The view huh? Mr. Obama, you're going on the View as president of the United States to discuss what exactly?
...
I fear that "..." is sadly all that was truly discussed. There was nothing of substance. Why this medium, no one can answer.
It is very belittling of himself. That's all anyone seems to know.
~David Morris~
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
GOP Youth Convention - A personal case study for proper framing.
Along with some of my other libertarian co-workers, I attended a GOP Youth Convention. The mission was to design an official party agenda on a variety of issues from the perspective of young people. The process involved splitting us into subcommittees (such as economics, foreign policy, etc) where we'd draft an proposed stance on a specific topic. We would then vote on the wordings of our drafts before making such stances official. Participates could make calls to reword the stance if found disagreeable, and we would hence vote on the alternative proposal.
While much of the economic and health care issues were agreeable, nominally, libertarians and conservatives are capable of disagreement when it comes to immigration, defense spending, and certain other social issues. With three libertarians in the crowd (including one who was particularly eager), most of the deadlock took place here.
Specifically, on immigration and gay marriage. It appeared that one of my co-workers was unintentionally stirring a hornet nest in the manner she made her proposals on such issues, leading her be be labeled as a "democrat spy" by certain individuals who found her disagreeable.
I recall the deadlock on the definition of marriage in particular. Singularly it appeared, my co-worker was advocating against the original proposal of the societal subcommittee of simply pre-defining marriage as between a man and a woman. However, her framing had more of an appeal tailored to civil liberals and proved agitating to many. As temperaments flared, I quietly thought of means to reword the manner in a way that everyone could be satisfied with.
It is here that I was thankful for heeding some of the lessons learned at Cato in regards to relating to one's audience. I've always believed libertarians can create more common ground with conservatives than not, if they are mindful of proper framing. Recalling the Ransberger Pivot, I employed it in a manner that was able to end the deadlock by making an appeal to the constitution, a document that everyone in the room could appreciate. In the end, rather than stand for federal involvement on marriage, I subtly took things in a direction of allowing the 10th Amendment to settle the issue.
It was nice to play peacemaker.
~David Morris~
While much of the economic and health care issues were agreeable, nominally, libertarians and conservatives are capable of disagreement when it comes to immigration, defense spending, and certain other social issues. With three libertarians in the crowd (including one who was particularly eager), most of the deadlock took place here.
Specifically, on immigration and gay marriage. It appeared that one of my co-workers was unintentionally stirring a hornet nest in the manner she made her proposals on such issues, leading her be be labeled as a "democrat spy" by certain individuals who found her disagreeable.
I recall the deadlock on the definition of marriage in particular. Singularly it appeared, my co-worker was advocating against the original proposal of the societal subcommittee of simply pre-defining marriage as between a man and a woman. However, her framing had more of an appeal tailored to civil liberals and proved agitating to many. As temperaments flared, I quietly thought of means to reword the manner in a way that everyone could be satisfied with.
It is here that I was thankful for heeding some of the lessons learned at Cato in regards to relating to one's audience. I've always believed libertarians can create more common ground with conservatives than not, if they are mindful of proper framing. Recalling the Ransberger Pivot, I employed it in a manner that was able to end the deadlock by making an appeal to the constitution, a document that everyone in the room could appreciate. In the end, rather than stand for federal involvement on marriage, I subtly took things in a direction of allowing the 10th Amendment to settle the issue.
It was nice to play peacemaker.
~David Morris~
Friday, July 23, 2010
Mosque across Ground Zero. Oh well. Can I have a cross then?
Response to this article at Washington Examiner.
I'm a Christian libertarian with traditional values. Sure, I can claim mixed feelings on the controversy of a mega-mosque on Ground Zero.
However, unless there's some hidden form of legal foul play, I can't really care enough to be up in arms about it. I understand after all, that Islam is composed of different denominations just as Christianity is. Its not as if al Qaeda is funding this. Again, I don't necessarily endorse the mosque. I would still appreciate it were they not to build the mosque.
I would also appreciate it if someone gave me a quarter right about now. Oh well, its no big deal if I don't get what I want on this one. This is a red herring to more important things.
Besides, I perceive no true threat to my religious freedom on account of this Islamic building anyway. Nay, that remains the purview of ignorantly intolerant anti-Christian activists, who oft speak of "separation of church and state" as though the term "state" was synonymous with "public display."
So how about the following compromise?
Muslims get their mosque across the street of ground zero, and Christians get to put a cross or religious plaque somewhere ON ground zero. That is, whenever they decide to put something there.
Nah, that's probably attract the ACLU.
~David Morris~
I'm a Christian libertarian with traditional values. Sure, I can claim mixed feelings on the controversy of a mega-mosque on Ground Zero.
However, unless there's some hidden form of legal foul play, I can't really care enough to be up in arms about it. I understand after all, that Islam is composed of different denominations just as Christianity is. Its not as if al Qaeda is funding this. Again, I don't necessarily endorse the mosque. I would still appreciate it were they not to build the mosque.
I would also appreciate it if someone gave me a quarter right about now. Oh well, its no big deal if I don't get what I want on this one. This is a red herring to more important things.
Besides, I perceive no true threat to my religious freedom on account of this Islamic building anyway. Nay, that remains the purview of ignorantly intolerant anti-Christian activists, who oft speak of "separation of church and state" as though the term "state" was synonymous with "public display."
So how about the following compromise?
Muslims get their mosque across the street of ground zero, and Christians get to put a cross or religious plaque somewhere ON ground zero. That is, whenever they decide to put something there.
Nah, that's probably attract the ACLU.
~David Morris~
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Debt Metaphors To the Moon.
I decided to go hunting for some debt metaphors today. Imagine the engineering achievements would could obtain!
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Big numbers: As a point of reference, if 11.4 trillion $1 bills were stacked on top of each other, they would stretch all the way to the moon. And back. And over halfway to the moon again. Put another way, if you brought $1-trillion in crisp one-dollar bills to the bank and you handed the teller a dollar every second, it would take 32,000 years to completely transfer the money. [source]
---
23.5 Trillion Dollars Is 23.5 Football Fields Stacked 2 Stories Deep With Packed $100 Bills: That’s the Size of USA Federal Debt. [source]
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If you had a nice neat stack of $100 bills 40 inches high, you would have a million dollars.
A billion dollars is a thousand million. If you could keep it from falling over, a billion dollars in $100 bills all in one stack or on one helluva spindle would be more than 300 stories high. More than three Sears Towers stacked one on top of the other. It would be 3,333 feet high, a hazard to air traffic requiring beacons flashing day and night.
The amount that the Bush administration borrowed from investors last month, October 2002, was ironically 33.3 times as much as the above and if stacked all together in $100 bills would reach 21 miles into space. That's not feet or inches, but 21 statute miles of 5,280 feet to the mile.
And that's not all. The Bush administration ran up the entitlement side of the national debt another $20.9 billion which means that the total national debt went up $54.3 billion last month, October 2002. Now, our monthly stack of $100 bills would reach 34.2 miles into space. And that's only what your government added to the tab in one month.
If you took the entire national debt and it was possible to stack it neatly in $100 bills, that stack would extend 3,966 miles into space. "One of these days Alice, to the moon."
If our hypothetical spindle was based in New York City and it fell to the east, we could have a narrow bridge across the Atlantic to Berlin. If it fell to the west, the top would land more than 900 miles offshore from San Francisco in the Pacific.
From another direction.
If you set aside $7 million a day from the birth of Christ, from the beginning of the Gregorian calendar 2,002 years ago, you would be able to pay off the national debt by November of the year 2458. That's only 456 years from now. Of course, right now the national debt would have to stop going up.
There are nitwits who tell us that the United States can easily afford a debt of this size because our Gross Domestic Product is more than $10 trillion a year. At $6.3 trillion, the national debt is only about 60 percent of the GDP.
The implication here is that all we have to do is stop spending money for six or seven months of the year, send everything we make to the government, and everything will be hunky dory. It really means we would all be dead in a matter of weeks.
Don't buy medicine. Don't buy gasoline or groceries. Don't go to Starbucks or McDonald's. Of course, there wouldn't be anybody there anyway because they would all be doing the same thing. How long do you think you could last that way, even if we didn't start killing each other over what's left on the shelves?
We all know what the sensible solution is. Set up a payment plan within our means.
Unfortunately, the most we've ever paid against the national debt was $230 billion in fiscal 2000 and that wasn't enough to keep the debt from going up another $18 billion that year due to interest and the theft of entitlement surpluses.
If you go to any mortgage lender or any of the plug-in mortgage models on the Internet, you will find that paying off the national debt in anything less than 50 years requires annual payments of at least $350 billion a year. And that's with interest as low as 5 percent.
However.
There is one thing we could do that would be of benefit to all of us. We could get rid of the bogus bonds that our crooked government has awarded us while they played a con game called "borrowing" entitlement money—actually stealing our surplus Social Security, Medicare, gas taxes, and other excessive overpayments.
We don't need these phony securities. The entire "Intragovernmental Holdings" side of the national debt, currently standing at $2.7 trillion, is fraudulent. Worse than anything Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossings, Arthur Andersen, or any of the corporations under investigation by the Justice Department and SEC have done.
Wipe that fraudulent $2.7 trillion from the crooked books and we've only got $3.6 trillion in honest debt to investors to pay off.
We would all be better off if the crooks had the integrity to simply take the money and run in the first place instead of tricking us with their double taxation scam.
[source]
---
~David Morris~
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Conservatives vs Libertarians. Solution? The Limbaugh Libertarian Virus.
Original respons to this article over whether conservatism is to be considered a "dirty word."
---
I think this sounds like an interesting strategy for converting liberals.
Do not break away from conservatives when it comes to dealing with conservatives. The neoconservative brand of Bush is dead most certainly. Its just as dead as Nixon. But the Reagan conservative brand is still very much alive. It is not to be forsaken on the grounds of a single heretic.
So I suppose when dealing with liberals, start the process on social issues and teach them about economics. Bam, a new libertarian. If dealing with conservatives, teach them about the 9th and 10th amendment. Bam, new libertarian.
It all really depends on your audience.
As a movement though, like it or not, the first pure-strain libertarian president will be a republican. I hear you out until you get to a point of speaking of third parties. I don't know of Palin's model. I don't trust Hannity's blueprint. However, I am continually fascinated by Limbaugh as I screen him for anti-liberty gaffes. For when you listen, it is soon apparent that he's a "conservative" with a libertarian infection.
Could his libertarian substitute hosts have a hand in this? We need to repeat what I shall henceforth deem the "Limbaugh libertarian virus" for all the other conservatives and hijack their party.
Ah yes. Another caveat we must be aware of is that not everything associated with "liberal" is necessarily socially tolerant.
Fairness Doctrine, affirmative action, jealously guarded ban on alternatives to evolution, infringement on the *private* right to associate and disassociate, hostility to public displays (not state displays, but public displays by private citizens) specifically of Christianity, etc. One should take care in broadly painting contemporary liberalism as socially untainted.
Certainly, libertarians call for a secular government. Many "liberals" however are known for going further in calling for a forcefully secular culture. Just a word of warning.
The 9th and 10th Amendment is the key. Be we educating liberals or conservatives, our message must provide that people have the right to associate with those who hold their beliefs. Federalism.
~David Morris~
---
I think this sounds like an interesting strategy for converting liberals.
Do not break away from conservatives when it comes to dealing with conservatives. The neoconservative brand of Bush is dead most certainly. Its just as dead as Nixon. But the Reagan conservative brand is still very much alive. It is not to be forsaken on the grounds of a single heretic.
So I suppose when dealing with liberals, start the process on social issues and teach them about economics. Bam, a new libertarian. If dealing with conservatives, teach them about the 9th and 10th amendment. Bam, new libertarian.
It all really depends on your audience.
As a movement though, like it or not, the first pure-strain libertarian president will be a republican. I hear you out until you get to a point of speaking of third parties. I don't know of Palin's model. I don't trust Hannity's blueprint. However, I am continually fascinated by Limbaugh as I screen him for anti-liberty gaffes. For when you listen, it is soon apparent that he's a "conservative" with a libertarian infection.
Could his libertarian substitute hosts have a hand in this? We need to repeat what I shall henceforth deem the "Limbaugh libertarian virus" for all the other conservatives and hijack their party.
Ah yes. Another caveat we must be aware of is that not everything associated with "liberal" is necessarily socially tolerant.
Fairness Doctrine, affirmative action, jealously guarded ban on alternatives to evolution, infringement on the *private* right to associate and disassociate, hostility to public displays (not state displays, but public displays by private citizens) specifically of Christianity, etc. One should take care in broadly painting contemporary liberalism as socially untainted.
Certainly, libertarians call for a secular government. Many "liberals" however are known for going further in calling for a forcefully secular culture. Just a word of warning.
The 9th and 10th Amendment is the key. Be we educating liberals or conservatives, our message must provide that people have the right to associate with those who hold their beliefs. Federalism.
~David Morris~
On the Ground View of Afganistan.
---
From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
From the Sand Pit it's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River , watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
I also glance at the area around my buns every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel-plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me, I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Afghanistan blows, man. It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtuns, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns... actual, living Huns. They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their families, nor for each other, nor for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK-47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.
I'm freezing my buns off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours. Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is 'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.
They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives. The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bull, and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here, because you have no idea what we're doing, and really, you don't want to know. We are your military, and we are doing what you sent us here to do.
Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi
"Freedom is not free...but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share".
Send this to ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS so that people here will really know what is going on over there.-
A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America ' for an amount of 'up to and including my life.' That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.'
From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
From the Sand Pit it's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River , watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
I also glance at the area around my buns every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel-plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me, I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Afghanistan blows, man. It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtuns, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns... actual, living Huns. They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their families, nor for each other, nor for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK-47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.
I'm freezing my buns off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours. Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is 'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.
They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives. The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bull, and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here, because you have no idea what we're doing, and really, you don't want to know. We are your military, and we are doing what you sent us here to do.
Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi
"Freedom is not free...but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share".
Send this to ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS so that people here will really know what is going on over there.-
A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America ' for an amount of 'up to and including my life.' That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.'
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