Recently in General Category

“… with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens—a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits or industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

— Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, 1801

If you ran a business and the walls figuratively came crashing down around you like they have in the United States economy the last few months, what would you do?

You could just call it quits and walk away.

You could make calls into every person you know and beg them for help and support.

There are many directions you could go, but there is one thing I can't imagine anyone would do: try to go on living like nothing has happened.

The problems in our financial markets and talk within the ranks of legislative and executive leadership of propping up failed institutions have brought to light another very glaring miscalculation: The U.S. government is already in a terrible amount of debt. These are all signs of the seriousness of the situation we are in. These signs suggest a calculated, careful, well thought-out response.

More importantly, these signs demand that we, as a people, forget political loyalties, forget the frivolity of our lifestyles, forget luxury and conveniences, and forget about the thoughts of others.

We must concentrate on one thing: Getting through this together in one piece. That means making serious sacrifices and planning for the future.

Why, during all that is going on, do I see that the U.S. Mint has announced a forthcoming set of commemorative pennies to celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200^th birthday?

It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but this is a perfect example of how government is just going on doing what it has always done when it should be doing much, much less.

The U.S. Mint operations should probably scale back to one standard set of coin and paper currency. The U.S. Postal Service could probably minimize postal options. The U.S. Department of Transportation could make a quick decision of which construction projects currently underway can be suspended immediately, which projects can be brought to a point at which they can be suspended, and how costs can be minimized on other projects.

Everything our government does needs to be assessed and evaluated for fat that can be trimmed so that only essential services are provided. programs will need to be scrapped, shut down, or scaled back. To help those in need who have traditionally relied on government services or assistance, groups outside the government will need to step forward and help.

The failed businesses have failed. Propping them up will cost more money. Figuring out why they failed will cost more money. Reorganizing them, placing them in a conservatorship will all cost more money. Money... money we don't have and can't afford to keep borrowing.

Can we set an example, as a country, for what should be done?

I hope so.

I’ve got to run up to the state capitol building in a few minutes to do a followup visit with a Guru Labs client there. I thought I’d jot a few things before I take off.

Election elation

I am very happy with how things have turned out in the national presidential race. I’m happy with this result for several reasons. First of all, George W. Bush is a better leader than John Kerry. To be honest, I’m not sure what Kerry is good for. Maybe he and John Edwards can become professional scam artists or something.

Secondly, the country didn’t cave under pressure from Usama Bin Laden. The latest videotape from UBL on Friday made threats against people living in states that voted for Bush — “red states.” Not only did Bush take all the states he took in 2000, but a handful of others as well.

So, is Al Qaida going to come nuke my hometown? I doubt it. They’ve taken quite a beating. If they do manage to get through and do something on our soil, it will be a shortlived venture.

So... bring it on. We can take it.

Voter turnout was amazing.

How about ole Michael Moore? In his last online pre-election blathering, he stood virtually side-by-side with Usama Bin Laden and called Bush a failure. He proclaimed Kerry the winner by a landslide. To republicans and conservatives he wrote:

Yesterday’s election would show a different kind of knowledge on the part of conservatives and republicans — the knowledge that Michael Moore is full of SH*T!

Come on, stupid-ass. You can’t win by going around the country giving people underwear and ramen noodles. You do it by reminding people why this country is the greatest country on Earth and what they can do to contribute to its greatness. You do it by inspiring people to be their best, not to encourage them to participate in low-spirited, malicious, possibly illegal attacks on people they don’t agree with or understand.

What now?

More people need to understand why Bush’s economic policies are working and why they will work in the long-term. People need to understand and believe in the direction we are going in the middle east. We need to propogate the release of stories of the good stuff we’re doing there. We need the people of Iraq to be our heroes because they are reliving the early days of our democracy.

Okay. Carry on.

I am so tired.

I will be so happy when this election is over. My only hope is that when it’s over, we’re not getting ready to get used to saying “President Kerry.”

I’ve recently had many a good conversation with some friends with whom I hadn’t talked politics with. I was surprised to find out they’re not Bush fans. I feel I haven’t done enough to get the message out!

Look, if you’re reading this (and it’s not too late) and you’re thinking of voting for John Kerry, spare me a moment.

John Kerry is for bigger government. He’s a socialist. He’s the single most liberal senator in the United States Senate. He’s anti-defense having voted against numerous defense bills. He’s sponsored very few bills during his time in the senate, but one bill he did sponsor was a huge cut in intelligence spending right after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

Kerry yearns for a day when terrorists are just a nuisance - and not an enemy. He’d rather prosecute them in court of law than a battlefield.

The democratic party is saying Bush’s tax cuts only favored the rich. That’s not true. They were flat across the board! The rich people got bigger tax cuts because they pay more taxes. It’s like this... if you have a big watermelon and someone comes along and chops of 15% of your watermelon, they get more watermelon than if they cut off someone’s watermelon that is one tenth the size of yours.

John Kerry says he wants to raise taxes on the rich. Why? What have the rich people done? Why should they be punished. Rich people are THE REASON this country is strong economically. Rich people invested their money and got richer.

If it’s the government’s policy to tax the rich unfairly, then rich people won’t have money to invest. They won’t have money to pay employees at the companies they own. They won’t have money to spend on cars, houses, etc. that less-rich people build, repair, and sell. If rich people have less disposable and investible income, EVERYONE SUFFERS!

John Kerry and John Edwards are both against tort reform. John Edwards made himself rich suing doctors, insurance companies, and governments in malpractice and injury lawsuits that paid millions in damages. Kerry is not going to support legislation to impose limits on these kinds of lawsuits. Under Kerry, the health care costs keep going up and health care gets worse as malpractice insurance rates continue to climb.

John Kerry wants the government to ease restrictions on embryonic stem cell research funded by federal dollars. If John Kerry is elected, he won’t pay careful consideration to the ethical issues around the harvesting of human embryos in the name of pop-science. He says he’s a Catholic, but he can’t let his political conscience be affected by his faith.

In other words, he’s a fraud!

Say what you want about George Bush, but he’s an honest man who is only looking out for what is best for you and me.

As I was watching and listening to the vice presidential debate this week, I thought about something that I don’t feel the media, talk radio, or the bloggers have discussed. I don’t know if my thought is original... it’s probably just a reiteration of something others have said in a different way.

The liberals and anti-Bush people have been using the reports that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq as proof of their claims that the Bush administration misled the American public. The Bush defense has been, “Well, we know we haven’t found any WMD, but it was still a good thing to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a bad person.”

Anyway, my epiphany was this: After 9/11, the immediate priority of the government was securing the country against another 9/11. A lot of speculation was done about what methods and tools the next terrorist attack would employ. It didn’t help we had the anthrax scare along the east coast soon after 9/11.

I can imagine a number of security analysts, intelligence workers, and government representatives meeting several times to talk about the possibilities of future terror. I can imagine someone in these meetings saying, “Al Qaida really needs only two things to execute another attack on our country: materials and money.

Materials and money. Intelligence indicated Iraq had both and had the will to give both to terrorists willing to damage America or American interests. After using this intelligence to warrant invading Iraq, the oil for food scandal uncovered billions of dollars Hussein was stockpiling for future military (i.e. terror) purposes. No WMD, but plenty of plans and funds to make it happen.

I don’t care how you look at it, Iraq was a threat and neutralizing that threat was a good thing. We are doing great things in that country and should continue to foster development of a stable democracy there.

I sent this message to a couple of my friends this morning and thought it might be enjoyed by the couple of people who might read the Fozzolog.

Chadd wrote back:

Okay... this is a Fozzolog entry I wrote three days ago, but I’ve been polishing it up for a while now.

Most of the time, I can understand why The Drudge Report features news stories on their news site. Occasionally, however, they include something that really puzzles me. Why, I ask, do they think this merits the attention of the information-addicted public craving for pointers to the next controversy?

This afternoon, after running around the Salt Lake valley visiting clients, I sat down to get my much-delayed dose of Drudge and in the middle of stories about hurricanes, presidential races, earthquakes was this headline: Scaife paper touts anal sex tips....

Curious, I tried to follow the link and I got a username and password prompt. None of the other stories written by Pittsburgh Live “Sex In The Afternoon” columnist Melissa Meinzer are password-protected—q ust this one. Just this one article that is linked from The Drudge Report. Something smells a bit funny here.

“So, what’s the controversy?” I asked myself.

I found the story linked by Google News and discover the headline is The back-door sport and the lead paragraph is the question portion of a typical ask-a-columnist story: “I'd like to try anal sex with my girlfriend, but I'm afraid if I bring it up, she'll think I'm (gay). Plus, I don't want to hurt her.”

Ms. Meinzer addresses this question that undoubtably every sex columnist in the country gets at least once a month. In fact, a quick search of such stuff on Google News shows that many sex columnists address this topic.

Why does someone at The Drudge Report find this so controversial?

Maybe it’s this Scaife issue, I wondered. Who is Scaife?

CNN has one answer. According to CNN, Richard Scaife is an evil rich republican who owns magazines and newspapers. Okay, they didn’t call him “evil” but they didn’t have anything nice to say about him.

Alright, so this makes a little more sense. A paper owned by a well-to-do conservative has a sex column (Some might think this by itself is a controversy) in which the columnist addresses a question from a man who wants sex tips on... unconventional practices.

I still don’t understand why this is “news” to The Drudge Report.

The underlying message I’m getting here is that a newspaper that is owned, managed, or controlled by someone claiming to be a conservative shoudln’t run stories that conservative people would find offensive, explicit, or racy.

That just seems hypocritical to me. Just about every political pundit on the right (Drudge included) complains about how liberal-biased the media elite are; They only cover the liberal perspective of stories; They spin the news in self-serving ways to promote liberalism.

A column in New York’s Village Voice on unconventional sexual activity would be considered the norm — I know because I’ve read some of Tristan Taormino’s columns in the Voice. I doubt, however, a story in the Village Voice about Christian-based community-outreach programs would attract such controversy or Drudge Report coverage as Meinzer’s sex column.

My point is that despite the fact the Pittsburgh newspaper Michelle Meinzer works for is owned by a outspoken conservative, the newspaper might still be beholden to the basic fundamental tenets of journalism: non-bias.

I don’t know anything about the management or policies of the publication Meinzer works for. I’m just pointing out that this “controversy” suggests the whiners on the hard right may be as much at fault as any liberal editorial journalist for propogating the belief that liberal-owned media can only serve liberal masters and conservative-owned media can only serve conservative masters.

I don’t like it. Drudge’s link to this story seems almost to be saying to Pittsburgh Live, “Hey! You’re a conservative publication. You can’t be doing that. Get back in line!”

Regardless of who owns or manages operations of a media outlet, the highest emphasis should always be on vetting everything and making sure there is an overall non-bias in reporting, in content, etc. IMO, anyway.

Here’s a little political jerky to chew on.

I ran to the grocery store tonight and listened to some Michael Reagan while I was en route. Mike was talking about John Kerry and his service in Vietnam. I think he was talking to a caller or a guest who was a Vietnam POW and how they were pissed off at Kerry for his 1971 testimony.

So, Mike said something that made me burst out laughing in the car. He said, “Kerry’s spent more time talking about Vietnam than he spent in Vietnam!” Then he followed that up with, “Bob Hope spent more time in Vietnam than John Kerry did!”

A little perspective goes a long way.

Hey, how about that Republican convention, eh?

That just rocked.

Nice to see G.W. Bush getting a nice bounce. If he can keep half of that spread from now until 2 Nov, we’re in good shape.

Wow. Is it time for another political entry already?

John Kerry’s numbers are slipping in key states, most likely as a result of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth and the new book Unfit For Command.

It seems like much of the nation will be looking to Bush at the Republican convention coming up this next week to show them the direction he plans to take the country. It’s his election to lose, at this point anyway.

I was listening to Michael Savage on the radio a couple days ago. This is unusual because I don’t usually listen to him because I don’t like his style and because I’m mad our local station put him in at 5:00 p.m. and moved Michael Reagan to 8:00 p.m.

Anyway, I was listening to Michael Savage and he made a couple of comments that really hit me hard. First of all, he said he’d been doing some research and according to his research and his calculations, John Kerry won more medals in the shortest period of time than any other U.S. soldier in the history of the country. Savage points out that this means Kerry won more medals faster than George Washington or much decorated World War II soldier Audie Murphy.

Does this mean John Kerry is the best, most brave, most honorable soldier in the history of the country? Or does it mean, possibly, that Kerry could be a disgrace to the medals he was awarded?

I don’t have the answer. I would think the current controversy might prompt some officials to review the citations and records and determine whether Kerry’s three purple hearts, two bronze stars, and one silver star were awarded for behavior and injuries worthy of the medals.

It’s no wonder so many veterans are just plain pissed off at Kerry for pushing his service so hard to persuade voters. On CNN’s Larry King, 1996 republican presidential candidate Bob Dole said Kerry won “three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds.”

On a program on Fox News, a Kerry spokesman admitted it may be possible the injury for which Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart may have been “unintentionally self-inflicted.”

I have tried hard to filter a lot of this stuff through the “right-wing conspiracy wacko” filters, but all I see when I look at John Kerry is a man who cares only about himself, his wealth, etc. He’s spent the last 30-40 years watching his own ass. He doesn’t seem to care about this country or its people. When he speaks of his desire to provide better health care, better national security, etc. I just get the feeling he’s saying scripted words. I really don’t get the impression he feels what he says.

Now, to suggest I’m not just a “Bush Koolaid drinker,” I;’ll say I do get much more of an impression of sincerity from Kerry’s running mate John Edwards. Heck, I think I’d get a higher reading on the sincerity meter from any of the other democrats that were vying for the candidacy.

Push on!