Archives for July 2011

Many people are painfully aware that there’s a fundamental problem in the United States today, but they’ve come to a misleading conclusion about the cause — one that’s leading them to trust the wrong people for a solution.

It’s becoming clear that Ayn Rand’s nightmarish vision of a future in which looters gain power over producers is coming true. I’m not an Objectivist and I disagree with Rand about a number of things, but I’m totally on the same page with her economically — and her metaphors about a world falling apart are ringing more and more true.

But many people seem to be so trapped in the current mainstream party paradigm that they’re fooled into believing that the current president is the problem. Since they see their choices as a matter of either Democrat or Republican, they see salvation in electing a Republican as president.

This frustrates me now, but it’s going to frustrate them even more if it happens — because a Republican president won’t fix the fundamental problems, either.

Keep Reading

Because of a welcome link from Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit site — followed by links in 826 additional places — traffic to this site has been rather heavy today. That’s a mild way of saying that we’ve seen unprecedented interest and it’s caused a few problems for our overtaxed server.

I apologize for the trouble this has caused for some of you attempting to reach the site. The traffic we’ve seen in the first five hours is already 24 times what we’ve ever seen in a full day before, so it’s just something we weren’t ready for. If even a fraction of you come back, we’ll have to move to a more capable server, but that would be a nice “problem” to have.

So far today, we’ve seen visitors from 73 countries around the world and all 50 U.S. states. Welcome to everybody. Please come back. You have a lot of choices about where to spend your online time. I appreciate your spending a few of your minutes with me.

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you’ll know that I have no use for either of the mainstream parties. I don’t closely follow the debate of the moment in D.C. anymore, because I honestly don’t think it matters.

Sometimes the hypocrisy on both sides gets too thick not to notice, though. The two parties frequently switch sides on positions — based on which party holds the White House at the moment, it seems.

Right now, Democrats are screaming that the debt ceiling must be raised and that anyone who doesn’t vote to raise it is irresponsible. Republicans are piously intoning that there can’t be more borrowing without some serious budget cuts. (Of course, their idea of “serious cuts” amounts to trimming toenails in my book, but we’ll leave that alone.

Take a look at the positions the two parties took on the issue of raising the debt ceiling in 2006. With a Republican in the White House, the Republicans voted to raise it. Democrats voted against it. Check the link below for details of how the Senate voted. They’re almost all a bunch of partisan hypocrites.

GovTrack: Senate Vote On Passage: H. J. Res. 47 [109th]: Debt Limit Increase resolution