realistic graphics and sound. In fact, the wow factor is as important as the
game. The visual eye candy and surround-sound separate the games of today from the games of yesterday.

The home computer games of the early eighties were text games. There were a lot of logical puzzles to figure out and
the games were interesting. Just to test out how interesting the old text games were, I fired up my trusty old TRS-80
and played 'Zork'. It was still fun and challenging. The prose was matter of fact. - "You are standing in the bottom of
a small ravine. There is a narrow crooked trail going west and a ladder leaning against the north edge of the ravine.
There is a small creek here."- Every frame of the old text game forced you to make a decision. Do you follow the
trail? Do you climb the ladder? Do you check your inventory for a container to get some of the water? There used to be no limit to what you could carry in your inventory and the general rule was that you picked up everything possible. Most of us who played these games resorted to drawing maps to keep up with our location. It was easy to get lost.

The next generation of games was the cartoon-animated games like "Kings Quest". The hero moved about the whole frame and the scene did not change unless he walked to the edge of the frame and that brought up another scene to runaround in. The game play with these was essentially the same as the text games except you could see the surroundings. You had to type in the action for your hero to take. -"Look under rock." Or "Talk to gnome." You controlled the hero's movements with a joystick if you had one or you could use the arrow keys. Depending on your computer, sound could be pretty basic. Sound cards were just beginning to proliferate and so some of the computers of that day included rudimentary sound. My Tandy 1000 had a 4-voice ability and compared with the TRS-80, it was great. The best you could get on the TRS-80 Model I was squeaks and squawks but at the time even squeaks and squawks enhanced the games you played.

Then came "Wolfenstein 3-D". That game was a marvel to play. It had simulated voices and your character stayed in the center of the screen. You looked through your characters eyes. It was great wandering through the prison and Nazi headquarters killing bad guys as you went. The game was fun, and a forerunner for the games that followed. 320 by 200 graphics does not sound like much, but at the time, it was sufficient.

It is my firm belief that some of the old games were better than the new ones. If they reissued some of those old games with up to date graphics and sound, they would probably do well. I also liked the translators so that you could ask questions and tell you hero what to do. I know that you can make the hero do most things with the game controller, but the dialogue between you and your hero via the keyboard made the game more personal and interesting.

Cheers,
-Robert-Link to Serial It is updated weekly.

Obama's Quest for more Dependence

Losing Our Self Reliance:
I just got sick listening to Barack Obama in a speech that was carried by Fox News on Sunday night. It was not that he pointed out all of the ills of the United States, or that he made his getting an education paid for by the government a model for everyone, no, what made me ill was that he really believes that regardless of an individual's effort, the government should play the part of mama to everyone.

Obama railed about losing good jobs here in America, but never a word about the liberals taxing our manufacturers into oblivion. He never spoke about the demands from labor unions that bear some of the responsibility for losing so many domestic jobs. He never once said anything about our shortage of domestic energy because a few liberal green activists are Hell bent on pushing us back into a 12th century world. He never once spoke about the fabricated global warming hoax that will cause us to lose more of our good jobs. The jobs will not disappear, they will just move to different countries where those companies can exist.

Health Care: Please bear with me on this. I am insured and have two doctors that I routinely visit. The first is a general practitioner for ordinary health care. The second is a heart specialist for containing the damage from a-fib episodes and their prevention. Besides the monthly premiums for my wife and me, I pay an annual deductible and a small fee per office visit. But guess what? The doctors are so busy, just to make an appointment you have to get it at least a week in advance. (If you are lucky.) Try and find a doctor with a European name. Apparently, the American young are not studying to be doctors. The bottom line here; what kind of health care can we expect with socialized medicine? Even now, whenever I have an episode that cannot wait a week for an appointment, it is off to the Emergency Room. It is so crowded with Illegal Immigrants that the wait is sometimes up to 4-6 hours. The fact that I am insured does not mean a whit in the Emergency Room. The State requires Emergency Rooms to treat everybody regardless of their ability to pay. When Obama speaks so glowing of giving everybody health care, all I can do is wonder where are all the doctors going to come from? More Charity Hospitals would help if the public would finance them. But still the question I have is where are all the doctors going to come from? I know that I could not be a doctor. Doctors are special people that are married to their profession. They make good money, but they also sacrifice a lot of their freedoms to help their fellow man.

Obama mentioned the plight of some poor people he met without jobs and had an inability to pay for the gas to go find a job. Then he railed against the Oil companies for the high price of fuel. What he neglected to say was that his party is preventing us from having nuclear power. He failed to say that his party is preventing exploration for domestic supplies of energy. He did call for a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. It is the absolute stupidity and pandering to the ignorant among us that made me sick. I finally changed the channel and found a movie on T.V., 'Star Wars'.

Cheers,
-Robert-

Senator Clintons Amazing Interview

In an astounding interview with Bill O'Reilly, Senator Clinton provided a good look at what to expect in a Clinton Presidency. Among the stands she would take would be to send illegal aliens home only if they committed a crime. She would not go after the 'sanctuary cities' because the Illegals would cooperate better with the police if they knew they were protected from deportation.

A lot of people hold that view, the main problem with it is that the 'sanctuary cities' will not allow their police to even find out the citizenship of the people they arrest. One would have to assume that these cities would remain a magnet for Illegals. Never mind the pressure on the local workforce to compete with people who will work for less along with the burden of paying for their health care and education. When does this nonsense stop?

One of her other points was that she would start a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. She claimed that we have already won, that we ousted Sadam and established a Democracy for the Iraqi people. No matter the turmoil in Iraq, she does not see any military solution to any of the problems there.

Military Solution: Pulling out our troops would be the fastest way to guarantee a 'military solution'. Once a power vacuum is created, there is one thing you can bet on; a military solution. If the Iraqi Government is not strong enough to maintain itself, then either Al Qaeda or Iran will happily overrun Iraq and use it as a springboard to further their radical agenda. If that happens, the genocide that will accompany their 'military solution' will be on our hands just as it was in Cambodia when we left Viet Nam. It will be hard to wash the blood off our hands if we leave Iraq prematurely.

The following is a partial quote about the 'military solution' that happened after we left Viet Nam.

Quote provided by -- http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/pol-pot.htm

Follow the link to read the full article!

"By 1975, the U.S. had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam. Cambodia's government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost its American military support. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively seized control of Cambodia.

Once in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which he had witnessed first-hand during a visit to Communist China"

The result of this 'military solution' after we pulled our forces out: 2,000,000 dead. That's two-million souls lost because of our untimely retreat.

Hillary's position would doom thousands in Iraq and perhaps millions in the Middle East. Everyone should see the interview of Hillary Clinton by Bill O'Reilly. The interview, both video and transcript is posted on the Fox News' web site. Hopefully it will stay there a few days or they will archive it for posterity.

Cheers,
-Robert-

So - So McCain

Being a conservative, I find it hard to get excited about the nomination of John McCain. But the realities of the upcoming election make it easier to understand why we need a nominee just like McCain.

If the Republican Party had nominated an ideologue conservative, we would not have a chance to advance in any category. The prospect of the Democrats getting a filibuster proof congress is high. They would have been able to impose their agenda with or without the approval of a conservative President. The only weapon that the president has is the veto option. That option would be feckless with a 60+ member Democratic Senate plus the rino (Republican in name only) Republicans.

McCain is a moderate on a lot of issues, and that bodes well for him in dealing with a Liberal congress. McCain may not win on all issues, but he and the Democrats see a lot of issues through a similar lens. This puts McCain in a position to be able to influence and possibly prevent a lot of Liberal social tinkering. A strict Conservative would be at loggerheads with Congress on all issues resulting in constant turmoil.

As I said, I am not enthusiastic about McCain. I just understand why his nomination is logical at this point in history. I will vote for him, but will not support his candidacy with any money. Call me hard headed but I blame McCain a lot for of the situation that the Republicans are in today. A constant critic of Bush, he became the darling of the liberal left. He only gets my vote because of the two extremely liberal Democratic candidates and the prospect of an overwhelming Democratic Congress.

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Cheers,
-Robert-