Colorado Right

From P. J. O’Rourke - not that anyone will actually listen:

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are living in the world’s most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, “Go out and make a bunch of money.”

2. Don’t be an idealist!

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”

3. Get politically uninvolved!

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.

4. Forget about fairness!

Life sends the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile, politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than others. Some are rich while others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s not fair!”

5. Be a religious extremist!

The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin. Observe the Tenth Commandment. The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And, right at the end of it we read, “Don’t envy your buddy because he has an ox or a donkey.” Why did that make the top 10? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, include jealousy about livestock?

Well, think about how important this commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own.

6. Don’t listen to your elders!

After all, if the old person standing up here actually knew anything worth telling, he’d be charging you for it.

From Newsbusters:

On Friday’s Countdown show, MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter, also of Newsweek, suggested that voters who support Hillary Clinton’s call for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax are “stupid” as he contended that the Clinton campaign team are “assuming that people are too stupid to realize that this is a bad idea that won’t save them any money at the pump.”

I defy you to find one Democrat who will point to any tax and say “this is excessive, we don’t need this money for government.  It should stay with the people who actually earn the money”.

Even Hillary’s “acceptance” of this tax holiday is not really one.  She just is so stupid as to think that she can force the oil companies to pay the tax and not pass the expense on to the consumers.  This ignorance of the laws of supply and demand sure makes her sobriquet of “Smartest Woman In the World” seem rather inappropriate.

Let’s see, 18 designs and $200,000 already spent. Projected total cost $1 million. And this is for one wheelchair access ramp? Only in the Democratic Communist People’s Republic of San Francisco:

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities.

There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning.

What I’m most shocked about is that Pravda of the Left Coast is saying that this is not a good use of tax money. And why must this million bucks be spent? The Lifetime Employment for Lawyers Act (also known as the ADA). One of the supervisors is a paraplegic and there are only steps up to the podium.

I have an idea for these guys. Hire someone at $80K a year who’s whole job is to stand around and haul any disabled people up and down the steps. Have him buy some plywood and 2×4’s and in his spare time build the fracking ramp. And even with salary, benefits, expenses, vacation time, materials, and everything else you would still be able to get the job done for less than $150K. Even if it took a whole year.

Or just have him haul the disabled up and down and you have a decade’s worth of disability access without changing anything else.

Hey, you self-righteous progressives who chat about blood for oil. How many homeless people could have been fed with the $200,000 already spent on the 18 different designs? Would a million dollars get clean needles and condoms to the entire city for a year?

No ramps for condoms!

And want people to donate their kidneys to raise money for the payoff:

Iranian hardline students have offered rewards totalling a million dollars for the “execution” of three Israeli military leaders over the deadly strikes on Gaza, the student news agency ISNA reported on Monday.

The group is even encouraging Iranians to donate their kidneys to increase the bounties on the heads of Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan and military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.

Its nice to know that the Democratic Communist People’s Republic of San Francisco has this kind of money to waste:

In his quest to make San Francisco the greenest city in the nation, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently created a $160,000-a-year job for a senior aide and gave him the ambitious-sounding title of director of climate protection initiatives.

San Francisco has at least two dozen other city employees already working directly on climate issues at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In addition to the director of climate protection initiatives in Newsom’s office, San Francisco has an Energy and Climate Program team of eight people in the Department of the Environment, who combined earn more than $800,000 a year in salary and benefits, including a “climate action coordinator.” At least 12 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission staff members work on climate issues related to water and energy, including a $146,000-a-year “projects manager for the climate action plan.”

Also in the name of climate control, the Municipal Transportation Agency has a “manager of emissions reductions and sustainability programs” who works on making Muni’s bus fleet greener, and the San Francisco International Airport has a “manager of environmental services” who oversees such projects as the installation of energy-efficient lighting and solar panels.

The list doesn’t include the scores of staff members who work on broader environmental policies, like the recently hired $130,700-a-year “greening director” in Newsom’s office, or Jared Blumenfeld, who earns $207,500 a year in salary and benefits as the head of the city’s Environment Department, which has a staff of 65 and annual budget of about $14 million.

And you know you have completely gone off the deep end when the flipping Green Party commissioner questions what is going on:

“Although it sounds very well intentioned, and perhaps even necessary, I’m concerned this is a case where eco-chic has gone out of control,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the only Green Party member on the Board of Supervisors.

And the evidence continues to build that the whole global warming hysteria is a) religious in nature and b) a scheme for smart hustlers to shake down taxpayers.

The slant of this article is sickening:

Times are tough for the 27-year-old illegal immigrant and day laborer

For the most part, Rodriguez says, he’s doing what hundreds of other day laborers are doing these days: Standing around and waiting for jobs in Santa Cruz instead of actually getting them.

The bad times are trickling down to the lowest rung of the work force: the illegal labor pool, 

And somewhere in Mexico a wife and a family are having a rougher go at it than usual. 

A couple of questions:

1.  If its so tough in the US, why not go back home?  This article implies that the poor illegal hasn’t had regular work since last summer.  How in the wide wide world of sports is he able to live here?

2.  If there’s no work at home - why not?  Just when did it become America’s issue to deal with unemployed Mexicans?

And most of all this:

“Everybody is going to suffer in a recession — from the top on down,” says Patti Decker, a branch manager with Labor Ready in Soquel, whose number of Spanish-speaking customers, she added, has been on the rise in the last few months, in part due to the poor economy.

Labor Ready is an “employment contractor”.  Just why are they able to break the law with impunity and knowingly hire out illegals?

Apparently because he’s a) not educatered enuff:

State House Majority Leader Alice Madden, a Democrat and CU law school graduate, declared that Benson would be “the least educated president ever considered in modern history.”

And because he actually knows the value of a buck:

He has chaired a $1 billion fundraising campaign for the school, successfully lobbied for a state law to give universities more money, and served on several education boards.

But how in the world can we have an actual Republican (eww, yeech) as the President of the People’s Republic of Boulder University?

A “Boycott Benson” Web site questions the selection process and criticizes his background as a conservative Republican activist. The student government has voiced complaints, and a campus portrait of Benson was defaced with graffiti that said, “I’ve given CU enough $ for an individual right-wing nut like me to be CU’s president.”

And I resent the fact that any of my tax money is going to support a campus full of idiots and traitors, too.  Where do I get my refund?

clipped from politicalmavens.com Hillary? Broke? Not exactly. But she’s strapped. She was forced to admit today that she loaned her campaign $5 million last month. What is the Clinton personal net worth? Nobody seems to know. Estimates are between $41 and $80 million. Bill is getting multi-million dollar payouts from companies like Yucaipa and InfoUSA. For doing what? Nobody knows. And the Clintons aren’t forced to disclose what he’s doing for all that dough. The left-wing press has been all over Mitt Romney over how much of his own money he’s put into his campaign. I don’t see similar bellyaching over the Clinton contribution. Maybe the media thinks $5 mil is small potatoes. Or maybe it’s OK for the liberal Democrat to contribute from her fortune but not OK for the conservative Republican to contribute from his. She is up against the wall: cash-poor, dead-even in delegates, and facing new contests in Maryland, DC, and Virginia that favor Obama. The hereditary monarch has been forced to wash the floors.

Update:

Of course, its the Clintons so the whole thing is a hoax.  She has money!  Bill has more money than God and he will give it all to her to be President.

For those who have better things to do than keep track of the latest in a long series of UN sponsored playtimes about the environment, there is one going on in Bali now. Of course a ton of very, very, VERY serious bloggers like this one, writing very, very, very, VERY, VERY serious posts:

The next three days might prove to be among the most crucial in history. If countries can agree to talks that will lead to the cuts in emissions that will keep global conditions within tolerable levels, then humankind could have a bright future. If, however, governments fail to rise to this challenge there could be very rough times ahead…………

Leadership and resolve is now needed from those countries who say they see the danger posed by rapid climate change. The EU must keep its nerve, and not only argue for an obligation on industrialised countries to cut emissions by a sufficient amount, but to also resist those countries who are trying to wreck these talks by insisting that developing countries should take on legally binding targets as well. The rich nations have the means to act and are largely responsible for the global temperature increase we already have……….

Some thoughts in response:

1. The next three days might prove to be among the most crucial in history.

Its overblown rhetoric like this which actually harms your own cause. The globaloney left and parasitic bureaucrats from the United Nations and all the associated NGOs have been crying doom about everything for such a long time that the sound becomes some sort of background noise.

You don’t really believe that the next 3 days will determine the fate of the earth. Otherwise why aren’t you spending every penny you own, mortgaging your house and car and all your possessions, and bringing every single resource you have in an effort to get your desired outcome? By your own words, this is the most crucial 3 days in all of human history and all you can do is sit around observing and yammering about it? You don’t do more than whine about the issue because you know this is more about some sort of money shakedown and an anti-capitalism kabuki dance.

Your governments certainly don’t believe that what you are saying is true. The heads of state aren’t convinced that its true or they would be there. The most cruical days in all human existence? The government representation is a lot more about a nice pre-Christmas vacation in a Pacific paradise. With a great opportunity to bash America, but that’s just gravy to the UN lickspittles and their ideological kin walking the beaches of Bali.

2. Leadership and resolve is now needed from those countries who say they see the danger posed by rapid climate change. The EU must keep its nerve

This would be the same EU that is growing its carbon dioxide emissions faster than the United States? Your moral slip is showing - and you don’t have any leadership on this either. Are you leaders willing to stand up and tell your citizens that they need to reduce their standard of living by 40%? No more flying, no more driving, no more building individual houses, no more than one sheet of toilet paper per use? Of course not. Because its just another sheet of paper with silly writing on it that the EU and all other countries in the world know they can ignore with absolutely no consequences to themselves. But it will make them feel really, really good to stand up and say they did something for the environment.

If you really wanted to effect global change you should encourage all the oil and coal use you can. Only when the oil and coal are gone will the global economy change to something else.

3. The rich nations have the means to act and are largely responsible for the global temperature increase we already have

You actually think that mankind now possesses the power to terraform the entire planet? Again, I don’t believe you do. The whole article is about some vauge plan to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2020, but specifics on how that is to happen are thin on the ground. And will this have any effect on the global temperature? Not that anyone can prove with any measure of certainty. We don’t know the daily rainfall of the Earth. We don’t know the cloud cover percentage of the Earth to any certainty. We don’t know the temperatures and effects of the different currents in the oceans. There is so much we don’t know about the global atmosphere and especially how all the parts work together over this huge planet. And yet your religious belief in carbon emissions as the only source of global warming (see that big ball of fire in the sky? might it have some influence on the atmosphere?) means that you want everyone on the earth to give up technology? to stop driving cars? to stop heating or cooling their homes?

Again, you don’t really know what 40% reduction means or implies. Somehow you violated the earth with carbon emissions by flying from Britain to Bali. Journalists are exempt? Are you willing to accept nuclear power for your electricity? No nasty carbon emissions with nuclear. I couldn’t say for sure, but since most eco-nauts love the planet and hate nuclear power it is a guess you wouldn’t like that solution at all. But this is the end of days for the earth - would you be willing to compromise your “no nukes” stance to save the earth? Just how are you going to get your electricity? And don’t say wind power - it might sound good, but since you can’t depend on the wind 100 percent of the time every wind farm has to have some backup generation capability that will work when you can’t get power from those huge turbines. Your own government in the UK is proposing to put 2 giant wind turbines on every single mile of coastline, but they still admit that you have to have some backup power generation - if you want reliable electricity anyway.

So you use hysterical rhetoric, don’t actually believe in what you are saying, want to have some sort of moral stance taken rather than anything that would interrupt your own comfortable life, and believe in imaginary solutions to real world problems.

And then you wonder why we don’t believe you?