I don’t live in Wisconsin and can’t speak to the specific details of said budget, although in general I think all governments are too large and need deep financial cuts that will of course upset public workers. But this predisposition to think that the democratic arguments about the budget are wrong creates an interesting dynamic for me: I applaud the Republican senators and governor for paring back the size and entitlement dispositions of government, while I simultaneously applaud the Democratic senators for standing for what they believe in by depriving the senate of a quorum of senators.

It is situations like these that make me proud to be an American and a small part of this great (and sometimes insanely bizarre) system. Kudo’s to both parties in Wisconsin! May Freedom (and Liberty) Ring!

-The Broken Blogger

-Z

I know presidents in the past have done the same thing (or its equivalent) to make it look like they are “doing something” about fuel prices. But my problem with it is a tiny little sentence at the bottom of the Bill of Rights: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

So then here is my question: What part of the constitution delegates the authority of the United States Government to meddle with the free market by determining a price is “too high”? I agree with most, that I would like to spend less on gas for my car, but since when is anything like that a federal matter? I would like to pay less for my mortgage too but is the federal government going to force housing manufacturers to create more houses to lessen demand and thereby drop prices so that I can buy a cheap house?

I am including a small bullet point list of items I think the federal government has no business being in (based on the constitution’s restriction of federal government).

• Social security
• Medicare
• (or medi-anything for that matter. Federal health insurance? I think that is somewhere in our 4th amendment rights)
• Education
• Welfare
• Federal ID cards
• Age of citizens to do certain things (other then vote)
• Drinking alcohol
• Driving age
• Subsidation (sp?) of farmers or anyone else

I am sure I will add to this list as my brain leaves the fog of me being sick behind.

-Z

Tolerance: There is a word (or rather some of its derivatives) that I have heard spoken (and in my opinion misused) quite often; generally in the social arena, and generally by those of the left leaning political spectrum. I don’t mean to bash the left or its goals or ideals, I just have an issue with hypocritical statements and ways of thinking.

Just so I don’t offend any particular group (like I really care if I offend you) let me first state that every group, organization, community, sect, cult, government, etc. etc. etc. is guilty of some kind of hypocritical jargon. Since at the core of those and every organization are human beings, and I think we can all agree that in the grand scheme of things, humans have a hard time seeing other points of view, the “big picture”, and admitting that they could be wrong on certain topics. So we see hypocrites in Church, Hypocrites in government, hypocrites in the news, hypocrites at our grocery store or at work.

But the core of my “rant” is this: It seems like a rather large “chink” in the left’s political armor to label others as intolerant or judgmental. Why? For the very reasons I detailed above. The left is not immune from judgmental thoughts and processes. They just pretend like they are. And that is a hypocritical stance. For example, a common lament for those who don’t go to church is that they have tried it, and hated that the church was filled with judgmental intolerant people. Hello!! Of course it is, the church has humans in it doesn’t it? What did you expect, heaven on earth? I don’t see that excuse stopping you from going to bars, work, grocery stores, social gatherings, etc. All those places too are filled with intolerant judgmental people. Secondly, how judgmental is it of you to then label the vast majority of church goers in one fell swoop? How “intolerant” does that make you?

And that to me is the weakness with the left’s pursuit of social justice. The left has to judge those it deems judgmental, thereby becoming what they would rid the world of.

In addition to that chink in their armor, I find their “hijacking” of the word intolerant to be amusing. It amuses me to the point of frustrated hilarity because they are using it in situations where the definition would not apply. In short, they don’t know what they are talking about. Again, (I suppose) an example is in order… Gays and “gay rights” is a major tenant of the left’s social justice ideals. And those that do not agree with their philosophies are labeled “intolerant” and ignorant. But the left doesn’t seem to know what the definition of tolerance is, and is therefore hard pressed to use its antonym accurately. “Tolerate: To put up with something or somebody unpleasant.” You cannot “tolerate” that which does not bother you. You do not “tolerate” the fact that you have a good paying job. You don’t “tolerate” having a million dollars in the bank. You don’t “tolerate” a fun evening out with your friends or your spouse. You have to not agree with it or be bothered by it to “tolerate” it. Therefore when the left calls a pastor who is speaking out about a gay lifestyle “intolerant”, they have to assume that because he does not agree with the gay lifestyle and its ramifications, that he himself discriminates against gays at every opportunity. By making that assumption the left has just pre-judged the pastor and become judgmental and intolerant of those speaking their minds.

Conversely, the left is not a tolerant political or social harbor. It is filled with humans just like the right side is. They do not “tolerate” the gay lifestyle, thereby getting to claim that they are tolerant. The gay life style does not bother them, therefore it is impossible for them (by definition of the word) to be tolerant of gays.

At the root of all of this is the problem with politically correct behavior or the attempt to enforce it. In order to setup “rules” of correct behavior or thought, you have to define bad behavior and thought; in doing so you take on the role of a judge, and must become judgmental in order to enforce those social moorings that you are attempting to create. Now I believe that humans (under certain circumstances) should be judgmental. We should prejudge at certain times. But that is not the claim of the left. They claim that we should never prejudge or become judgmental. In doing so they became hypocrites (just like everybody else).

-Z

Rhiannon’s friend sent her an email advocating abortion. I then drafted my own response to his silly argument. The first part is his email, followed by my argument back.

***************

THATS ME! IM THE ONE WHO THINKS WE SHOULD KILL UNBORN KIDS TO REGULATE THE POPULATION! GOOOOO ABORTION!

Oddly enough, Im Right. Do the Math. 1.37 Million Abortions a Year multiplied by 9.75 k(The average income a year for a single individual on welfare) ($13,357,500,000), now deduct a 10% from that sum(Just incase 10% of them become productive members of society and dont end up ROBBING ME FOR FINANCIAL STABILITY) new sum is ($12,239,750,000). Now let me spell that out for everyone Twelve Billion Two Hundred & Thrity Nine Million Seven Hundred & Fifty Thousand Dollars…..And were not done yet. Lets span that over a Generation. We take that number & multiply it by twenty to represent the Average Length of Dependancy one “endures” his life on welfare. New Number…$244,795,000,000!!

Things that the approiations committee allocate $244,795,000,000 or less on a year.

1. Military Personnel(97 billion Dollars). No Money, No War.
2. Hurricane Disaster Relief(29 Billion Dollars). We’ll just go ahead and leave those places in Ruins.
3. Anti-Drug Youth Program(120 Million). Drugs are good for the economy, this can go.
4. Our entire Education Budget(142.514 Billion Dollars). So that we all can live a bit more like Texans! Yeehaw!
5. Our entire amount allocated for Agricutlure subsidies(16.8 Billion) So much for veggies….or eating for that matter.
6. ….well you can see where this is going….If you ban abortion, not only is there a problem with overpopulation there is also an economic collapse that will occur afterwards. Pick your poison,

ABORTION vs STARVATION?

Source on Approriations Committee( http://appropriations.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=490&Month=6&Year=2005 )

Source on Abortion numbers( http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm )

Source On WelFare Statistics( http://www.census.gov

Rhiannon…nothing personal beautiful, but you need to read it in full & realize that its not a choice. If it were a choice we wouldnt have abortions and the world would be pretty with flowers and rainbows. Please read the numbers and figure out a solution to abolition abortion. If you can do it, than I will go with you all the way to congress with it and we will fight and kick ass and get rid of abortion….but it cant go, or we are all poor and starve to death. I gave you the numbers, they are the only thing in this world that dont lie.

You have to be rational in politics or you end up fucking the whole world up. Its called Machiavellian, “The ends will always justify the means”. Not always good, but its just the way things work beautiful. Thats why they call Politics “The Dark Art” because we dont get to see the rainbows and flowers you guys do.

***************

Now time for my response:

Numbers only lie when they are used by someone who can’t do math or think logically. Let’s REALLY look at these numbers and what they mean:

If only 10% of your aborted children become productive members of society (a number that is way too low, but this is your “numbers don’t lie” argument so I will use it) Then that equals .137 million productive members added every year. The average American makes $28,626.52 a year and is taxed federally for about 21.5% of it.

137,000	= Productive People
X $28,626	= Annual Wage
—————
$3,921,762,000	= Total Annual Wages
X .215	= 21.5% in federal Taxes
—————
$843,178,830	= The amount of money added ANNUALLY because these people are alive

When you subtracted out the 10% from $13,357,500,000 you came up with $12,239,750,000. But that number is incorrect. The actual number is $12,021,750,000.

You then went on to explain that the average amount of time spent on welfare was 20 years (another trumped up number). So you multiplied your incorrect number by 20 to get $244,795,000,000. The real number would have been 240,435,000,000. (I am not through with my argument and I have already saved you 4 billion dollars!)

Now the average productive person is productive for 40 years assuming that working ages starts at 20 and ends at 60. So the money added to the federal coffers after 40 Years of letting one year worth of abortions live is:

$843,178,830	= Anually added amount of money
X 40	= Productive Years
—————
$33,727,153,200	= that money over 40 years

Let’s “tuck” that number away for now and look at something else you pointed out. You said the average time spent on welfare was 20 years, which means if these people retire at 60 like our last group did, they are still working for 20 years of their 40 “working life”. Now, lets assume that even when they are working that they aren’t making as much as the average American. Let’s just suppose that they make half as much. We will also assume that their taxes are half the tax rate. That leaves us with…

1,233,000	= Productive people (this is the 90% on welfare for those 20 years)
X 14,313	= Annual wage (28,626 / 2)
—————
$17,647,929,000	= Total Annual Wages
X .10	= Less then half the taxes everyone else pays
—————
$1,764,792,900	= The amount of money added ANNUALLY from these slackers
X 20	= Productive Years
—————
$35,295,858,000	= Total amount of letting the slackers from abortions live to 60
+33,727,153,200	= From the first group of non-slackers
—————
$69,023,011,200	= Total added to the federal coffers from all abortion “would-bes”
-$240,435,000,000	= The number you assumed we were losing after 20 years
============
$171,411,988,800	= The number you should have said it cost everyone (assuming your variables anyway)

Now here is another problem with your “numbers never lie” argument: Numbers lie if you don’t compare “apples to apples”. You talked about some 244 Billion dollar number (a 20 year figure) and compared it to 1 year figures from the federal government. What you should have done was divide your number by 20 (or not multiplied it to begin with) to get an ACCURATE portrayal of their cost compared to things like the military budget.

So lets do that!

$171,411,988,800	= Drain on the federal reserves after all the data is in
/ 20	= Number of years these leaches sucked us dry
—————
$8,570,599,440	= Annual amount of bloodsucking going on

Wow, that is a big number… I sure can’t afford that… But then, these numbers just don’t look right unless you have something to compare it to. Let’s pretend that the five things you gave as examples of federal spending was the TOTAL federal budget. We know this to be much higher of course, but really, the less the total is, the better it will serve your argument, so I will use low numbers to make you feel better.

97,000,000,000	= Military spending
+ 29,000,000,000	= Hurricane relief (since they cost $$ why not just let them die?)
+ 120,000,000	= Youth Anti-drug program
+ 142,500,000,000	= Education budget
+ 16,800,000,000	= Agg Subs
—————
$285,420,000,000	= Total Federal Budget (yeah right that’s what it is)
/ 8,570,599,440	= That bloodsucking number
—————
33.3022

That means that if we added the 8.5 billion into the budgets it is only a 3% increase. In order to cover the spread the average Americans tax rate would increase from 21.5% to 22.145%. A difference of .645 percent. That equates to $184.6377 extra per tax paying person per year.

Interesting… now that we are FINALLY comparing apples to apples, your doomsday prophecy seems less doomsday-ish.

Without talking about how completely inaccurate your actual statistics are, I have the following “talking points” about your gripe:

• You complain that $184.63 extra out of the average American’s paycheck is “ROBBING ME FOR FINANCIAL STABILITY”, but don’t make mention that the hurricane relief is over 3 times that amount! I would think you would be yelling about the over $553.91 you had to pay to those idiots who continue to live in an area that has hurricanes. Why not advocate their death instead?
• You complain that $184.63 every year is too much for you to pay for your share of giving life to 1.37 million Americans every year. Hmmm I would pay that just to save one life. It makes me wonder just how callous, insensitive, greedy, and short-sighted you are.
• You say that this is a “choice” of us versus them. That if we don’t kill them we will starve. That this is a decision forced on you by hunger. Are you trying to tell me that $184.63 less a year is going to cause you to starve?
• You brought up having to be “rational” in arguing. I think I have presented a very rational argument that used your (false) numbers. Sure, I injected some sarcasm here and there, but I find your whole “ahhhh! We are going to starve without abortions!” a completely irrational argument.

Now let’s compare this to the REAL federal budget of 2.5 trillion dollars.

$2,500,000,000,000	= Federal budget for real
/ 8,570,599,440	= That bloodsucking number
—————
291.6948	or 0.003428239776 percent increase.

That breaks down to a 21.50073707155184 percent tax rate; an increase in 0.00073707155184 percent or $21.10 per year.

Damn those leeches!! We should fry them all. If I can’t have my $21 extra dollars this year I’ll starve! It’s us or them! Let’s go to war and eradicate them!

Give me a break. Come up with a better argument next time.

-Z