The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Home Archives for 2008 Presidential Election

Let’s See What Happens

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OK, with Ohio gone I’m ready to concede the presidency to Senator Barack Obama. I offer well earned congratulations to those of you who worked so hard to get your candidate elected. Now, it is my hope that reason and sense will prevail among his advisers and him, and even with the specter of a Democratic majority in both houses of congress, Obama will avoid the temptation to oppress the country with a loony left liberal agenda. This goes against common wisdom, since as a senator, he really never reached across the aisle. However, as President, he better know that a plethora of liberal legislation would put a stranglehold on growth.

The prospect of a shit-pile of liberal legislation passing is daunting. How about a $10 minimum wage? Let’s have abortions for all! Tax, spend, and redistribute! Shut down conservative talk radio. Allow unions to strongarm their way into every business. Oh, and keep the teachers’ unions strong so the dastardly erosion of our public education system can continue.Tax corporations so heavily that they run for cover overseas. Penalize success. Reward indolence. Further the erosion of individual responsibility. Appoint activist judges with “empathy” instead of those who will try cases fairly and let them legislate from the bench. Pull out of Iraq before our goals are attained. Give everybody including illegal aliens health care so we have to further ration the already scarce services. The litany of potential liberal legislation goes on and on. Congressional liberals will want to expand their base by buying votes with all this legislation and more at the expense of the good of the country as a whole.

Will good sense prevail or will the spending floodgates be opened? At this point I don’t know if there’ll be a super-majority in the senate, but thank God it looks increasingly like there won’t be. Regardless, Obama’s role must absolutely be that of a moderating influence on an out of control Congress led by radical lefties Reid and Pelosi. Lord help us if they can ramrod their legislation unabated! One big problem I had with Bush is that he failed to wield the veto pen to stop the proliferation of profligate spending bills that crossed his desk. Obama needs to do better. He cannot allow Congress to spend our way to bankruptcy.

Problem is, we don’t know enough about Obama to predict whether he’ll be a moderator, a uniter, or a divider. We can only hope. He pretty much has a mandate here to do as he wants. Will he govern the country for all of us or just those who think he’s the Chosen One? No one knows what “Change” means now, but in a few months, we’ll begin to find out.

I am hopeful that we can avert a descent to the socialistic morass. I think a lot of far lefties will be disappointed. Meanwhile, the Republican Party must take this loss seriously—as it apparently didn’t in 2006—and reorient itself to being the party of small government and strong values. A makeover is a dire need, right here, right now.

Earlier, I wrote some comments to a reader that bear repeating here. So, here they are.

We’ve always survived cyclical socialism in the past; however, each time we leave a socialist phase, some vestigial programs remain behind. Through several generations’ increasing expectations, we as a society have come to rely more and more on handouts, as perceptions evolve from necessary evil to everyman’s entitlement. Everybody increasingly has the hand out and expects something for nothing. When that becomes the central theme of a society, it will ultimately collapse under the weight of decreased productivity, stagnant economy, and the already overfed public clamoring for mo’ money. The fragmentation inherent in this societal entropy sows the seeds for demagoguery and dictatorship.

I’ll do my part to restore my party’s greatness after the damage done by Rove, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield. We need to get back to being the mainstream party of the people, which is our rightful, historical position. If we can heal this society and make it strong again after Obama’s four years (assuming there are no major surprises tonight), we can get rid of the splinter groups that have screwed the party by their association with it.

If we lose big time, it should be a lesson. Of course, Category One voters are idiots and tend to vote against something more than for it. By the time four years of realization that socialism is oppressive has sunk in, I hope the lemmings turn away from the cliff and come back to Papa.

So, let us look forward to January 20, 2009 as a testimonial to the greatness of this country as exemplified by the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another and let us hope that those to whom the spoils of victory go remember what made this country great and how we got here. It didn’t happen by rampant pandering to a bunch of Category Ones. No, let’s unite this country with good, solid, moderate leadership that does more than just paying lip service to reaching across the aisle. Do you think Obama & Co. are up to it?

I hope the Obama Administration does not turn out to be another Jimmy Carter earn-while-you-learn program. History has been made tonight. Let that remain untarnished. President Obama will be my president as well as yours.

Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief that the campaign ads are over and we can get back to watching less annoying commercials for Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra and real news about Casey Anthony’s illicit attorney hugs. I wish you all brief and painless post-election hangovers.

The Mouse will return from time to time with comments from his soon-to-be opposition sofa, unless the congress shuts him down with the Fairness Doctrine.

I Hear Things Down Here

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I am The Mouse Who Ate Xanax, who lives under the Nittany Turkey’s family room sofa, within furry, rounded earshot of the big TV and the radio and all. I am not seen, but occasionally heard. I while away the hours of potential visibility by listening intently for signs of human activity and only come out when it is safe. There was a big dog the other day, one who could have swallowed me in one gulp, but I was in deep, pill seeking mode, so I avoided capture. Most of the time, as I said, I just sit and listen. ???? ????? In the process, I hear things that make me wonder.

For example, it seems to this Mouse that the U.S. Presidential race is almost finished. If you listen to the TV or radio, though, you would think it has been decided for months. Polls and all that stuff are being kicked around monotonously. However, nothing is decided until the last hanging chad is counted. The leading candidate, running a campaign on smoke and mirrors, by most available measures appears to have a significant lead. What a weird year this is.

Don’t get this Mouse wrong: the smoke and mirrors campaign has been masterfully run, as it seems to have hypnotized many potential voters with its rotating magical mantras of promoting wealth envy under the guise of “fairness”, promising payoffs to less fortunate voters under the guise of “tax cuts”, and completely ignoring the absence of qualifications of a magic carpet riding, panacea proffering candidate who has served fully 164 days in elected office before running for the highest elected office in the land. Something akin to Mickey Mouse politics is going on here, and this Mouse smells a rat.

The capybara in the room is the candidate’s smooth talking potential for hoodwinking voters who are disgruntled with the status quo into voting not only for him but also for U. ?????? ??? ????? S. Senate candidates from his party, candidates these voters would ordinarily pass on. Now, having heard their pied piper’s plaintive pleas, the rats are dutifully following their improbable leader. This is a disastrous course for my adopted country (but mice are not subject to immigration rules), as it may well lead to a super-majority for that party in the Senate, which will give them free reign over my unwitting landlord’s pocketbook, among other, almost unthinkable consequences. You can contact expert immigration attorneys for hire who knows how to navigate through the tough immigration law to help you with the complected and constantly changing immigration rules.

Humans seem to be such a pliable lot, kind of like a ball of silly putty. Watching how this shaman has promised witch doctor cures for all humankind’s ills by advancing a nebulous, undefined concept of “change”, I wonder whether I should not hire his campaign masterminds to help me market my odious mouse turds to the gullible public as natural, organic, herbal supplements. That would be offal.

This Mouse has to say that whoever is running that campaign and writing the words for its front man is a master of human psychology. He knows how you humans work. You are divided into two groups of interest for masters such as these: Category One is comprised of the vast unwashed, a large number of voters who don’t understand government or economics but who can be bought with fancy promises and sweet words, while Category Two is comprised of the intellectuals, the liberal elite, who think they know what is best for everyone else and can influence a large number of voters (or think they can). The leading candidate has managed to appeal to both the masses and the elites, both Category One and Category Two.

Recently, a local newswoman interviewed the candidate’s running mate and asked whether his proposed redistribution of income wasn’t the type of socialism described in Karl Marx’s seminal work. A great media outcry ensued, and the candidate’s campaign crew denied all further access of the TV station to anyone associated with the campaign. The campaign crew, having collected record-setting donations, immediately set its attack dogs in motion, performing a metaphorical strip search of the newswoman. Politics is nasty business.

While invoking Marx was probably a bit of a sophomoric ploy by the newshuman, this Mouse believes that the question was appropriate. Of course, it was side-stepped by the running mate, whose mouth had previously gotten him in trouble with the campaign’s masterminds. The skinny guy running for president has described wealth redistribution as a tax break, and people are buying the rhetorical ploy. Call it whatever you want. This Mouse calls it socialism. If it looks like a duck…

In one famous faux pas, the leading candidate spoke of people who cling to their guns and religion. This Mouse once again heard distant Marxian echoes: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Many liberal elitists believe that to be axiomatic these days. When speaking to those Category Twoers, thinking that he would not be overheard by Category Oners, the two-faced nature of this candidate surfaced. He knows how to talk to both categories. He talks to Category One in open forums, with some subtle winks to Category Two, with whom he typically consorts behind closed doors.

Many of the Category One voters do not understand what their bought votes are really buying for the future of the country. Most of the Category Two voters, the intellectuals, would dearly love to embark on such an egalitarian experiment as the leading candidate advocates, just to see how it works. Indeed, their intellectual curiosity has longed for it for many years. Of course, they turn a blind eye toward the historical failure of all previous attempts at implementing welfare states, socialistic paradigms, communism—call it what you will. Taking money from the most productive members of society and playing Robin Hood with it, using the gun to the head power of central government, is a depressive scenario, denying incentives, reducing productivity, and producing the opposite effect of what is being bandied about. It will reduce, not expand, employment. You need only look across the pond to Europe to see examples of stagnant, quasi-socialist economies.

One of my pill-providing benefactors, Artificially Sweetened, made a good point. Though the unemployment rate in Greece is 30%, why should the unemployed worry about it if the state is going to take care of all of one’s basic needs? If I were there, I would not have to beg for my bread crumbs and my Xanax. I would be able to eat moussaka (or is that mouse-saka) at every meal. I would drink my ouzo and Mousetaxa on the state. Opaaaaaaaaaaaa.

The other candidate appears to this Mouse to be a bland, stodgy, bald old guy, who would maybe be a good grampa if I were human. He seems to not have the killer instinct that a candidate must have these days. His ideas make sense and are not radical, but his opponent (whose ideas are) has accused him of being just like his party’s incumbent president. He has been unable to convince the public that this is not the case, and with the current president’s approval ratings hovering at a post-Watergate Nixonian 27% and threatening to dive to Jimmy Carter lows, this is a major failure. This Mouse, however, believes that voting for this candidate makes sense, if only to forestall further assaults on innovation and productivity, the cornerstones of a capitalistic system.

Further, it makes sense to vote for this other, more stable guy to mitigate the danger of a spendthrift congress, which is the cause of many of our existing problems. A rubber-stamp president is the last thing this Mouse would want, especially one who agrees with the tax-and-spend mantra proffered by the leaders of Congress. This Mouse believes the other guy when he promises to wield the veto pen and rein in the self-serving lords in those oak-paneled halls.

Michael Kinsley, with whom this Mouse seldom agrees, wrote an essay for TIME last week. In it, he said that our society is in dire straits, and that in times of crisis, we don’t need “change”. We need to get back to business as usual. This Mouse agrees. We do not need to be conducting experiments in social engineering; things are bad enough already.

Promises by the skinny guy can be taken with a grain of salt, as he has never actually accomplished anything in his life other than running for office. Many of these concepts have been tried elsewhere and have failed. Many of us are hurting and we blame our present leaders. Some of that blame is reasonable and just, while some is misplaced. ????? ?????? We want relief and the skinny guy’s line is appealing. Many of us would like to have the Brooklyn Bridge in our real estate portfolio, too, but most of us know better than to hand over $500 of our hard earned money to the snake oil salesman who offers it. The smoke and mirrors guy is presenting the same proposition—only it is your vote he wants, in return for which he’ll give you a great big bag of promises. You might feel good momentarily, but you’ll be selling out your progeny, dooming them to an economy that lacks the opportunity and incentives you American humans have known all your lives. His proposals don’t add up. Put them on paper and see for yourselves. If you don’t or you can’t, and you vote that way, chances are you’ll get what you deserve.

The future of this country has a direct bearing on all of us, and our vote must be seriously thought out. “Trying something new” doesn’t get it. We all hurt now, and our affections are easily bought by a whiff of expensive perfume and a dropped handkerchief. However, such rendezvouses rarely result in substantial, productive, long-term relationships. The last thing we need now is to capitulate to the flirtations of an untried, untested, inexperienced candidate. With that in mind, and in spite of my host Turkey’s previously announced write-in campaign, this Mouse endorses the white-haired guy for President of the United States.

Turkey for President

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If you’re even halfway intelligent, you have to be completely put off by the choices for President of the United States this year. Partisanship aside, we have one tragically inexperienced candidate who proposes that his inexperience is a qualification for high office; we have the other candidate in his golden years who can’t quite seem to put his finger on the pulse of the country. They are both U.S. Senators, although one is still on the Earn While You Learn program in that capacity. Senators, as a rule, are career politicians who have spent their lives talking about issues, writing bills about them, brokering deals to pass the bills, and voting on others’ bills. Most of them have never run so much as a candy store, let alone a state or a country. Between these two, you have one opportunist who feels that his destiny is to lead us (and to, of course, gather the spoils of victory), and another who won a war of attrition and seems only half-assed interested in the office he seeks. Both have enunciated pie-in-the-sky programs—their “plans”—which they know are unattainable, but which are great sales tools, pushing the right buttons with the right voters. Both give us round-about, vague descriptions of policies they propose, which they cannot promise to ever be funded, and which, furthermore, will require a compliant Congress to implement. Congress serves itself. At the same time, both have attempted to frighten us about the other. They both shoot for the lowest level, assuming that the electorate is composed of morons who will believe the interminable and annoying TV ads and stump speeches. Alas, our ignorance created both of these candidates, presumably in our image.

If we’re so stupid as to have put forward these two mendacious, opportunistic hypocrites as the entirety of the field for this horse race, we should recognize ourselves for what we are: easy marks. One guy tries to buy our votes by promoting wealth envy; the other guy tries to buy our votes by appealing to our sense of decency and values. One guy panders to pro-abortion whackos; the other guy panders to anti-abortion whackos. It goes on and on. The crap that flies is so transparent that if we don’t see through it, we’ll soon be shoveling it big time. Life with either of these guys will be a shit sandwich—the more bread you have, the less shit you’ll have to taste. That is the way of the world, which I’m telling you just in case you’ve had your head so far up your ass that you haven’t noticed.

Neither one of these guys has made the slightest attempt to abandon the vote buying and pandering to hit at the root of our biggest problems—the abrogation of individual responsibility and the concomitant massive increase in the size of government. We need to be reeled in. Us. All of us. I know, I know! It doesn’t feel good. They’ll take away our toys! The American Dream! Nahhh, we don’t want to be reeled in. We’d rather listen to vacuous promises and be hopeful that we can pass on the price of our denial to later generations. Anyone but us. We need our toys. We need our handouts. We need big government to take care of us from cradle to grave. Corporations that provide the stuff we crave are bad, evil profit mongers! We must be able to sue them to get our money back if things go bad! If we screw up, we need government to fix it for us. That’s it! Free stuff! Down with THE EVIL CORPORATIONS! We need governmental guarantees of safe conduct through life. Death to any politician who has enough balls to tell us that it cannot be so! Yeah, right. Bullshit, people. Those of us with any brains at all know that collectivism is a morally—as well as fiscally—bankrupt paradigm. We know what once made this country great and what will make it great again—the individual. But we need to stop listening to empty promises of quick fixes and find leaders who will lead—CEOs, not civil servants turned salesmen.

At this moment I can think of no politician who could run for president without peppering us with great packs of lies and unworkable feel-good scenarios. Accordingly, I am offering an alternative. I am proposing that you write-in “The Nittany Turkey” on your ballot if you feel as uncomfortable as I do in choosing between the two gentlemen who are running for the office. You want “change”—I’ll give you change. Here are some of my platform planks.

  1. Mortgage “Crisis”. No bailouts for either bankers or mortgagors. Let us bite the damn bullet now and not pass the problem on to our grandchildren, who will have their own problems to solve. Some people who have defaulted on debts that they entered into knowing full well that they would ultimately have to repay them will and should lose their houses—and perhaps their cars, their big screen TVs, and their Chicago Bears season tickets. These people are victims, alright—victims of their own greed, incompetence, and desire to live above their means. They should have stayed in rental apartments if they couldn’t afford houses, particularly in the overinflated real estate market of this decade. Now they must pay, not be bailed out. Everybody with the hand out needs to be politely told, “You broke it, you fix it!” Or maybe not so politely, responding in kind to their ridiculous demands.
  2. Line Item Veto. This is something that a long line of presidents dating back to Ulysses S. Grant have campaigned for and never got. Why? Congress reserves the right to load up bills with pork barrel crap they use to buy votes from the greedy beneficiaries of that pork. It has become a self-perpetuating nightmare. Let us end it by giving this Turkey the right to strike out any gratuitous add-ons that pollute legislation coming to him for signature.
  3. Energy policy. The solution to the dependence on foreign energy sources either must end or we will become a second-rate nation. It makes sense that we’re doing something wrong if we let enviropussies push us around such that we cannot drill for oil where it exists. There are no such restrictions in place with our international rivals. Russia drills where it wants and China is drilling off Cuba. We’re hamstrung because our politicians don’t have the balls to tell these whackos to shove off. They have far too much power—only because politicians listen to them and take their money—but they do not represent the views of the citizenry. They merely represent thumbs-up-the-ass elites. We haven’t built an oil refinery in 30 years in this country because environmental regulation, among other things, make it a dicey, risk laden venture. We need to provide incentives to the oil industry to increase domestic output, and to diversify into other sources of energy. Natural gas and clean coal technology need a boost. Finally, nuclear energy should not be the subject of fear smears. It works, it is relatively cheap, and it is sustainable. Unfortunately, it takes years to build a nuclear plant and the up-front investment is huge. This is where government can and must help grease the skids for private industry. We need to stop listening to fear mongers and set ourselves on a course that will take us to energy independence. Profits are not obscene. They provide incentives to improve the product and its delivery, as well as accruing to the benefit of all of us who own stock in oil companies, which includes a lot of people who bitch vacuously about “oil company profits.” You want to see chaos in the marketplace and long lines at gas stations? Nationalize the petroleum industry. Ain’t going to happen on my watch. The oil companies do a helluva job managing a distribution system that we take for granted. They deserve credit, not scorn, and they must be encouraged to explore, drill, refine, and deliver.
  4. The “right” to drive. Here’s a radical proposal sure to endear me to teenagers of all shapes, colors, and sizes and their irresponsible parents. Let us start by increasing the national driving age to 19. Let kids use public transportation and school buses. Keeping 16-18 year-olds’ asses out from behind the wheels of cars they don’t have the maturity to drive in the first place will save lives and money. We’ll save lives because studies have shown that the pre-frontal cortex, where responsible decisions are made, is not fully developed until about age 25. Let the little geniuses do their text messaging on school buses, not in their own cars, so they don’t risk MY ass as well as theirs. We’ll save money because parents won’t be obligated to buy Junior or Megan a car when he or she turns 16. There would be an exemption for 18 year-olds who have served or are in the process of serving our country (see #6). If you are responsible enough to fight for our freedom, you’re responsible enough to drive. Meanwhile, we must beef up public transportation. As a society, we just cannot afford cars for our least productive citizens.
  5. Health Care. This is not a responsibility of government and it should not be a responsibility of our employers. Why do we concede something so important to entities that couldn’t care less about us as individuals? Government-run healthcare systems exist in Canada and England, and through them we can see where we’re headed if we go that direction. This is an area in which the left-leaning candidate has it all wrong and the right-leaning candidate has it all right. While it sounds great, the bill of goods sold by the socialist fails when it comes to funding it. We’ve already crossed that bridge with Medicare. The rationing and the squeeze on private physicians’ incomes can only get worse if the scale of social medicine is broadened. Meanwhile, the pseudo-individualist would leave the employer-driven health insurance morass in place with some beneficial modifications. This Turkey thinks he has a better idea, but it doesn’t go as far as it should to place the responsibility squarely back in the hands of the individual, not his government or employer. Competition in the marketplace is necessary to drive prices down. Individuals should buy their own health insurance as we self-employed people have to do. We should be able to buy insurance across state lines, as one candidate proposes. We should dump the whole “managed care” system and allow only traditional indemnity health insurance policies to be written, with no special deals between insurance companies and providers. Everybody pays the same price and deals with the insurance company for reimbursement. The doctor and his staff work for YOU, the patient who pays them, not for the insurance company, whom they presently believe is the true customer. I could write 100 pages on this, but you get my point. As soon as government and the insurance industry stop holding the health care industry for ransom, we’ll get prices down and service will improve. We can provide a governmentally funded (i.e., out of my pocket and yours) safety net for the truly needy uninsured, but this does not mean those healthy young folk who choose to gamble irresponsibly by not purchasing health insurance because they would rather spend the money on clubbing and toys. Those people need to pay the price, because you and I don’t intend to.
  6. National Service. This one will be very popular with parents of so-called young adults. Every lad and lassie will be required to serve two years in service of their country. Pay would be minimal, but they would receive sustenance, lodging, and invaluable training. Military service would be required, as it is in Israel. No exceptions for the rich, only for those unable to serve because of physical handicaps (which will be relabeled handicaps, not referred to as “challenges”). We will no longer have issues either allowing or prohibiting homosexuals (not “gays” – we want that word back as an happy adjective, too) in the military because everybody, straight, queer, or otherwise, will be required to serve. Non-combat assignments will go to those who are not fit for combat.
  7. United Nations. It is time that someone else played host and provided most of the funding for this corrupt and ineffectual institution. We have been royally screwed for too long by an outfit that has evolved into something that bites the hand that feeds it. Spin off UNICEF. They do good work when UN operatives are not siphoning off funds from that program. Abandon “peace keeping” programs where UN troops wind up creating more havoc than peace, raping women and stealing stuff.
  8. The War in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do not pull out until both wars have concluded successfully to the benefit of the region and our interests. Yes, oil is involved, but until we can fully implement my point #3, which could take a quarter century, we need to ensure that our high-mindedness does not cause our balls to be cut off unwittingly. It is nice to talk about global peace, but as you learned in Economics 101, it’s all about resources and scarcity, and we need to get our hands on those scare damn resources. The defense budget pales in comparison with spending on social programs, but without it we’ll obviate the need for social programs.
  9. Living within our means. Yes, friends, that’s how we’re going to solve what has become an economic nightmare. We’re all bitching—which means we’re all fucking guilty! Nice smokescreen, folks. You want government to cover your ass because you were a bad little boy or girl and you got caught? No, baby. You need to be spanked. You’re feeling the sting of that brown leather belt right now and that’s why you’re crying NOT FAIR! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Yeah, ya bunch of pussies. You did it to yourselves, so don’t go crying to momma government to fix it for you. That comes out of MY damn pocket and the wallet is hereby shut! Get rid of your fancy cars, your fancy houses, and your fancy entertainment habits and live within your means for a while. And if you lived beyond your means for a long time and the bill is now coming due, PAY THE FUCKING BILL. That might mean living very low for a while, but you did it to yourself, buddy. And stop taking off work at 2:30 on Friday, damnit! Our national productivity is suffering in this leisure oriented society. We spend far too much money to support dumbass actors and even dumber professional athletes, while Rome burns. This money is just thrown away. If we refused to pay $12 for a movie ticket and $90 for a seat at a basketball game, we’d fix this in a hurry.
  10. Fix our schools. Get rid of teachers’ unions and privatize schools. Pay teachers a competitive salary and require that they have real degrees in real disciplines, not watered-down “Education” degrees. Require real world experience outside the classroom as a qualification for a teaching position. End certification programs that tend to create barriers to people who really have something to offer kids and protect incompetent teachers. End social promotions. Get government the hell out of the classroom.
  11. Stop blaming what happened yesterday. Yesterday is gone. We can’t change it, and it doesn’t matter who did what to whom yesterday. The future is a dream. The only thing we have a hold on is the present, so let’s take the bull by the horns. This will be hard. We will have to endure hardship that no generation since those who lived through the Great Depression and World War II ever had to face. We’re far removed from that type of hardship, but we’ve shown in the past that we can survive it. We need to come together, work hard, make sacrifices, and make this a better country for succeeding generations.

And so, my fellow Americans, look cynically at politicians who offer the same old crap with different labels, particularly those who offer “change.” That’s just a sales gimmick. Either of those two guys will ultimately play the game in Washington just as it has been played for over 200 years. They’ll tell you what they think you want to hear in order to get your votes, and then they’ll do whatever the hell they want—for the benefit of those they “owe” and to feather their own nests and lust for power. I, on the other hand, won’t tell you what you want to hear. I’ll tell you what you knew all along was true but chose not to think about. Now it is time to think about it. Now is the time to DO something about it. Let us bite the bullet together and make this country strong again. Write-in The Nittany Turkey on your ballot November 4!