Let's Stop Screwing Around and Call it what it Is...Robbery

The United Kingdom, not apparently happy enough to collect taxes from employers, is now proposing that employee checks be handed directly over to the government, who would then subtract the amount of tax that they deem owed. The government would then pay the employee through a bank transfer. So, essentially, your paycheck in the UK isn't your paycheck until the government says so. What happens with a glitch in the system? A massive bureaucracy always has gross waste and mistakes. Take Social Security, which likes to waste huge amounts of money paying dead people despite having received notice of their demise. I can easily envision thousands going unpaid for weeks as the government tries to figure out what happened to their checks.

Not to mention, in the end, government gets theirs first, you get yours when their done with the money. It's like all those movies where they steal the payroll truck delivering the money to the bank. Robbery.

Another Reason to Vote for Republicans in November 2010

The official White House blog is proposing that a Republican majority in the House of Representatives could result in a shutdown of government similar to what occurred in 1995. Um...sounds good to me. I can't think of anything the government has done well of late, or for that matter anything they have done which represented the will of the people, is remotely constitutional, or in some cases, legal under federal law. The only drawback to a shutdown of the government is that the Congress wouldn't have the opportunity to repeal the moronic health care law and other legislative and executive power grabs made by the Democrats. Thanks, President Obama, for giving us another reason to vote for Republicans on November 2, 2010.

Hypocrisy Abounds

Let me start off by saying that the protester of the Ground Zero mosque and community center proposal, the Westboro Baptist Church (which already tastelessly appears at the funerals of fallen soldiers saying they died because there are gays in the military), the Tennessee preacher, and the Florida preacher who is waffling on whether or not to burn Qurans and started all these demonstrations have more in common with radical Muslims than they do with rational people. However, I'll also say that the Afghan Muslims who are so enraged by these acts are hypocrites themselves. I don't remember them protesting when the Taliban was destroying Buddhist imagery and temples in 2001. Or when Muslims were burning bibles and destroying crosses in Gaza. Islam has a long history of not only intolerance but violence towards the iconography and the people of other religions. That's nothing that anyone needs to be imitating, especially not Christians and Americans.

Can it Be?

A group of Republicans adhering to the idea of tradiotional conservatism is repudiating the old heirarchy and the gross spending of the Bush administration. Can these people truly give the Republic back to the people, or is this just a game to garner votes from the tea party people? I think that this country is on the verge of a rebirth and the only thing that can stop it are those that would hijack the ideals for their own synical purposes. Case in point, as I was writing this I got an email from the local tea party advising about robocalls from the "Tea Party of Louisiana" endorsing a particular candidate. There is no true Tea Party of Louisiana just as there is no true national tea party. Also, the Michigan state Supreme Court recently rejected the appeal of a group seeking to put the tea party on the voting ballot. The group appears to have been formed by Democrats seeking to draw votes away from conservative candidates. We cannot be free and be liars at the same time.

Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

The verdict is in on President Obama's "Summer of Recovery" and the patient doesn't look so well. Unemployment has reached 9.6%. The United States' economy lost 283,000 jobs during the summer months. While the President extolled the private sector job gain of late, he forgot to note the 54,000 jobs lost net this month. And, not to worry boys and girls, it's just 120 more days until the biggest tax raise in history. I'm not saying the sky is falling or anything, but I recommend a hardhat.

You'd Think Someone Had Seen This Coming...Oh, Yeah

As fears of increased health care costs under Obamacare approach, employers are shifting more and more of the costs of health insurance plans onto their workers. It's almost as if the world were ruled by logic rather than the magic Obamanomics.

Same Song, Second Verse

Climategate wasn't enough, now independent reveiw panels are giving voice to similar criticism of the IPCC findings that were evident in the e-mails. I wouldn't mind the debate so much if people weren't trying to cram the policy down my throat.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Stephen Hawking has apparently declared that God is not necessary for the creation of the universe. Why a physicist with an atheist opinion is major news is a bit beyond me. Apparently the idea is that the law of gravity practically necessitates the creation of multiple universes. Call me a contrarian, but I kind of thought God made the laws that govern the universe. I won't pretend that I can argue intelligently that Mr. Hawking is incorrect on his level, but it strikes me that he's ignoring a fundamental idea in that at some point there would have to have been a first particle to have gravity.

Too Funny