Brain Lemon

After much thought on the matter, I have decided that I am against the bailout plan as it is currently being constructed by Congress. 

When this plan was first put forth by Hank Paulson, I mildly supported it.  Most people don't know it, but last week the credit markets were essentially frozen, threatening to bring all sorts of business to a screeching halt.  Without short-term loans to get, thousands of companies would be unable to operate.  The problem mainly comes from the huge amount of sketchy assets owned by investment banks, including mortgage-backed securities based on bad home loans.  The bailout plan would buy some of these assets and provide much-needed liquidity to the market.  Thus I begrudingly supported the plan as a terrible but necessary laxative for the economy.

Now that Congress has got its grubby little hands on it, the plan has become a special-interest bonanza with many Democrats trying to radically redefine the plan to make it an even more socialist endeavour.  Some are suggesting that any profits realized from the later selling of the questionable assets should be redistributed, thus turning the whole thing into a perfect socialist transfer of wealth.  They're even suggesting some of it go to help low-income people buy houses.  Yes, they are actually talking about helping more people get mortgages they can't afford.  You can't make this stuff up.

With this bailout plan turning into a deadly behemoth of big government, and with the price tag completely unknown but potentially going into the trillions of dollars, there is absolutely no way a conservative can support it.  To put the cost in perspective, it would likely exceed the total amount of currency now being circulated.  That is, more money than you'd have if you piled up every bill and coin out there.  The inflation that would be caused by this action is staggering.  The dollar would be massively weakened, and foreign investment would surely go away.  Add to that the fact that the federal government would essentially own millions of mortgages and even properties, and you have an expansion in government size and scope that is terrifying.

The true solution to this problem, like so many others, is unleashing the free market.  The unfortunate thing is that so much of a bubble has been built up that we would be in for a very rough ride.  True fiscal restraint, and true conservative economic principle, is tough like that.  It is sort of like vegetables, in that it is good for you in the end, even if at the moment you have to eat broccoli instead of ice cream.  We've gorged on ice cream for so long as if it would never make us fat and cause us health problems.  But just like obese people need an agressive, sometimes grueling diet, we need that for our economy.  We will recover but for now we need to cut back drastically.  No more excessive houses, insane credit card bills, and risky investments that no one even understands.  And for God's sake, NO MORE GOVERNMENT SPENDING!!!  I honestly believe that for anyone to suggest new, lavish programs such as universal college or health care is morally reprehensible, unless one's goal is to radically change the county forever, which I believe is indeed the goal of Barack Obama and friends.

Unfortunately, given the nature of government, we are likely to see some monstrous creature emerge from meetings this weekend.  Politicians of all stripes have a deep need to feel like they are "doing something," even if their actions are harmful or useless.  The president and far too many Republicans have embraced big government ideas, and of course the Democrats are eager to control more of the private market and manipulate things as they desire.  In a time when many politicians and cronies should be put in jail for fraud and mismanagement, no one is likely to go down because the culprits are everywhere.  We are facing a time when our government and our economy are on the brink of total failure, and one can only imagine the consequences for the average person.  There simply isn't much more we can take.

I'm sick of liberals, who constantly go on about conservatives "blurring the line between church and state" one day, then go on the next day to use plainly religious language for their own benefit.  This is found everywhere – recently Obama has described himself as an implement of God's will, and prayed that he may do God's work on earth.  It seems like it is perfectly fine for liberals to do this, and to explain their positions on economic, social, and foreign policy issues as being related to their faith and religion.  Of course, they never apply the same to abortion, but that's another issue entirely.  Meanwhile, when a conservative dares to explain their view on the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and the universality of freedom in the same words, they are called theocrats and the like.

This outrage has come to a head in recent days with many liberals, including Rep. Cohen on the floor of the House, comparing Obama to Jesus and Sarah Palin to Pontius Pilate.  The line goes like this – Jesus was supposedly a "community organizer" like Obama was, and Palin is the "governor" much like Pilate was.  In effect, then, Obama is a Messianic, virtuous fellow while Palin is comparable to the man who ordered the crufixion of Christ.

The absurdity of this comparison is incredible.  It represents a complete ignorance of what it means to be a "community organizer."  Contrary to the deceptions floating around about this profession, it is far removed from a simple, good-natured public servant.  It is in fact an explicitly and deliberately political activity, designed to agitate groups of disadvantaged folks into a lather of class warfare in order to pursue leftist/socialist agendas.  For one thing, it heavily uses the politicization of churches to gather and fire up people.  This explains the naked partisanship of chuches like Obama's Trinity UCC.  The view of community organizers is that it is perfectly acceptable to preach partisan politics from the pulpit.  This, of course, is part and parcel of the religious left, which readily uses churches in order to promote socialism using terms like "social justice" as code words.

Jesus was not a community organizer.  Jesus never read Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing.  Jesus was concerned with bigger things than job centers and unionization.  The suggestion that he was no more than a leftist political activist is beyond offensive.  It is just as offensive as suggesting Jesus was a foreign policy hawk, or a capitalist, or a social conservative.  He may have been these things but it is ridiculous to reduce Jesus to fit in the tiny political terms bandied about by modern politicos.  More likely than not, he was a combination of things – clearly on the right on issues like abortion, while more to the left on economic isssues, though not quite as liberals portray.  All this to say – Jesus was not limited to the terms we use.

So I ask of liberals in general – if it is okay for you to compare Obama to Jesus, why is it so "scary" for conservatives to be influenced by our faith on issues like freedom and abortion?  Why is it a problem for President Bush or Sarah Palin to be an evangelical, while it is no problem at all for Obama to be a practitioner of black liberation theology?  To me it seems like that is far more askew to American values – an ideology explicitly Marxist and racist.  But supposedly that's no big deal, according to liberals who defend this association.  All I'm asking for is consistency and honesty in questions of religion and faith.  And that seems to be far, far more than the left is willing to offer.

By special request, I have finally decided to make a post on the subject of Sarah Palin.  I have not posted in a while since I am still trying to figure out the form I wish my blog(s) to take – whether or not to set up another one, maybe split the politics and everything else?  TypePad lets me have three at my level anyway.  So much to think of when you're trying to launch yourself into the politics scene!

As for Sarah Palin, let's just say that I was literally shaking with excitement last Friday when it was announced.  Now that may sound strange to some to be excited by a veep selection, but as is well known I'm a politics geek and I haven't had something to be excited about for a while.  The selection of Palin came as a huge surprise, especially to all of us who are accustomed to McCain being "bipartisan" and moving to the center/left on many things.  A selection of Lieberman or Ridge would be bad but not surprising, and someone like Pawlenty would have been acceptable but quite uninteresting.

Sarah, on the other hand, could prove to be the deciding factor in this election.  She has transformed the McCain ticket, which lacked any reason to support other than it not being Obama, and turned it into the TRUE change ticket.  While Obama went with a long-time Washington insider who thinks riding the Amtrak Acela train (almost $100 each way) from DC to Wilmington and being born in Scranton makes him a "blue-collar" guy, Sarah is a genuine normal person who has succeeded purely on skill, principles, and hard work.  She's a former hockey mom who has a proven record of actual reform – that is, actually challenging the establishment, even in her own party, when corruption was apparant.

Palin has energized the base in a way we did not think possible, bringing in over $7 million in the day after her announcement.  She has given us a real chance to win in November, assuming she can nail the speech tomorrow and the debates, and nothing comes out about her beyond a pregnant daughter and a fishing license violation.  And she has brought out the true ugliness of the left for all to see, with bloggers and media types savaging the woman and her poor family.  They are in a complete panic – how do you attack an extremely popular, attractive, principled and talented woman with five kids, including one with Down's Syndrome?  Especially when the Democrats made such a big deal about Hillary and the "glass ceiling," how can they deny a woman an office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Of course, she could fail too, in which case McCain will lose.  There was a good chance of that anyway, with much of the country still buying into the Obama movement.  But more and more people are finally realizing what Obama is all about – extreme arrogance, foreign policy naivete, higher taxes, and political correctness like we've never seen.  We may still avoid this disastrous path, and Palin may prove to be just the ticket to a somewhat not-so-bad future under McCain.  Or then again, we could all be screwed no matter what.  But for now let's hold out some hope and hold off on the survival gear.

More posts are coming.  Definitely beginning to realize that the way to start a blog is to actually post to it.  Updates coming as future planning continues!