An Open Question [1] [2] for the 2012 candidates for President.

This letter has been sent – or will be sent – to most of the candidates for the presidency in the Democratic and Republican parties in 2012. Some won’t get it – their web site utterly lacks ‘contact me’ email or a web form.

I have no pretension that I’ll get anything but a form letter back. If that.

It would be instructive if they would answer the question. But that will have to wait until a person with more umph asks the question at a debate, or a member of the press with some brass ones pitches it to them. Or, possibly, if a lucky member of the public finds themselves face-to-face with the candidate.

Or maybe you could re-blog, pass it along, send it to the candidates, put a bug in the ear of a reporter.

Sir / Ma’am,

I am asking this question of the announced candidates for President.

The answer will be very instructive, will tell the voters a great deal about your philosophy, how you will perform in office.

I will publish the results on my blog, Space For Commerce, and a mil-blog that I contribute to, The Daily Brief.

Amartya Sen wrote in ‘The Idea of Justice’ this thought experiment;

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because she made it.

Sen argues that who gets the flute depends on your concept of justice.

Bob will have the support of the economic egalitarian.

The libertarian would opt for Carla.

The utilitarian will argue for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can play the instrument.

Who gets the flute?

R/s

Brian Dunbar
Neenah, Wisconsin

[1] On review I see the summary owes a great deal to – if not an outright theft from – Eric Falkenstein at Falkenblog.

Sorry about that.

[2] Tip o’ the hat to SouthBend7 for sparking the idea.

“You were a Marine?  Oh, I could never do that, X.”

Where X is a phrase like ‘I could never stand the discipline’ or ‘I could not stand being yelled at’ or ‘I hate it when people tell me what to do’.

This is bullshit.

All of us put ourselves under discipline for one reason or another, and we do it willingly. 

If you can make the team, hold down a job, graduate college, learn a skill, you can certainly stand four years in the military.  Don’t have to be an automaton, don’t have to loose your individuality, neither.  Me, I had a problem with authority [1] for  few years, until I settled down: I did okay.

It’s just that the consequences of screwing up in the military are more immediate.  Present a failure to adapt in the office, the consequences are slow or no promotion, loss of pay.  It’s all very slow and gradual.  Failure to adapt in the military and you will find yourself doing many, many, push-ups with a metaphorical boot up your ass.

Funny – I have only heard this from younger people who have not found themselves, or older folks who are clearly losers.  Adults making a living . . . not so much.

[1] And I have the Page 11 entries [2] to prove it.

Progressives are vampires.  I can prove it.

Accept that vampires are real. Ignore the mystical mumb-jumbo krep about souls: merely hyper-intelligent apex predators.

Being not complete dummies, they wish to conserve their stock of prey, homo sapiens.

Western Civilization is about progress. More social integration, better technology, members are citizens, not serfs.  There are more of us, we’re healthier.  But we’re better armed, now, and can effectively fight back.   A society that can effectively organize to eliminate blood-sucking ghouls is, from vampire-kind’s point of view, double-plus un-good.

Western Civilization is a danger to vampire-kind.

Eliminating this threat is tricky.  Push one way, anniliation and mass die-off.  Push too hard in another, you get a stronger culture.

The prudent thing for Vampires to do is slowly devolve this civilization into a mass of superstition, gullibility, and malleability.  People who will depend not on themselves for their needs and their thinking: the President, the pop star on teevee, someone.  They require prey smart enough to feed themselves, but not so smart they question what goes on around them: dumb down the schools, eliminate critical thinking.  

The end-game is a gentle decline into fuedalism and a new Dark Age.  Ideal hunting grounds for vampires. 

Serfs, not citizens.  Prey, not competition.

I submit that the actions of certain elements of the Progressive wing of politics in America are indistinguisible from the actions of blood-sucking ghouls.

Progressives are vampires, man.  The majority of humans in that wing are, at best, deluded dupes.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Mr. Nadler’s bill would “require the IRS to adjust tax brackets proportionally in regions where the average cost of living is higher than the national average.”

In other words, the various tax brackets would apply to residents in certain regions at higher income levels versus other parts of the country. A family with an income of $50,000 or even $1 million in Manhattan would pay less federal income tax than a family with the same earnings in Omaha. The bill is called the Tax Equity Act …

A more accurate title is ‘Hey Out There In Fly-Over Country: F**k You’ act.

Representatives Nadler, Bishop, Israel, Lowey, Maloney and McCarthy:  you are associated with a pack of thieves, liars and cheats 535 strong who, nearly to a man, deserve long stretches of time in jail for the laws you’ve flouted, the bribes you’ve taken, the damage you’ve done to this country.

You are a pox on this land, a disease in the body politic.  Y’all aren’t even very smart except for the low cunning needed to come up with ever more inventive ways to cheat the public and lie your way to another term in office.  You deserve neither re-election nor pension, nor any job that does not involve the phrase ‘Would You Like Fries With That’?

You should be turned out of your office to make your way by your scant wits in the world you insist the rest of us live in.

Representative Nadler – f**k you.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Charles Bolden.  Graduate of the Naval Academy.  100 combat missions in an A-6.  Test pilot.  Astronaut, flew twice, mission commander twice. Commanded 30,000 marines in Kuwait.  Retired as major general.  Selected to lead NASA.

A very accomplished man, a very smart, savvy leader, a man who mastered a difficult career.

Gibbs, at his daily news briefing, was asked why Bolden had made the comment.

“It’s an excellent question, and I don’t think — that was not his task, and that’s not the task of NASA,” Gibbs said.

Stabbed in the back.  That has got to sting a little, ya know?

What’s a big green weenie?  When you’re due for a weekend of liberty, and the gunny calls you out for a working party, that’s a big green weenie.  Have the CO tell you to enforce an unpopular policy, only to have him change his mind a week later when it proves unpopular with the troops, and you look like a tool?  Green Weenie Time.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Thanks, America!  Your generosity (in the form of federal stimulus money) paid for a street reconstruction project downtown. It’s done and looking good.

From the dead-tree version of this article ..

The $450,000 street reconstruction project … replaced the asphalt pavement with concrete between Main and S. Commercial streets. [1] Stamped colored concrete was used for the crosswalks.

Advocates of stimulus spending who envisioned this money putting America back to work will be happy to hear that hundreds upon hundreds of area unemployed were busy at work with hand tools, chipping up the old asphalt, carting the rubble away in wheelbarrows, making themselves useful and getting an honest day’s wages for hard work done well.

The stamped concrete is pretty cool – looks like brickwork.  I’m sure it was more expensive to do it this way and of course we’d have paid for it if we had to pony up the funds ourselves.

Makes a fella proud to pay his taxes, it does.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Weirdly, the main road downtown is not Main Street but Wisconsin Avenue. Main is the road in from the freeway. It’s an okay road but it’s not a stereotypical small-town Main Street.

I was going to rant about President Obama sending Joe Biden to Arlington for Memorial Day, while he spends a well deserved weekend in Chicago.

When you care enough to send the very best you send your second banana in your stead. 

But then Richard Fernandez did it for me and he did in a very non-ranty way and it is an actual pleasure to read.

So go read ‘Memory and Survival’.

Besides - he’s going to lay a wreath at Lincoln Cemetry.  And hey, that’s okay.  One national cemetary is just like another.  Just a buncha dead guys in a stone garden.  The headstones look the same.  Hey lay a wreath here, lay one there, it’s all the same.  Just some ceremonial foolishness – hand salute, lay the wreath, hand on the heart, moment of silence then back in the limo.  Who gives a fuck, really.

Tell you what: just to keep the Commander In Chief from being bothered with trotting out to Arlington or Lincoln or where-the-fuck ever … next year we can lean a headstone against the fence in his backyard.  Monday when he feels up to it he can mosey outside, toss on a wreath and call it a day.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

From the video description: Against GySgt Wallgreens request I recorded his speach in secret….. the result is this awesome video with the last words we heard before boarding helos and heading into the heart of Marjeh. Have you ever wondered how Marines get pumped up? This video will show you how true leaders inspire their Marines to do the unthinkable.

And that ain’t no crap, Suzy Sunshine.

Where do we get men such as these?

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Boycotts are awesome.  A very American [1] institution.  Economic freedom rocks!

 Until the boycotted fire back.  Arizona Corporation Commission member Gary Pierce to the City of Los Angeles

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation.

I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.

I bet Los Angeles would miss 25% of it’s electric power way more than Arizona will miss the revenue Los Angeles sends to Arizona.

[1] Yes, the boycott was invented in Ireland.  So what?

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

‘We don’t want offshore windmills,’ they said. ‘They ruin the natural beauty of the island.  And they will interfere without sunrise ceremonies.’

I had found these to be reasonable objections to the windmill farm off Cape Cod.  My mind’s eye pictured hundreds of the things whirling away in the surf, casting shadows over the beach, harshing the mellow of a sunrise ritual … yeah I can see that.

Then I found this.

Are you f***ing kidding me?

This is not a spoiled view.  This is not going to interfere with a sunrise ritual. 

This is people who want teevee, ipods, cheap electricity in a never-was 18th century New England Shangri-La.

Life is not a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Ladies and Gentleman: Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) articulating (for some values of ‘articulate’) his concern that the island of Guam will “actually tip-over and capsize.”

Forget – if you can – that this guy writes laws the rest of us must obey.

Note the iron discipline the Admiral demonstrated. Not a snicker, not a smile.  He did not cover his mouth. He did not glare at the Congressman for wasting his valuable time.  He did not turn to his aide and mutter ‘Geez Louise, can you believe this guy?”

Bravo Zulu, Admiral.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Health Care Reform, Henry Waxman issuing a subpoena to private citizens to account for why they’re following the law, demagoguery on the right and left, politicians making promises to get elected then making a u-turn in office, Abscam, Iran-Contra, Monica-Gate, Watergate ..

There are two ways to take the long view on this.

a. Politicians have always been this way.  What we learned in eighth-grade Civics was lies and whitewash.

b. The guys sitting in the D.C. are degenerate and not worthy of our heritage.

I’m not sure which bothers me more.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.