I envision an ugly future.  Despite the fact that I have joked with my mother that I was born during the Carter administration and everything turned out OK, I worry.  I see my child being born into an America I can't even recognize.

I find myself channeling my inner Sarah Connor lately.

I used to think that we were living Atlas Shrugged.  But lately, I think we're seeing a different ending.  I don't see the politicians kidnapping Galt and asking him to fix it fix it fix it; I think they want the broken system.

I don't know how to live in a broken system.  I feel like I need to spend some time learning how.

And even the plains aren't enough to calm my soul.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:32 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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People suck.  I can't even tell you how mad this makes me.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:13 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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1 i am astounded that you have heard about this . I am so far removed from news it isn't funny, but i did hear about this from a morning radio show the other day. would you believe it if i told you that the walmart mentioned in this news story is the walmart right near my house, where i have sometimes shopped?!

Posted by: Kate at August 17, 2009 09:04 PM (Fq55p)

2 Sweetie, you gots it all wrong.  Don't be hatin'.

They dint spend the welfares on the wii's. Dey spended the welfares on diapers and pencils, crayons, and educational stuff. ($200 per kid, age 2-17, in school or not!)  That freed up the $200 dey already had budgeted for dat stuff, so now dey could spennit on the X-boxes and Hi-Def.

Don't be frontin.  Obama said he was gonna pay my mortgage.

Posted by: Chuck at August 17, 2009 10:11 PM (bMH2g)

3 It is precisely this type of misappropriation of funds that leads them to need money to buy school supplies (allegedly) in the first place.  If the individuals in question made good decisions, they would be able to provide for the kids they have or, more likely, they would not have the children they do. 

This is why good parents make their children earn things.  So they see the value in hard work and have some ownership and investment in what they possess.  This from the mother who made her 5-year-old earn 1/3 of the price of her Barbie Jeep through chores (no b-day money!).  That Barbie Jeep is still one of her most prized things, even though she outgrew it a couple years ago.

You would think after the Katrina debit card Coach purses, boob jobs and lap dances, someone might have seen this coming.  But, after all, it was for the children.

Posted by: Feelin' Mean at August 17, 2009 10:56 PM (EvsXa)

4 You made me de-lurk on this post.  My mom lives in NY and was tellling me about this.  She saw what her neighbors daughter had spent on the grandkids.  I really wish I could go shop at the Gap, Hollister, or other high ended stores in the mall instead of Walmart and thrift stores.  Oh yeah they had to drive an hour to get to the closest mall.

Posted by: Cindy at August 17, 2009 11:00 PM (RVjNA)

5 I'm de-lurking too!  I live in this county and this is beyond irritating on so many levels.  Let's throw money at a problem and hope for the best.  The kids will show up on the first day of school w/ stories about their new video games and tv's but somehow without a pencil.  And we wonder why the Rochester City Schools are a complete mess. It starts at home people....

Posted by: Jen in NY at August 18, 2009 06:43 AM (cdiel)

6 If a lack of school supplies are such a real problem, then I must wonder why the money for school supplies goes to families with a suggested list of supplies to purchase instead of to schools to purchase and have on hand as needed.  I guess that would be rather like the school lunch program, but with paper and pencils.

And I'm NOT advocating this, I'm just thinking that it would have made more sense. 

Then again - sense and government hand outs aren't exactly known to be close friends and workmates.

Posted by: airforcewife at August 18, 2009 07:31 AM (CDkfD)

7 No offense, but this is why the poor stay poor.

Not because of the cards they were dealt in life, not because they didn't win the 'lotto' ticket of being born into a certain family or economic class. No, it's because they continue to participate in bad spending behaviors and they don't break away from their materialistic patterns confusing wants into needs.

One of the biggest characteristics of the wealthy is that they follow the behavioral cycle you’ll hear on any financial advisor show – earn, save, reinvest, then repeat. The common denominator among the wealthy is not the amount of income they earn (or liberals will say – their tax bracket), but the choices they make once the paycheck hits their bank account.

You could give these people on govt. subsidizes a million dollars and they'd still be filing for bankruptcy within 3 years.

Posted by: bdol78 at August 18, 2009 08:44 AM (W3XUk)

8

Man it's a small world, along with Jen & Kate I too live were this happened.

 

Yes, let's simply give money away....and then be surprised when it's misspent. Our government at work folks, I blame them just as much (if not more) as the scum who received the money.

Posted by: tim at August 18, 2009 08:47 AM (nno0f)

9 Okay, second thought - I'll support the X-box if it comes with the electronic game of Monopoly only so then these people can learn a thing or too about how to spend, save, and the results of investments or spending outside of your means to bankruptcy.  

Posted by: bdol78 at August 18, 2009 10:11 AM (W3XUk)

10

People suck.

We know. We Alphas just pretend to love them. And yet they vOte for us anyway! Bwahaha!

people were going in and buying X-boxes, Wii systems, flat-screen television sets

They're just viktims of corporations that brainwash them into buying unnecssary junk. Funny thing is, it's the big companies that fund us Leftists! You think Bill Gates is ever gonna give his money to the H-Heritage Foundation? What a deal ... your taxes fund their purchases that fund us. Follow the money ... Leftward!

This is a great example of why it's useless to give a man a fish.

It sure is useless. Who can live off a fish these days? Let's give 'em whales ... at your expense!  Er, veggie whales ... you know what we meant, right?

I'm sure non-welfare New Yorkers would like the government to give them money to buy a Wii too.

They probably would. We'll corrupt them all. Turn the whole populace into dependents except for a handful of Gulchies.

It's Wii - we - vs. you. We outnumber you. We'll outvote you. Welcome to the USSO - the United Socialist States of Omerica.

Democracy + dependency = a perpetual welfare state!

We may be mathematically challenged, but at least we understand that much.

I hope George Soros is glad that his "help the poor" idea just helped people to afternoons of Guitar Hero.

The poor need entertainment too. It's not fair that only richies get to play Guitar Hero. Video game equality now! It's probably on some page of some health care bill. Who reads that stuff anyway?  Reading isn't fundamental; it's fundamentally Europpressive! We Alphas have better things to do.

I'll support the X-box if it comes with the electronic game of Monopoly

Un-Liberaled Woman, these dependents are already learning about the ultimate monopoly - the gOvernment!

Posted by: kevin at August 18, 2009 10:28 AM (h9KHg)

11 AFW, that was my thinking exactly.  Lord only knows why we just want to hand out cash, but how idiotic!

Posted by: Guard Wife at August 18, 2009 12:17 PM (qk9Ip)

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Wise ideas from the CEO of Whole Foods: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

Of course, now this means that loons are calling for a boycott of the traitorous lefty store.  How dare they oppose Obama?

I take back all the snarky things I've said about Whole Foods.  I still don't have any interest in shopping there, but good for their CEO for being brave enough to oppose something that the majority of his clientele supports.

(Links found at Althouse's great post, Are We Having a Conversation Yet?, via Boxenhorn)

Posted by: Sarah at 07:01 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I meant to say this a while ago but just never got around to it.

20/20 ran a special a few weeks ago called "Over a Barrel" about oil.  First of all, I simply hate the expression "addicted to oil."  It's like saying we're addicted to houses or restaurants.  It's necessary for our lifestyle.  Just because we need it doesn't mean we have to sneer and call it an addiction.  And it's not like cigarettes, where we'd be better off if we stopped using them.  Our lives would be infinitely worse without oil.

Second, T. Boone Pickins really ticked me off.  At the very end of the show, he said:

Posted by: Sarah at 06:03 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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I just watched last night's Law & Order: Criminal Intent and flipped out.  I checked to see if I was the only one who noticed...Lorie did too:

A former Baader-Meinhof communist terrorist is murdering Wall Street fat cats and talking about overthrowing the capitalist pigs, and somehow the writers for the show tie him in with the Tea Parties.

My eyes are rolling so hard they hurt.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Via The Corner:

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I had this conversation this weekend:

Friend:  Well, I think people need health coverage.  And I include dental in that because I think dentist visits are so important.

Sarah:  Oh, my family never had dental insurance growing up.

Friend:  That's terrible!  My kids go to the dentist twice a year, no questions.

Sarah:  Oh no, we went to the dentist twice a year too, just that my parents had to pay for it out of pocket each time, for all five of us.

Friend:  [horrified look, as if I had said my dad did all our own dentistry at home in the garage]

The conversation turned to other matters, but as I think back on it now, I wish I could go back and restart the conversation from this point.  I find it fascinating that this friend equated not having dental insurance with not visiting the dentist at all.  My parents took us regularly, and they paid for everything on their own: cleanings, x-rays, fillings, sealant, my broken front tooth that rebroke six times during my teen years, retainers, four sets of braces, Mom's crowns and root canals, etc.  I know it wasn't cheap, and I have since thanked my parents for all the dental work they bought for me, especially since now I have to buy my own retainers each time the dog chews one up.

But we received dental care.  The lack of insurance didn't keep my parents from taking care of our health.

Why is it that people act like they have no concept of taking care of routine health concerns on their own?  As if to say that if it's not covered by insurance, you're out of luck?  We weren't out of luck; we just paid for it.

I mean they paid for it.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:53 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Jim Manzi:

Posted by: Sarah at 06:07 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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This should indicate how much quality Democrats really think they're going to offer us peons:

In other words, Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse won't themselves join a plan that "will offer benefits that are as good as those available through private insurance plans -- or better," as the Ohio and Rhode Island liberals put it in a recent op-ed. And even a self-described socialist like Vermont's Bernie Sanders, who supports a government-only system, wouldn't sign himself up.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I've been thinking about guns this morning.

Ever since we started trying for a baby, I have tried to figure out what I think we should do about our guns and teaching our child gun safety. So I read the post Guns, sons & the good old days of parenting and its comments with interest. I think I agree with many commenters that it comes down to respect: children need to learn respect for the power of guns and respect for the authority of adults.

I also found a clip at Gateway Pundit about a car dealership that's giving away AK-47s with truck purchases. Can you hear the condescending sneering from the reporter? I love how she says that people might be offended to hear the dealership equate God and guns. Really? Which people exactly? The gun people or the God people? I generally find those two groups overlap. Especially the ones who are looking to buy a truck in small-town Missouri.

Ah, liberal condescension...make sure to ask him if he thinks Jesus would approve of AK-47s (I literally rolled my eyes as I typed that, heh.)


Both links via Instapundit.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:27 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via Insty, a great PJTV video called Steven Crowder Investigates Why CanadaCare Sucks...Will ObamaCare Be Any Better?  It's worth watching the whole thing, but one of the most galling bits was when they go to a free clinic to try to get his cholesterol checked.  The nurse says they cannot do that at the free clinic and gives him two options: 1) go to a private clinic and pay $900 for a check-up, or 2) call a family doctor and ask to be put on the two to three year waiting list.  "You're young, so you have time; normally you don't have a problem at your age," she said.

And mostly the video just reminded me of military care.  We don't have to wait months or years for appointments, but our emergency room and weekend clinic is exactly like this video.  Plus we get to share ultrasound rooms!

UPDATE:  drblast is on the same wavelength, with Free Lunch, Please

Posted by: Sarah at 08:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via AirForceWife:

A group of 50 black males beats up a white family, shouting "This is a black world!" while they do it, and, quote,  "Akron police say they aren't ready to call it a hate crime."

Fantastic.  Because we all know if a group of 50 whites beat up a black family while yelling "White power!", the police would tread lightly and not jump to any conclusions.

I think we all need to sit through a presentation:

Posted by: Sarah at 10:30 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Here's a perfect example of a Lefty doing exactly what the Right is accused of: being elitist and racist.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg on abortion:

Posted by: Sarah at 07:53 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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We just gave a man a fish and fed him for a day, and now he wants another:

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(Via Insty): Gay Patriot has a post called As people flock to conservative/libertarian banner, fewer politicians seem ready, willing & able to carry it into battle.  I really liked the first two comments on the post:

Posted by: Sarah at 10:31 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I didn't write an Independence Day post yesterday.
I just didn't have it in me.

Neal Boortz hates the 4th of July.  Every year he refuses to work that day because he says he cannot stand people's superficial displays of liberty and independence.  Americans ask more and more of Uncle Sugar and relinquish more of their freedom in exchange for government security, and then they have the nerve to celebrate being free on the 4th of July.

I've always snickered at Boortz and thought he was overreacting.
But this year, I am slowly joining him...

As the future of our country goes down the tube, I had a hard time feeling very celebratory yesterday.

Many months ago, I happened to catch Sean Hannity doing a man-on-the-street interview with a young girl.  He was asking her questions about what she believed people had the right to.  According to her, they have the right to everything: jobs, education, shelter, transportation, health care, and so on.  But when Hannity pressed her, saying that surely she can't believe that every single person deserves free everything, she frustratedly replied, "No, you're twisting my words around.  Not everybody, only the people who can't afford it.  If you can pay for your own college, you should, but if you can't afford it, the government should help pay."  So Hannity goes, "Oh, OK, let me see if I can rephrase it.  You mean we should function to each according to his need and from each according to his ability?"  And the girl excitedly said, "YES, that's it, that's exactly what I meant!"

He then asked if she knew who Karl Marx was, and naturally she had no idea...

I just don't think my countrymen understand what true independence means.  I don't think they understand that freedom also means the freedom to fail, to have bad luck, to lose it all.  I don't think they understand what the signers of the Declaration of Independence risked and sacrificed.

I don't think they understand risk and sacrifice at all anymore.

And I can't help but note a new "long train of abuses and usurpations" with each passing day...

Posted by: Sarah at 07:39 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I saw Glenn Beck's discussion with Alan Carlin of the EPA this week, which is available here.  And this graph struck me as too crazy to even be true.



The red lines: "UN Predictions for Temperature Levels"
The yellow line: "UN Predictions: What Will Happen to Temperatures If Their Restrictions Are Put In Place"
The green line: "Global Temperatures from Surface Station Measurements"
The blue line: "Global Temperatures from Satellite Measurements"

So the red and yellow lines are what the UN says will happen, and the green and blue lines are what is really happening.  Note the enormous plummet away from prediction.

If this is accurate, then what is actually happening on our planet is nothing like what was predicted.  In which case, all decisions based on global warming predictions are moot.

It also reminds me of this unemployment graph.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:44 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I have always been frustrated by my lack of options.  If you wish for the United States to look more like Canada or Europe, then please just move to Canada or Europe.  Don't try to turn our country into something that already exists elsewhere.  Because if I want the United States to look more like what the Founding Fathers envisioned, with far less government intrusion, I have nowhere else to go.  There is no other existing country that matches the vision of where I want to live.  (And the US today ain't exactly it either, but it's the best we've got.)  Please don't turn my only option into another Canada.  Canada is already Canada.

Stephen Green: Once Upon a Time in America

Whatever liberty we have right here, right now, in America … well, for all practical purposes, that’s all that’s left anywhere. If France had our freedoms, there would be no French here. If China had it, there would be no Chinese here. If it existed in Latin America, there would be no Spanish spoken here. And so it goes.

And so if we, here in America, throw it all away in a fit of panic or pique, then what we once called “America” will become as false as a fairy tale.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:32 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So there we were...

I hate that I have to type this story.  I wish I could tell it to you in person, with wide eyes and lots of expletives.

We took a bus tour to the Grand Canyon yesterday.  And as happened when we went on a cruise, my husband and I remembered why we don't like being trapped with strangers.

Since it was a long drive to and fro, we watched movies on the charter bus.  There were a couple of kids on the tour, so the bus driver insisted we watch appropriate movies.  On the way there, we watched Marley and Me and Evan Almighty.  You get the idea: family movies.  And on the way back, this lady...

Wait, let me back up.

My husband and I were the first people on the bus, and we accidentally picked the worst seats.  On a tour of polite Japanese and snoozing Italian tourists, we happened to sit behind the most hoopleheaded, annoying, creepy American family.  I can't even do their annoyingness justice; it was just one of those situations where you find yourself unwittingly eavesdropping on their inane chatter for fifteen hours because they just won't shut up.

It was going to be a toss-up over whether the mom or the dad was the more annoying, but then the mom made a shocking leap into first place.

On the way back, the mom volunteered to choose the movie we'd watch.  And on a bus filled with Asians and black people, this lady picked out Gran Torino.

I am crapping you negative.

Here's how it played out.  Keep in mind that this conversation is being shouted the length of the bus, with the lady up front at the DVD player and me about 2/3 of the way back:

Lady: I really want to see Gran Torino.
Sarah: Nooohooohoo.  Not a good idea.
Lady:  But I want to see it!
Sarah:  It's not really, ahem, socially appropriate for this setting.  It's very controversial.
Lady:  Well, what else do you want to see?  No suggestions?  Then let's watch Gran Torino.

Now I am starting to lose my cool and get knots in my stomach.  There is no way we can put that movie in on a bus full of minorities.  (My husband wondered if the Japanese people would even catch the "zipperheads" and "gooks."  I said perhaps not, but everyone knows the n-word when they hear it.)

Meanwhile, I am trying to insist to the lady's husband that we simply cannot watch the movie.  I tried so hard to be diplomatic, saying that while it is an interesting movie to watch and discuss, this was just not the right time and place.  When the lady returns to her seat, her husband says maybe we should pick something else.  The lady starts pouting.  Finally, I lost it and said, "Whatever.  I'm glad you're comfortable playing a movie filled with the n-word."  Then the black ladies next to us start to get involved.  I swear one of them went all Bon Qui Qui and muttered that she would cut her.

Thank heavens someone else must've told the bus driver the deal, because by the time I marched down the aisle to insist that the movie was absolutely unacceptable, he had already figured out the gist and put the kibosh on it.

But seriously, oh my lord.  I about died.

My husband and I spent the rest of the trip giggling about other movies that we could suggest to watch: American History X, Crash, Deliverance, Pulp Fiction, and (the LOL suggestion from the husband) Brown Bunny.

We may as well have suggested porn.  It might've been less uncomfortable on a bus full of Asian strangers than Gran Torino.

I hope this lady goes home, rents the movie, and then realizes what she almost did and feels like crap.

No more group tours for the Grok family.  We're flying solo from now on.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:15 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Am I crazy? I'm starting to think I'm crazy.

While British officials publicly slammed Bermuda, they were privately annoyed with the U.S.
[...]
President Obama's aides told Britain the Gitmo group was headed to Bermuda less than 24 hours before the ex-inmates' chartered jet landed there, the Daily News has learned.

Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown said, "We are confident this decision is the right one from a humanitarian perspective."
[...]
Bermuda will also receive an unspecified "small sum" to cover their costs, said a U.S. official.

The "small sum"? $200 million. Kimberly Morin says it best:

Humanitarian? How about monetarian? I’d be willing to bet $200 million that the Palau government would not have taken these detainees without Obama bribing them with a cash payout. Of course the White House says that the money has nothing to do with the detainees. It is for development for the country of Palau. What is to develop? They are a gorgeous tropical island whose economy is based on tourism. Why would we be giving this tropical island money for development in the first place? Earth to Obama - horrible recession, highest unemployment in 25 years, non-stimulus doing nothing and you are going to give $200 million to a country that does not warrant development and has absolutely nothing to do with our economy.

It costs somewhere in the ballpark of $100 million per year to run the entire facility at Guantanamo Bay. So there's two years of operating costs to unload four guys. Furthermore, Palau's GDP is apparently $164 million. Hooray, Obama just doubled their yearly intake!

Seriously, when did the whole world become the Mad Hatter's Tea Party?

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