TINY MINDS

Archive for the ‘Bloviating’ Category

One of the most important things you must do, once you decide to run for office, is to get a clear idea of WHY you are running.

This is the most fundamental question you will be asked, and you will be asked it early and often, all the way through election day.

Many political experts say, and rightly so, that you need to have a 10-second speech, a 60-second speech, and a longer statement. The shortest is for elevators, or the line at the grocery store. The 60-second might be for a luncheon event or networking situation, or when encountering the press from time to time. And fundamentally, rather than going into details of issues, you need to know, and relate, why you are running for office.

Keep it simple. For example, “I’m running for the legislature because I believe that ordinary folks can do a better job of representing our interests than the politicians we have in office now.” Or “I’m running because we need to really find out and control what’s going on in the state capital.”

Think about why you are running — if it’s not something external to yourself, you may want to think again about running. Many of our current politicians ran (and continue to run) because they think of politics as a career, or the next stepping stone on their way up the political ladder. You know that’s not you — make sure you communicate that to your voters – and let “why” you are running permeate everything you do in your campaign.

Although I realize that tens of people stop by here each month, usually on accident, I’ve decided that I liked my old Lemmings theme better than the stark and dreary Gadsden bumblebee theme. Hopefully once we get past the 15th of October, I’ll be able to jump back into the bloviating with both feet.

It could be hard to type that way, but we’ll see.

Thank goodness the Democrats rarely listen to her. But in a recent article on Salon, she makes a slew of good points – and asks a couple of searching questions.

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. … It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

It was there for all to see. Those of us who are part of the mob, and helping drive the conversation online, could feel it in our bones. Too bad the Democrats, by and large, can’t seem to feel the populist anger that’s welling up all around them. Actually, it’s not too bad; the air has that 1994 smell to it, if you know what I mean.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

It’s easy — it hasn’t been about “people” in a long time, Camille. It’s about power. It’s about money. It’s about control. And it won’t end, ever, for them — because it’s all they know. The idealists of the 60’s are gone — either evolving into self-interested power-seekers, devolving into regular folks who just want to raise their families and make a living, or finally wised up and realized that the Republican or Libertarian Party is their true home.

I love the smell of 1994 in the morning. Smells like… victory. Some day, this regime is going to end.

Whole Foods still loves you, and they’re still a mass of gooey Leftists.

Today, on my way home from work, I stopped at the store to pick up some well-deserved barley-pop (they have a great selection) and ran into a friend of mine who works there.

Naturally, I had to stop and congratulate her on Whole Foods becoming the darlings of the Right Wing Conspiracy, with their CEO’s recent Op/Ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare“.

She said “I just KNEW you were going to come in and give me a hassle about that!” and laughed. She then proceeded to give me a copy of a letter they are issuing to any offended Lefty who comes by to bitch about Whole Foods falling off the Obamawagon.

Here are a few excerpts:

As you are probably aware, John Mackey wrote an Op/Ed piece that was published in the WSJ earlier this week … John’s intent was to express his personal opinions – not those of Whole Food Market team members or our company as a whole. Still, it’s very clear that John’s piece offended some of our customers, other members of the communities we serve, and some of our team members as well.

We offer you a sincere apology.

Whole Foods Market has no official position on the issue. That said, we have attempted to be part of the solution in health care reform for many years by providing innovative health care options to our team members. We believe that our high deductible medical insurance plan coupled with a company-funded HSA is an excellent way to empower team members to make their own health care choices.

John wanted to share our experience with others through his Op/Ed piece. He believes that the specific ideas he put forward would improve access and cost of health care for more people. Because our plan has held down overal costs (relative to other plans), WFM has been able to pay 100% of the premiums for our full-time team members — about 89% of our workforce…

WFM has a 30-year track record of caring about our customers, team members and communites. From local loan programs to salary caps, from donations to non-profits to funding the Whole Planet Foundation, our innovative programs are created and designed by team members who care about their fellow citizens…

In other words, we’re still the wacky, quirky, Lefty folks you buy your arugula from, so don’t stop shopping here. Just because WE solved the healthcare problem for OUR employees in no way means that we don’t support socialized medicine for the rest of you suckers. Unless you take ours away; that would be bad. We think.

in the version of WordPress I was using that apparently allowed folks to add themselves to my links list — so instead of writing a new bloviation, we had to do a little maintenance — and I decided what the heck, I’d update the theme.

Since tens of you visit each week, I thought I’d put in the effort to make it a little less gloomy than the old “Lemmings” theme, that and brown isn’t a very popular color of late, thanks to Barbara Box-o-rocks. Oh, sorry, SENATOR Box-o-rocks. Sorry, I forgot how hard you worked to “earn” that title by smearing Hershensohn so slimely. I’m sure that took the wind out of your sails and all.

I just got asked yesterday on Twitter why I am against the so-called “public option” in the so-called “health care reform” proposals now pending in Congress.

Actually, I’m not against a “public option” — we already have one, and it’s called Medicaid — a program that ensures that the poorest and least insurable among us are covered in the health care system.

Seems to me that there are four simple things we can do to improve health care in this country:

1. Tort reform — limit punitive damages, and require arbitration before awarding people like John Edwards tens of millions of dollars paid by doctors and hospitals for malpractice insurance. The money freed up could easily amount to billions in savings to the current system, making insurance and services more affordable.

2. Create “assigned risk” pools, not unlike how car insurance works, to handle people with pre-existing conditions. We could even throw some money at subsidizing the programs, set up on the state level.

3. To cover those not already covered by Medicaid (some studies report that quite a few people who are currently “uninsured” don’t even realize that they qualify for Medicaid), up the income eligibility levels to allow more people who can’t afford private insurance to be covered. At the same time, expand Medicaid to cover wellness issues such as regular checkups, health education, smoking cessation and substance abuse treatment.

4. Once we’ve done the above, require everyone to have a basic basket of health insurance. This would spread the costs over those people who have “chosen” not to have health insurance because they are perhaps young and healthy, but could afford health insurance. We require all drivers to have liability insurance; we should do the same with health care, since more and more it’s being deemed an essential “right” (although I hate using that word), and at the very least is not refused to anyone at the emergency room. Free riders who are able to help pay should do just that.

Next, let’s see how we can make Medicaid and Medicare more efficient and effective before spreading these systems over the whole thing. Let’s keep the government from competing via subsidies to the “public option” against a system that 80% of it’s customers are happy with. Once we’ve accomplished the above four items, and we wait a couple years, we can guage the results and see what else we should do.

Creating a gigantic government bureaucracy to solve a problem that is only a problem for a minority of the populace, when it could be helped greatly by a combination of tweaking the way we do things and subsidizing our most needful citizens, makes a lot more sense to me than blowing up what we have and moving to the so-called “public option.”

Thoughts?

I distinctly heard Obama say “Now, I don’t like big government” in his speech last night — but it’s not showing up in the transcripts.

Talk about chutzpah.

I didn’t write these, but I did receive them in my in-box, which is pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? Anyhow, thought I would share:

New Stock Market Terms

CEO– Chief Embezzlement Officer

CFO – Corporate Fraud Officer

BULL MARKET– A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius

BEAR MARKET– a 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING– The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO– The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER – What my financial planner has made me.

STANDARD & POOR– Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST– Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT– When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

MARKET CORRECTION– The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW– The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO – What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS– What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo at=2 0$240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR– Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT – an archaic word no longer in use.

I am SO stoked that the RNC has elected Michael Steele as the new chairman. I’ve met the man, and he’s not only a clear-thinking conservative, he has the kind of charisma that the party needs to move forward.

Congratulations, Michael and RNC — you’ve done a good, non-tinyminds kind of thing with this latest move.

GOP elects first black national party chairman.

So the GOP is out in the woods again. Boo hoo. We have only ourselves to blame.

We should blame ourselves for not being conservative in deeds as well as rhetoric. We should blame ourselves for trying to be “compassionate” with other people’s money. We should blame ourselves for allowing the movement to be distracted by wars. Wars happen — but the rest of our economy, our society, our culture goes on at the same time and must be addressed. We have elected leaders in the party who are technicians and networkers, not charismatic representatives of the conservative point of view. We have assumed that money wins elections. It doesn’t. Elections are won by big ideas married to big personalities. We had neither on the ticket this time around.

I could go on and on about what went wrong — but instead, I will be posting on how we can get it right next time and in the future.

What are you finding out about the course? Is it just hype and public information, or is it actually worth $2,000? It never ceases to amaze me that people will purchase absolutely already available information for vastly inflated prices — in this case, am I wrong?

Talk to me.

Part of what I do for a living involves investing in stocks and bonds.

Over the last few weeks, and months, I’ve noticed that markets can be mindless. Long a believer in relatively efficient markets, I’m becoming more and more convinced that they would be, if they weren’t peopled by idiots. I do believe, however, that in the long term (ie not a 24 hour news cycle, or a month, or a quarter, or a year, but rather over actual “long terms” of say 5-10 years) I think that markets are reflective of the values being traded.

At the current moment, however, the Mr. Market is being an ass.

The economy cannot possibly be as bad as the main stream media is making out, obviously for the benefit of their anointed candidate. This is a cycle that’s gone on for a long time; in my lifetime, there has been an alleged recession each time that a Republican (after Reagan) has been running for office. Bush I’s recession was illusory; Bush II’s recession in 2004 was also illusory. I believe that we are not in a recession now, although, due to the recent market crash and manipulated oil price shock, we may have a shallow one on our hands over the next couple of quarters. But it will be shallow, and short-lived.

As hedge-funds and massively leveraged investors were forced to unwind their portfolios due to the credit crisis caused by the sub-prime meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the Federal Reserve failing to “rescue” Lehman Brothers (which in my opinion will go down in history as the biggest dipshit move the Fed ever made, bar none), we are seeing retail investors start (too late) getting into the selling party.

Folks, Potter’s not selling, he’s buying. A recent op-ed piece by Warren Buffett referenced in this blog earlier tells you all you need to know: Valuations of companies are at an insane level — they are on sale to a degree not seen since 1974. If you have any kind of cash, you should do like Buffett, and buy, buy, buy.

If you have a portfolio, make sure it’s rebalanced, and then hang on for dear life. If you sell out, you are locking in your losses. Let others do that. Every single time there’s been a market crash, people with cash, and people who held on (assuming they were diversified into a spectrum of companies and bonds) were rewarded. Every single time. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

One last thought before I head for dinner. Think of it this way:

Let’s say you own a house. You’re planning on living in that house for a long time. Let’s also say that the real estate market is down, like it was in California in the 90’s. Or now, throughout the nation.

You bought your house for $300,000. You look on Zillow, you read the “comps”. According to Mr. Market, your house is now worth $200,000. Would you sell it now, seeing that it’s declined in value by a third?

Of course you wouldn’t.

Because you know that you’re going to be living in your house for a long time. And you also know that real estate prices in the long term always go up. Especially in inflationary times.

And just as you wouldn’t sell your house just because prices are lower at the moment, neither should you sell out of your investments. You don’t need to move out of your “investment house” — so don’t. Hang on, ignore the day to day news, and just bloody wait.

Let the morons sell to Potter.

Bill Clinton has once again shown the kind of statesmanship and class that he has occasionally exhibited throughout his “legacy building” phase after leaving office. Of course, he’s had his slips, but nothing like the idiotic rantings of fellow former President Jimmy Carter:

...Clinton told CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Wednesday that he doesn’t think “dumping” on McCain or his running mate, Sarah Palin, is a winning strategy. He said undecided voters aren’t interested in attacks but solutions for the problems they face.

“I just don’t believe that getting up here and hyperventilating about Gov. Palin, or Sen. McCain for that matter, is a productive use of a former president’s time and is not a vote-getter,” he said, adding that he admires McCain even though he disagrees with several of his positions.

Although I rarely have ever said anything good about the former President, I’m happy he’s taking this approach this time around.

First, my man Thompson ends his “electoral vacation trip”, finally putting an end to the farce that was his non-campaign, and breaking my heart, just a little. Now, Mitt Romney has thrown in the towel, leaving the GOP race to McCain — a man who will probably bring back the “fairness doctrine” that his alleged ideological father did away with, who will probably grant amnesty to millions of lawbreaking folks, who will probably do away with the already-meager Bush tax cuts and bring back the death tax, and …. ack. OK, breathe. Oh, and then there’s Huckabee, a man who called the conservatives in HIS legislature “Shi’ite Republicans” because they stood up, a little, to his massive tax hikes and spending increases and in-state tuition for lawbreakers, etc., etc.

Against the backdrop of John McCain running for the GOP, we have the spectre of either the corrupt and insatiably ambitious Hillary Clinton, or the empty-suited Barack Obama — both of whom have insisted that we need to retreat inside our shell when it comes to protecting ourselves from global islamofascism; both insist on socialized health care, massive regulation of industry as well as our personal lives to fight some alleged “global warming crisis”, etc. etc.

After re-reading Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay, I can’t even come close to voting for Hillary; Obama would be highly amusing as our President, at least for the first couple months, but it’s just too important a job to leave to either Larry OR Curly. Unfortunately, Moe is my only choice.

So I guess I’ll sign on as a McCainiac, and hope, as expressed earlier, that he’ll choose a real Republican as a running mate to placate those of us for whom RINO was not the idea when we signed up with the Grand Old Party.

Apparently, in her 35 years of non-stop public service, Bill and Hillary have accumulated a fortune! I never realized that “fighting for the children” paid so well!

Senator Hillary Clinton confirmed at a press conference in Virginia this afternoon that she’d loaned her campaign $5 million, and said, “The results last night proved the wisdom of my investment..”

Spokesman Howard Wolfson emailed with the news minutes earlier:

Late last month Senator Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million.The loan illustrates Sen. Clinton’s commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation. We have had one of our best fundraising efforts ever on the web stoday and our Super Tuesday victories will only help in bringing more support for her candidacy.

As I reported earlier, she’s drawing on a pool of personal wealth estimated to be as much as $41 million, as well as a reported payout to Bill Clinton of $20 million from the Los Angeles billionaire manager Ron Burkle.

I feel a little better now, although I’m pretty sure that “my guy” won’t be the GOP nominee in the end. I can only hope that McCain has the good sense to forget his hot-headedness to realize that Romney would make the best VP candidate.

I have to say, I’m sorely disappointed by the campaign so far of Fred Thompson — seems to me that he’s repeatedly allowed the media portray him as not really interested, engaged, or fired up about the prospect of becoming President. Is this the case, in fact, or is it just a hatchet job? I’d love to hear what you think about this.

I’m getting mighty tired of the press lazily trotting out the same damned stories every two years like clockwork. You know the ones:

1. Surprise that negative campaigning has emerged in a campaign
2. Articles about how somehow we’ve reached a new low in negativity and nastiness
3. Articles about how much “regular voters” hate negative campaigning and will probably stay home.

I would love to have the kind of job where I just trot out a story I wrote 12 years ago, dress it up in a different sweater, and send for the copy boy. That’s some kinda cool gig, imo.

Regardless, let’s talk about negative campaigning for a moment. First, we need to define what it “positive” v. “negative” campaigning means: Positive campaigning is talking about your own record, your experience, your own values, and what you would do if the voters elected YOU. Negative campaigning is talking about your opponents record, experience, values and what to expect from THEM should the voters be dumb enough to elect them.

Riddle me this: How does the press expect a candidate to get elected if he doesn’t give the voters a reason to either fire or not hire the opponent?

I’m not talking about slurs or lies about your opponent — those are bad. But those aren’t negative campaigning; they’re slurs or lies.

One of the reasons Phil Angelides is getting his ass kicked here in California is that he hasn’t done two distinct things: He hasn’t given most people a reason to vote for him, and he certainly hasn’t given most people a real reason to fire Arnold. I would argue that it’s actually more important to do the latter than the former, since I think we can all assume what Mr. Phil would do once elected — all we have to do is remember the Gray Davis years, only with less excitement.

Anyhow, please, MSM, stop whining about the evils of “negative campaigning” — it’s a necessary and required part of the electoral process — one that wouldn’t necessarily be that important if the damned press would stop writing the same tired articles every two years and actually delve into the records, experience, and values of the candidates.

What a concept.

We’re in the middle of changing the name of this blog; for some reason, D-S of the Week is offensive to some. I have no idea why, but since a lot of my friends on the internet, fellow bloggers, and others think that perhaps it’s inappropriate, why, heck, we’ll just change it.

There will be a time of transitions and possible interruptions, so please, be patient. Happily, at this point, we have 10’s and 10’s of people who visit here daily, so I don’t think too many people will be affected by the transition.

What’s the new name? Why, Tiny Minds, of course. We’ll be implementing the URL http://www.tinyminds.net, and will change all the appropriate references.

Thanks for your patience.

I have received a couple of emails from friends in various places saying basically “Hey, Tiberius, I like your blog but it’s hard to link it when my readers are objecting to the name of your site showing up in the blogroll.”

I’ve been thinking about it, and well, I can see their point. So just now, I went to Godaddy.com to see about buying the name “DSOTW.COM” — after all, a number of linking sites have already renamed my link “DSOTW”, makes sense to me. The LAST thing I would ever want to do is offend anyone, as all who’ve read my musings can tell.
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when any number of permutations of DSOTW were taken. Alas, the site is in Norway, and (my “norwidgjin” is a little rusty; I can barely pronounce lutefisk although I still remember the horrid smell) it’s apparently either a fan site for Norse Floyd fans, or it’s a “tribute” or cover band that would probably be a lot of fun to see, called “Dark Side of the Wall“.

Perhaps one of my Norwegian friends, of whom I probably have fewer after this post, can enlighten us on what it’s all about. In the meantime, at least they have another link.

And I was just kidding about the lutefisk, you North Dakotans, I realize that it’s the state dish. Just because I’d have to be down to the last possible thing to eat, with the SS and Quislings breathing down my neck, before I’d eat that stuff. At least without drinking at least half of a bottle of aquavite first.

But getting back to the subject — I guess if the word Dumbshit is that offensive to some people, they really haven’t looked around the Internet that much lately – but if anyone who links here — and I appreciate you all, believe me– wants to change the link name to anything they’d like, that’s totally OK by me.

I recently encountered a paragon of self-loving-ego-driven bloviation over at the Anti-Semitic Cartoons Blog, who goes by the name of Tony Malone. There’s a link to his blog imbedded in his name, and he’s posted many thousands of words over a couple of days no doubt intended to offend Jewish people but more likely just causing everyone to skip over his drivel.

In one post, he claimed that he wrote such long screeds because he’s a “writer”. So, being curious, I googled him and found that, indeed, he IS a writer. No doubt self-published, his 2-volume masterpiece is called “The Bible for People Who Hate the Bible”

According to Tony’s publicist (no doubt the same fellow he looks at in the mirror each morning): “In the end, Judaism and Christianity are left in tatters and the reader is challenged to think, and to question everything that we have been taught for millennia about “God” and religion.”

I’m sure you’ll all join me in trembling in fear at the incoming demise of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

EDIT: An example of Tony’s superlative bloviating can be found as the lead comment to this post. While I’m just screwing around, one gets the feeling that to Tony, this internet stuff is deadly serious.

Real Ugly wants to know what I’m listening to lately. I listen to a LOT of music, in any number of genres, so this selected 7 are just some that come to top-of-mind:

1. Warren Zevon — Lawyers, Guns and Money
2. Oingo Boingo — Capitalism
3. Larry Norman –6 O’Clock News
4. Garth Brooks — Standing Outside the Fire
5. Peter Gabriel — Book of Love
6. The Who — Cut My Hair
7. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy — Zoot Suit Riot

For the record, I own them all. As tempting as p2p is, I don’t bother. There’s so many sources of good music out there now, there’s no reason to risk the wrath of the copyright lawyers. See www.pandora.com.

We have finally found the “Perfect Storm”, of sorts, to help the Democrats get some sort of traction in the coming midterm elections.

Republicans have jumped off the President’s wagon faster than ever expected, and the Administration is spending its time calling “racism” and “isolationism” more stridently than they villified the right-wing critics of the Myer’s nomination. Rather than gracefully accede to Congress looking into the matter, especially given that top Administration officials including the President were unaware that there even was an approval of the deal, they’ve gotten their back up with veto threats (yeah, right, the President who never saw a bill he couldn’t sign will suddenly veto a mere delay in inking a deal with a UAE company?)

To call the whole mess a clusterf*ck is a huge understatement.

But if anyone can grab defeat from the jaws of victory, it’s people like Hillary and Chuck. We’ll stay tuned.