J’accuse and Your Guilt is Sealed

 

The new left is quite different from the liberals who used to make up the left. The new left is activist and refuses to permit people to oppose their dictums. Your religious beliefs are inconsequential in the world they are preparing for the future. Your political leanings must be corrected until you yield to their beliefs. Nothing can be permitted in opposition. Change has become the order of their day, their night and any time they spend awake. There can be no higher calling than the transition of society’s norms to match their beliefs. What is wonderful is how accepting these leftists can be when you talk their talk and walk their walk. They have their definition of a wonderful new age where everybody is completely equal. There will be no difference in treatment between men and women because gender, sexual is a word which they have deemed offensive so we cannot use such here, identity at birth is irrelevant to them as they can find one male and one female who are equal at any task. Power lifting, take the women’s world heavyweight record holder and some man who has never pressed weights in his life and has a figure so slight that he hardly seems to have muscles at all, the woman can out lift him so proof positive. Running, they can find a woman who is faster than some man. Whatever you can find and there is some pairing of a particular woman and a particular man where the woman is equal or superior. Tennis has already been established, as women are superior after Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs. Let us look at some of the results of these policies.

 

This was sufficient proof of equality to permit women into combat units. Never mind that some of the enemies they may face believe that women captured on a battlefield are to be used for the pleasuring the capturing troops as their reward for such a prize. These enemies know that their brutalizing of their enemies’ women is a particular insult which is why they will use captured women in propaganda which proves their superiority over the enemy which is incapable of protecting their delicate flowers, their women. Many of the developed world, where these leftists run unchecked, are incapable of understanding that there are those in the world whose societies differ greatly from the developed world. These societies are less advanced and less sophisticated in their moral principles holding on to mores discarded by the developed world anywhere from a century to millennia ago. Acts which they believe to be normal practice and acceptable as a means of proving their superiority using their beliefs that men are superior to women and because of this superiority then a brave and strong man would protect a woman at all costs and capturing and debasing an enemies women was a measure of dominance.

 

Many soldiers in the developed world’s armies know this and, because of their knowledge, they will go to extremes to prevent any woman in their charge from being taken by the enemy, even at the cost of their own lives. Despite evidence presented proving this danger would be real, the leftists demanded that women be permitted to serve in combat units. But this posed an additional problem; the women who desired to serve in the combat units were largely incapable of meeting the physical requirements. The leftists were there with the solution, a lesser degree of physical ability with tests adjusted for, wait for it, gender be used where women only be required to perform at approximately three-quarters that of their male counterparts. Other than the different physical requirements, men and women are completely equally capable of performing the necessary requirements for combat arms units.

 

Some Marines were once asked what misgivings they had with women serving in combat units and universally they had two main problem areas. The first was the insensitive treatment, the outright vile treatment they would receive if captured which would place their unit in jeopardy as this would require their being overly protective of any woman or women in their unit even to the point that some said they might consider shooting their female compatriots rather than allow them be captured. These interviews disappeared from records within weeks of their being reported. Their other complaint was they really would prefer that another male Marine be expected to carry them from the field of battle when injured as the women would likely struggle carrying a two-hundred-fifty pound Marine who was a full foot taller than the female soldier. This had been a proven problem in training to the point that the women were only required to carry another woman in such exercises and if no woman was present, then the slightest and shortest male soldier would be their victim to carry.

 

But this demands that all inequalities be ignored because if you ignore differences and compensate for them making that the norm, then differences really no longer exist. Simply pretend that there is no difference and then no difference is noted. That makes all differences simply vanish as they have been deleted from reality. This has been carried over to marriage such that the gender of the people being joined in marriage no longer matter. Marriage can be between a man and a woman, but where is the fun in that. Marriage can also be between a man and a man or a woman and another woman, viva the lack of difference. Now there is another new rule for society, everyone must treat same gender partners in a marriage exactly the same as they would a traditional married couple. There must be no differentiating or else. So, if you are a baker, one of about fifty in a city, and you are known to be a religious person, a very religious person, then there will at some point be a same gender couple who will seek out your bakery demanding that you make their wedding cake. Should you refuse, then you are in for a heap load of trouble. You will be sued and driven out of business rather than simply finding another baker who would accept your business and happily bake your cake. You see, it is a matter of principle that everybody must accept your choice in marriage and those who refuse on religious grounds, especially on religious grounds, must be driven from the public square.

 

Even in the workplace, if there is a person where one member of a same gender couple is employed, then there is a dynamic which at some point is almost guaranteed to erupt with the slightest provocation, even unintentional provocations. The horrible side to this is that no provocation is actually required, just the individual believing there had been a provocation. What is really unique about same gender marriage currently in society is that it is the particular area of greatest sensitivity. Should the member of a same gender marriage feel they have had their special relations insulted and bring charges that they have been slighted over their relations, then the accused is guilty. The accusation in and of itself is sufficient proof of commission of the crime and the accused is basically finished and will forever carry the stigma of being an insensitive boor to be scorned by all. This is further guaranteed by those who will be charged with doing the investigation. The EEOC officer likely has their degree in gender studies or other equally prestigious area of social studies. They are trained to be capable of feeling the slightest tremor or disturbance in the polite requirements of their highly sensitized abilities. Many of them are over-zealous just chomping at the bit to find some inequality to level, some wrong to right, some offended person to defend, some reason to champion a cause and make a difference. Never mind that often that difference has a person who becomes the victim, but these victims deserve being victimized, as they fell on the wrong side of the new social constructs. Wait until you hear of some who choose to be gender free.

 

Things were so very different back at the front end of the new age when equality actually meant accepting one another for the person we were and trying not to be judgmental. This was during that long ago age of flower power and being groovy and dropping in or dropping out which often could mean the same thing. Back then there was a revolution in society where the past was to simply be left in the dust, the dustbin of history and a whole new world was going to be replacing the old where people were judged by their character, ability, and quality of their performance, their work and differences were to be respected. People were to be permitted their differences and if one felt uncomfortable with your lifestyle, then as long as they were polite and treated you with respect, then you were to respect their beliefs and not demand they approve of you just as they were not to expect you to reform to their beliefs. It was all about respecting differences and everyone living their life by their rules and allowing others to do the same. Life has changed and the world is now about forcing everyone to believe the true and enlightened path of leftist dogma. We went from no such thing as a set dogma and everybody was allowed to make their own rules for their life and nobody’s rules were any better, more respectable or more correct than anyone else’s rules and that was that to strict dogma demanding complete compliance dictated by the extreme left. Now you must be in with same gender marriage, open relationships and every last iota of the leftist menagerie of whatever is their latest decision modern society must now embrace. It is difficult to keep up with some of the changes society has taken and the speed of these constant demands which come at us from every corner.

 

Many people, far more than the leftists are willing to accept, are growing tired of their holier than thou preaching about how everyone is supposed to think and what we are to cherish and what is acceptable and what is not. Despite the overwhelming social media offensive which claims the President Trump was placed into the Oval Office by no less than the devil himself, or was a Russian President Putin, and is there a difference as social media says there is no diff, but the people who voted for Trump were not all people who actually thought he was the most wonderful choice possible, but they definitely knew he was not going to be another leftist, and that was all that mattered. There are a number of Republicans who have misjudged the anger running through the American electorate and others who have seen it for what it is and decided to retire and let somebody the people can believe in to hopefully replace them. Now for the interesting thing which deserves its own paragraph.

 

The Democrat Party will survive their plunge into the farthest left swimming pool they could find and then swimming to the left end of the pool. They truly believe in what they are representing, and good for them. They will pay the price for their plunge to extremism and will recover and return to just being the excessively liberal party. The Republican Party is a completely different matter. Should their mainstream old school leadership insist on trying to play Democrat lite, then the party will die, as it should. They have a choice that they need to make, either change their leadership and actually stand for something or become irrelevant. Donald Trump is just a symptom of a very disgruntled portion of American society who is sick and tired with being ignored by both parties. They are going to either be given control of the Republican Party or they will declare a new party and the Republicans will go the way of the Whig Party, the party they replaced when the Whigs refused to take a strong stand on slavery. There is no singular item which will spell the end of the Republican Party but the lack of ability to repeal Obamacare, their inability to address and pass meaningful tax reform, their inability to address illegal immigration, their inability to deliver all the items they had promised if only they were given the White House and both houses of Congress, they did not demand a supermajority, which the people granted them, their inability to put the brakes on John McCain and impress vote control of their party members as the Democrat Party does as simple as for the asking, their inability to be honest with their supporters is what will bring them to an end. There are a great number of people who are very angry and their distress is not going to wane, their determination will not be denied, and their fervor will spread as more people wake to the fact that the United States is in distress and unless things are turned around and changes, basic and desperate changes, are made and made immediately, within the Trump four years, then all will be lost.

 

 

United States debt went from five-trillion dollars in 2000 to twenty-trillion dollars by the end of 2017, which is quadrupled. George W. Bush doubled it in his eight years; and, just not to be outdone, Barack Obama redoubled the debt in his eight years. There is a President which should be emulated for his absolute intolerance of the United States being a debtor nation. He did not settle for simply balancing the budget with accounting gimmicks or actually balancing it for a year or two or showing a small surplus which would evaporate all but immediately. This President paid off the entire debt and on January 8, 1835, at a gathering of the so-called important people in Washington, it was announced that President Andrew Jackson had fulfilled his campaign promise and the entire national debt was paid in full. His methods may have been somewhat dubious but his desired aim was admirable. To get the current debt is not something which could be vanquished by any single President and will take the full attention and efforts of an extensive number of administrations but is something the people are going to demand Washington change as their economy starts to be affected as the debt causes financial ruin and threatens to destroy the United States. Have you ever wonder why savings accounts earn almost no interest? The debt is the answer. The interest rates are being kept artificially low so the debt will not destroy the United States. Should the interest rates rise, then the payment on the interest would accordingly rise. Currently the United States has barely managed to keep up with the payments at their current level. Double the interest rate to close to five percent and the interest payments would double. Redouble them to around nine percent, about half of where they were under President Jimmy Carter, and the interest payment would take over almost half or more of the Federal budget at current levels and force the United States to cut funding for programs and halve the military. Should they rise beyond that, well, let us hope that never becomes the new reality. The time has come in the United States to make balanced budgets and paying off principle and not merely the interest of the debt a primary concern. When a political party and politicians start speaking about this, we will know that just possibly the United States may be starting to heal itself because it is currently quite ill and has a disease which causes it to bleed the people’s financial future.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

October Could Result as a Teaching Month for America

This month of October may end up teaching both Americans and anybody who wishes to pay attention some lessons in what has gone wrong with the United States Federal Government. These lessons could potentially be far more fright inducing than even the scariest Halloween costume and may have consequences far worse than even the nastiest prank gone bad. The lesson plan looks something like this; first lesson is the not so smooth rollout of Obama Care today, second lesson will be the shut-down of all nonessential government functions and the final lesson later this month could be what happens when the government runs completely out of borrowed monies as that is basically what the United States runs the government on, borrowed money. So, what are we to take from each of these examples of how not to run a business, organization or even a government?

 

The rollout of Obama Care today was supposed to feature health exchanges where people could go and find affordable, government approved health insurance. Anybody attempting to get in early and avoid the potential long lines as the deadline for having insurance approaches at the beginning of the new year, the very beginning as in right after the ball drops in Times Square or whichever time zone one resides, are going to probably be unhappy as at least thirty-five states have claimed they will not be ready on October 1 to issue health insurance through the exchange system and the majority claim it will be mid to late November before they will be even close to prepared to be up and limping. The Federal Government also is saying they will not quite be ready either and will also require at least six weeks before their system can be put to the test. The more that everybody looks at the difficulties the many separate appendages of the layers of government are having in getting even the basics out and ready in order to facilitate the start of Obama Care, perhaps the idea floated by some Republicans in Congress of simply postponing everything to do with Obama Care for one year, you know, just like all those businesses, unions, and others who were given one year waivers, so that then everybody will be on the same page instead of pushing a half-baked program on the people while allowing the President and Congress to play favorites with waivers and exemptions. I do believe that somewhere in the Amendments to the Constitution there is this cute little idea of equal protection and application of the law; I believe it is in the Fourteenth Amendment. One thing for sure, we can also gain a lesson on how the connected, powerful, wealthy and privileged classes are all dancing their way around being constrained by Obama Care while the ordinary Joe like most of us are being subjected to the whims of an untried system and we are going to be the guinea pigs who get to suffer the bumps, bruises and every trail first run error that this system that has been patched together on the fly just to even get it out over a month late. Does anybody really believe that the government will have even the slightest idea what they are doing by Christmas? I did not think so.

 

The second lesson could follow right on the heels of the rolling fiasco releasing Obama Care before its fully ready and functioning which would be a government shutdown due to the lack of funding set aside to run the Federal Government. The whole idea that we have been running the Federal Government of the United States on continuing spending bills is absolutely ludicrous and embarrassing in that our Federal representatives along with the President have been unable to agree on a budget to fund the Federal Government.  Producing an annual budget is presumably the first item of business the Congress is supposed to accomplish before they tackle anything else. The problem is partisan bickering or at least that has been the excuse for no budget being passed since the 2010 elections. The reason the excuse is not used for the two previous budgets not being agreed to and forcing continuing resolution be the manner for funding the government before then is simply because during the first two years of no budget both houses of Congress were so overwhelmingly Democrat that President Obama had a filibuster proof echo chamber for a Congress made up of members of his own party to an extent most Presidents could only dream about. Even with such a majority in both houses, the President and the Congress still were unable to produce a single budget. Truth is there has not been a budget passed since President Obama was sworn into office. There have been numerous theories and excuses pushed to try and explain why no budget has been passed during the Obama Presidency with the overt partisanship having become the number one excuse despite the inconvenient fact that even with an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress supporting President Obama there was no agreement and thus no budget. I have my own pet reason for there not being a budget and it even works for those first two years when there really was no other excuse not to have submitted and passed a formal budget. As long as there is no annual budget there can be no evaluations as to what the level of spending is related to other years by comparing the budgets. Furthermore, by using continuing resolution the spending for separate items can be passed separately and there can be numerous schedules such that there is no easily discerned way to total government expenditures for each year. One can also hide larger than normal increases in those areas and departments while using the lack of straightforwardness to deny increases or even make actual cuts to those areas where the President and his allies are inclined to do so. An example would be if you wished to increase a particular program’s spending allowance in the budget more than the usual say ten percent, all one need do is schedule it for receiving its funding monthly by continuing resolution and each month increase the spending by what at first appears to be the same ten percent but just as compound interest boosts your savings account and compound interest adds significantly to your mortgage total payment, it also greatly increases the budget well past the ten percent that you are claiming to use. Simply put, continuing resolutions as the method for approving government spending allows for far greater amounts of spending than would otherwise be budgeted if an annual budget were debated and enacted.

 

Should the Federal Government actually shutdown we would be treated to a lesson many of us should have already learned long ago, namely how little such a shutdown affects our daily lives. The Republicans are worried that they will get the blame for any government shutdown and they are therefore very likely to not find their spines and fold to whatever the President and the Democrat leadership demand just to avoid a partial shutdown. Partial, that is the word that everybody needs to put the emphasis on, not shutdown. If the Republicans were at all savvy they could utilize such a shutdown as a public learning experience in much the same way as the sequester turned out. President Obama spent weeks upon weeks warning how the sequester cuts would bring life as we know it to a standstill. He predicted near collisions due to no air traffic controllers, potential disasters from lack of health and other inspectors and the one item he got almost correct, long waits at airports for the TSA inspections. The thing was the lines at the airports were not any longer than normal but by simply having news crews and their cameras at some of the busiest airports during the busiest part of the day and the supervisor being instructed to send a number of his people on break at that time, instant photo-op of the sequester making life impossible. A government shutdown which only places what are deemed unessential personnel on leave, with pay if things are as they have been in past shutdowns as we cannot have these poor unfortunates go without their paychecks just because they are not working as it is not their fault their job is considered unessential, thus all essential services continue unfettered and hopefully smoothly. The Social Security checks, Food Stamps vouchers cards, Welfare payments, Air Traffic Controllers, FBI, CIA, IRS, BATFE and other enforcement personnel and all military personnel will remain at their posts doing their jobs. There is an inconvenience one might face, that would be the Federal Parks being closed, but the State Parks would still be operating as usual for an alternative. While I am aware that some of the Federal Government workers who fall under the classification of nonessential actually provide valuable services or are performing research and other tasks which are quite necessary; still, it does get one to thinking as to whether or not all of the nonessential Federal Government employees are really needed or could we actually do without some percentage and not notice any real difference? When one reads those articles which appear every so often which list some of the inane, insane, and utterly absurd items the Federal Government has either purchased or is researching and you just know that whoever approved these items we would have been better served had that unessential employee been dismissed before that fateful decision on how to waste our tax dollars. In all honesty, could we possibly get by without hiring any more unessential Federal Government employees for say five years and then just cut those positions that went vacant through attrition and start from there?

 

The final lesson coming in October is actually the culmination of our budgetary woes. Once again we have hit the debt ceiling which means that there is simply no money, in theory, to continue government. This problem has grown to the point where it has become a dangerous threat to the future and well-being of the United States. Up until approximately four years ago when the Federal Government reached the debt ceiling the Congress, usually at the behest of the President, had raised the debt ceiling and then the United States borrowed cash by selling bonds to foreign governments, most often this meant China. China reached their tipping point where should they buy additional United States bonds they risked those purchases having a negative effect on their economy. As China was the buyer of last resort for any large issuance of United States bonds, this caused difficulty in marketing additional bond releases. This resulted in a new and riskier arrangement where the Federal Reserve purchased the bonds. This becomes a problem for a myriad of reasons, many are very complicated and difficult to explain. Thomas Sowell has written a number of articles which explain some of these difficulties and is able to explain them such that they are understandable, or at least more so than most textbooks’ explanations. The first problem is the makeup of the Federal Reserve. Despite the inference in their name, the Federal Reserve is not an arm of the government. The Federal Reserve is a board made up of leading international bankers or at least board members and significant people of holdings in the world’s major banks. When they buy the United States Treasury Bonds, they are using the money which they hold which was supplied by the United States Treasury. This results in basically the Treasury printing money that this cabal of the world’s leading bankers and money manipulators then utilize to buy the Treasury Bonds thus returning the money to the Treasury who now place that money into the supply for the banks and markets as well as financing the Federal Government. This is often simply referred to as monetizing one’s debt which has always led eventually to, at best, simple inflation, and at worst, hyper-inflation such as what destroyed the Weimar Republic and has ruined other national economies throughout history including Rome. The other side of the coin is that if the debt ceiling is not raised, then it is possible that the United States would default on our interest payment on the debt. Contrary to what many believe, the only payments that have been made on the United States national debt have been payments to cover only the interest, the principle continues to grow ever larger and has not been paid down since before World War II. Should the United States default on their interest payments on the national debt, the credit rating would instantly drop below anything imaginable and the United States would be facing demands of payment on the principle, the actual debt which we back with our natural resources. The ensuing chaos and destruction would inevitably lead to only one thing, a war where the United States stood alone against the rest of the world, or at least those nations to whom we owe gold, money, or whatever. There would be no full faith and credit of the United States and the dollar would become worthless on the international exchanges. The full ramifications of such an event are unthinkable which is why there is absolutely no possibility that the fight to raise the debt ceiling will go any further than just before the next debt payment comes due. October should be a good month for those journalists who have their degrees in economics. I know I for one will be following Thomas Sowell very closely.

 

Beyond the Cusp