Maggie's Farm

Hot-button issues like immigration, ObamaCare, bailouts, taxation, national security, faith divide us mostly along what has been labeled conservative-liberal.

At root, however, the differing views are more rooted in who gives and who takes.

Our “betters” are largely insulated from the consequences of their views, catering to themselves and our “lessers.”  Then, there’s the “rest of us.”

The primary divide is between the rest of us who struggled, strived and gave versus those whose advantages parachuted them into powerful positions they abuse for their own wealth and to then take away the more meager advantages earned by others to give to the lessers who haven’t.

The rest of us favor immigration by those willing to work, but not to those who aren’t able or who just demand benefits.

The rest of us favor aiding the truly poor or disabled to adequate health care, but not to those who waste their money on frills and then demand providers to impoverish themselves and us not be allowed to make our own life decisions.

The rest of us favor business creating jobs and opportunities, but not lazy management and crazy schemes then feeding at the taxpayer trough.

The rest of us voluntarily pay our more than fair share, but not basic services being cut to enrich politicians and government workers who create more ways to tax in order to feather their own nests by creating more dependent lessers.

The rest of us support and serve in danger to preserve our freedoms and protect others’, but not to be frittered away through lack of priorities or will.

The rest of us thank G-d for our being and opportunities, but not to tolerate those who would deny us or others theirs.

The rest of us may become polarized but at root are not.  The rest of us just feel caught between those who consider themselves our betters, who perpetuate themselves by allying with the lessers without due claim upon us, whether at home or abroad.  These betters denigrate the legitimate concerns of the rest of us, but their scorn is hollow, ludicrous,  and, indeed, energizing.

Our parents and grandparents were great generations whom we identify with because they were the inspiration for the rest of us.  My baby-boomer peers have largely been the selfish punk generation of wastrels. Coming again, the generation of the “rest of us.”  Those who want to lead, who deserve leadership, are recognized as authentic in being of, by and for the rest of us.

An ideologue is attached to an ideal regardless of facts.

A cynic believes that selfish self-interest is the primary motivator, especially of others.

A skeptic habitually doubts or questions conclusions of others.

A critic develops judgments based on the merits of the situation or argument.

A freeman uses civil and political rights and liberties, to enjoy life.

These categories may to some extent co-exist in each individual.  But, to the extent any of us move predominantly from freeman or tolerant critic to habitual skepticism, or to being a cynic or ideologue, even when moved by others’ intrusion into our rights and liberties, we surrender some or much of our enjoyment.

The trick is to retain our focus on being a freeman (or freewoman, but I’ll use freeman here throughout).

If we don’t, we become susceptible to manipulation of ourselves or becoming manipulators of others.  One can’t be securely free when others are not.

Soldiers volunteer knowing that life-and-death choices determine their and others’ fate.  In effect, they are determined to be freemen.

The really religious know that opening their heart to G-d gives them freedom to enjoy themselves and others.

The true citizen participates and demands that chosen leaders respect all as freemen.

Look at history.  Those whose names and legacy are most treasured were freemen.

Look at yourself.  What are you? Really.

If not a freeman, you've surrendered.

Today, modern Israel’s 62^nd birthday, is a good time to ask the question, “What if there wasn’t an Israel, would things be different in the Middle East?”

The world would still be dealing with and suffering from MidEast extremists: First of the Soviet proxies, but without Israeli intelligence penetrating them and its military defeating them, exposing the Soviet Union as an unworthy sponsor; Then of the Islamist haters suppressing its peoples and fighting each other while harboring attackers of the West, but without Israel’s development and democracy serving as an unavoidable contrast to the potentials of freedom and sanity and its military and technology exposing the fundamental weakness of their self-created backwardness.

No one in the Middle East takes seriously that the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflicts are the primary, secondary, tertiary or lesser cause of MidEast instability or its threats to the West.

Outside the Middle East, however, we have the core delusion among many of those raised on the puerile pap created by the Left that the modernity and successes of Western civilization somehow oppress the natural decency and advancement of Third World countries.

President Obama is the poster boy.  But he is not the cause.  He is merely the product.  He and those who follow him, thus, fall back on the false premise that Israel is the problem.

No, the problem is their core delusion that we can escape history by denying it, even reversing it, though that still would leave the real root cause of MidEast instability, regional petty satraps, backward hatefulness, and those outside powers – from the EU to Russia to China – who benefit from retaining rule or access to oil.

If the initial thrust of President Bush’s strategy of spurring democratization in the Middle East proved hollow, then our subsequent neutralization of Iraq’s WMD potential and funding of terrorists and our struggling effort to retrieve Afghanistan from being ruled by  as much a threat is at best a holding action.  We, as Secretary of Defense Gates admitted, lack a strategy toward even containing Iran, its imminent nuclear armaments, its support for those who kill our soldiers and Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s and their peoples.

The exaggeration by Saddam Hussein of his own WMDs was to counter Iran.  The US and initial allies entering Iraq missed the proper focus then as we do now.

Weakening Israel is not a strategy for peace in the Middle East but another abdication of what could reduce the dangers of the Middle East.  The US administration and apologists are blaming the “salamis” for the failure to ice the botulism.

President Obama and followers are not the root cause of Israel’s current dilemma.  They are the natural extension of the escapism that infects Western thought, that undermined President Bush’s brash, perhaps fruitless, but correct focus that peace can only come from shattering Middle East excuses and delusions and providing more fertile ground for the emergence of rulers more concerned with the betterment of their own peoples’ lots.

Israel shows the way, not the barrier. The barrier is the purposeful misfocus, the dangerous inanity, of the avoiders of truths. Isn't 62 years enough time to prove that if modern Israel didn't exist the catering to Middle East tyrants would still be the core cause of dire oppression there and threats to the West's security and prosperity?

Congressman Henry Waxman, who never met a federal tax or mandate he didn't like to ram down Americans' throats, even when he discovers that the law he backed actually requires corporations to quickly report the negative financial impacts of ObamaCare, has decided to focus his attention on Americans' throats.

The Hill reports: Waxman calls on Major League Baseball to ban chewing tobacco.

From the Comments:

"On behalf of the American people, I would like to submit an earmark for the next major piece of legislation, called "Bubble gum for Bubbas." This is to request $75 billion to buy smokeless tobacco from MLB athletes and to exchange it with bubble gum, just like we buy guns from people in inner cities to get those guns off the street. This legislation includes a rider for their third-party medical insurance plan that pays for any additional dental expenses that may in the course of this contract and for any reasonable time after the completion thereof be incurred by replacing said chewing tobacco with chewing gum."

And:

"The nanny state marches on. Since the government is now responsible for your healthcare, and can't afford the expense, be prepared for a rash of new restrictions. Obesity will be outlawed, alcohol consumption and lack of exercise will be next. Do you have any risky habits? Ride a motorcycle, sky dive, fly a light aircraft or hang glider? Dangerous and society should not be responsible to take care of you if you take these risks, so the government will say. Auntie Sam will take care of us all. Let's all take our morning "happy pill" and drone on like slaves."

There's another law he backed that Waxman forgets: Such a ban would have to be negotiated with the Players Union.

Can't wait to see the LA Dodgers and other teams send bottles of warm brown spit to Waxman's office.

Can we avoid 70% of the cost of the huge Medicaid expansion within ObamaCare?.  Yes, says a careful analysis, from a very knowledgeable source with practical experience.

Between 2014-2019, the estimated additional cost of the Medicaid expansion within ObamaCare, that accounts for over half those with added coverage, is $436.4 billion.  That’s the figure analyzed by United Healthcare’s Center for Health Reform and Modernization.  That ranges from $12.2 billion for Alabama, to $32.4 billion for California, to $28.1 billion for Florida, to $19.5 billion for Georgia, to $12.6 billion each for Indiana and Illinois, to $10.7 billion for Michigan, to $2.8 billion for Nevada, to $16.6 billion for Ohio, to $27.4 billion for Pennsylvania, to $59.5 billion for Texas, to $13 billion for Virginia.

The magnitude of each state’s added cost varies with how liberal its qualifications are already. Another factor is who gets new coverage.

Let’s get to the bottom line: Those claiming that their industry is too big to fail are those who are failures, failing in their basic responsibilities to plan, manage and innovate, most often accompanied by rewarding themselves with high pay and perks.

In the 1980’s, many large corporations were acquired by vulture capitalists, broken up and otherwise disposed of. Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars were sometimes wasted on acquisitions that proved worthless, except to the wheelers-and-dealers’ fees, although in far more cases reorganized leaner and meaner competitors emerged.  American industries, and those who wanted to keep their jobs, were forced to adapt if they wanted to remain viable.  The American economy prospered anew. Many millions of employees were dislocated, struggled, but American unemployment was at new lows as new opportunities were created.

Those lessons, like most, need to be relearned anew with each generation.

The Texas Stadium demolition video:

The Texas Stadium deconstruction and transformation video is even more interesting:

If you like explosions, here's the Three Rivers Stadium implosion:

And, here's the Cinergy Stadium implosion, with good soundtrack:

The Kingdome implosion looks kinda like it was in a SciFi film:

More cool ones at YouTube, of course.

Ed Morrissey and Professor William Jacobson inform us about the tragic death in an airline crash of the brave Polish president and a large number of Poland’s leadership, on their way to a joint commemoration with Russia of the 1940 slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union.

For those of you who don’t recall Katyn, I wrote about it last August.

Katyn: In 1962, one of my later mentors published the first definitive book proving that the Soviets committed the massacre of Poland’s military elite at Katyn.  This is a very important key to understanding the Captive Nations outcome of WWII and the Cold War.  I just rented the film, Katyn, directed by Poland’s most famous director.  Anne Applebaum, steeped in Soviet history, has an interesting review of the film, “A Movie That Matters.” An excerpt:

"Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.

"But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.

"Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty."

Obama snubbing Poland for 70^th anniversary of WWII? Poland was the most screwed over country going into, during, and after WWII.  Those of its soldiers who escaped the Nazis and Soviets were among the bravest fighters with the Allies. Poland and Poles deserve more respect.

Wonder what hollow words President Obama will utter now?

Today’s loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland’s most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland’s inspiring democratic transformation. We join all the people of Poland in mourning their passing.

As usual from Obama, contradicted by his undercutting of Poland volunteering to host anti-missile defense and his disdain for Polish President Lech Kaczynski when alive. Israel surely gets the point.

The New York Times asks: "For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class."  It had to before and will again, because Poles and their leaders have clearsighted historical memory and courage.

“I’m tired of hearing about the Holocaust.”  Be close enough to most people for them to be honest, even Jews, and you’ll often hear that said. What they most usually mean is they are tired of hearing hypocrisy.

Sunday is Holocaust Day, Yom Ha-Shoah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe, sadly commemorated in many nations so we don’t forget.  The actual full title is Yom Ha-Shoah Ve-Hagevurah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe and the Heroism.

Yes, there was heroism.  Among the parents and strangers who kept spirits alive ‘til death. Among the relative handfuls who risked all to shelter or aid escape. Among those who escaped to fight.  Among those who tried to alert the Allies and get their help, failing but persevering.