A Daily Dose of Ben

2009-06-26T07:48:00.002-04:00

So Michael Jackson is dead and half the world seems to be crying. Somehow I can't seem to forget that he slept with little boys, so I will save my tears. I'm not saying I'm happy he died, I'm just not going to mourn the passing of such a person.

2009-06-25T10:04:00.002-04:00

A lot of people are getting behind Obama's plan to have the government offer health insurance. I just don't get it. So let's say there's now a public option.... First off, pretty much anyone with chronic illnesses is going to switch to the public option, because it will most likely be mandated to be cheaper. Then the government will soon find they don't have enough healthy people paying premiums to offset all the sick people on the plan, so they will come up with some sort of incentive that a private company is unable to offer, or they will find some other way to shift the law to get more healthy people on the plan. At the same time, to save on overhead headaches, companies will stop offering health plans to employees, and instead give us all 2.5% more pay or something like that. Since individual private insurance doesn't get the same tax breaks that employer-provided insurance and presumably government-offered insurance does, it won't make any fiscal sense for an individual not to be on the government plan at that point. And soon enough there will be no private option left. It comes down to this- no government plan can compete on a level playing field with private ones over the long term. So they won't have a level playing field, politicians and bureaucrats will tilt it in their favor.

Even if the government could conceivable do it better and cheaper, I still wouldn't want it. Why? Because I am not a ward of the state, I am a free man, and I do not want government officials, elected or otherwise, making decisions about my health care. Anyone who tells you the private sector shouldn't be scared, that as long as they are competitive they'll be ok, and if they aren't then why shouldn't we do the government plan is being naive. They are ignoring all the millions of incentives that this will create for politicians to make the government plan the only plan over time, and then we lose our freedom.

The current system is broken, but not because of the private sector. If you want to blame someone, blame wage controls put in place by the government in WWII. That's why employers started offering health plans, and why they got a tax break for doing so while individuals cannot get that same tax break. Give individuals the same tax break that businesses do for health insurance, and then you'll see the free market work it's magic.

To those of you who object that the free market only works if people are willing to spend the time to find the best service and the best doctors and the best prices so that competition will help the best and hurt the worst.... I say that your health care should be far too important to you to allow such choices to fall in to the hands of politicians or even your employer. I say you should be lobbying for health insurance tax breaks so that you have the freedom to find the best, and I say if you aren't willing to put in time and research to find the best solution for yourself, then you deserve the crappy care you will get from Obama's plan. It's pathetic that people are willing to spend hours upon hours shopping for shoes to match a new dress, but get upset at the idea of having to shop around for the best health care.

The problem with letting someone else decide on what health care is best is that they might be considering different factors than you, like price instead of quality, or speed instead of accuracy.

2009-06-17T14:06:00.002-04:00

It's too early in the game to predict a result, but what is going on in Iran has implications for beyond its physical borders. There are two really fascinating things going on here.

One, the country is revolting. 70% of the population there is under 30 and mostly secular, so the days of the Mullahs being in charge are nearing an end, even if the current events don't do it. Demographics are an unbeatable force. A few 60 year old men cannot control a country of millions of 20-somethings who don't like old men. And the result of the current unrest could lead to real democracy over there, and the beginning of wider change throughout the Middle East.

Two is twitter. New technology and historical events are colliding like never before, and it's fascinating to see the quick evolution going on. For instance, once the Iranian government started shutting down Twitter relays or whatever the proper nomenclenture is, folks started posting backup IPs through Twitter, but it being public and all, the Iranian government saw those IPs posted and blocked them, too. So now the people are finding other means of communicating relays so they can use Twitter and keep the flow of information going.

Keep yourself posted on what's going on, this is important, possibly world-changing stuff. If you really want to know what's going on, forget big media, CNN and ABC don't have a clue. Go somewhere like www.boingboing.net and look for their stories on Iran and follow links from there and explore the plethora of fascinating communication coming out of an opressed state.

2009-06-12T12:57:00.002-04:00

What exactly defines "zionist?" One thing a lot of anti-semetic jerks like to say is that they aren't "anti-Jew," they are "anti-Zionist." But what does that mean? Traditionally Zionism meant that you believed in a goal of a Jewish state to protect Jews from the sort of things that tend to happen to them in non-Jewish societies, like pogroms, Holocausts, the Dreyfuss Affair, the Leo Frank lynching, and general anti-Semetic hate.

So when someone says they aren't against Jews, just Zionists, what they really mean is that they are against any Jew who is proud of being Jewish and willing to defend both themself and their families and fellow religionists against aggressors. Anti-Zionism means the only Jews you like are the ones that dislike 90% of the Jews in the world. And therefor you are against 90% of the Jews in the world. It's hard to seperate anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism, because when it's all said and done, Zionism is the belief that Jews should be allowed to live in peace, and anti-Zionism is the belief that they should only live where they are told to, and they should not defend themselves against aggressors.

2009-06-12T09:35:00.001-04:00

An email I just wrote to my sister:

So I assume you've read about the Holocaust Museum shooter? I'm just
curious if people in your circles are talking about it at all, and
what they are saying. I keep hearing how this is yet another case of
right-wing extremist violence, but I have a hard time equating a man
who hates Bush, neocons, Israel (which has much higher support on the
right than the left in this country), and thinks socialism is the
future of humanity can be called right-wing? I don't think he could
really be called left-wing either, though his rantings make him seem
more left if you were forced to define him.

But I think that right there is the root of the problem. Everything
in society today has to be looked at in terms of its group
identification. Why can't the guy just be crazy, why do we have to
say he did it because of some group we decide he was associated with?
Than all of the sudden you are looking at members of particular groups
not as like you, but as something different. Then they become
dehumanized, and that historically leads to mass murder, and has
nothing to do with which side of the aisle you consider yourself
politically. Both left and right wing regimes have used group
identification to commit mass murder, and it could easily happen in
this country if we start looking at every individual murder as the
result of a political ideology.

It's already happening. Not to the extent of killing people, but look
at the abuse Sarah Palin takes. Letterman made a rape joke about her
14 year old, and gives a lame half-apology, but if you read the
left-wing gathering places online, there's an awful lot of people that
think it was ok because Palin is Republican. That's just an example,
people on the right dehumanize people on the left plenty, too. And
it's so very dangerous, possibly one of the most dangerous tendencies
of our society, and the exact opposite of the world Martin Luther King
Jr. dreamed about.

2009-06-12T09:23:00.000-04:00

Some deluded nutcase shot and killed a guard at the Holocause Museum, and it's being shouted from the rooftops that it was a case of right-wing extremist violence.

That's ridiculous. This is a man who hates Jews and Israel. Which side of the aisle shows the most support for Israel? The right. He hates Bush and Neocons. Sounds like a left-winger to me. He believes socialism is the future of humanity. How can you be more left than that?

Thing is, he's not left, either. He's just a crazy nutcase. Why do we have to define every event by some sort of group identification? Why can't people understand that crazy is crazy, and not necessarily politically aligned with anyone?

2009-04-23T15:57:00.003-04:00

One of the problems we had during the Bush era was that the Bush haters brought up so many ridiculous, outlandish criticisms that folks like me that lean right had to spend time and effort refuting, while we would have been better off being able to spend our time legitimate criticisms of Bush, of which there are plenty to be had. I fear the same thing happening with Obama. His supporters are going to spend so much time refuting ridiculous claims of Obama-haters that legitimate criticisms from within his own party won't have as much time to get aired. And that's why the Tea Party and other folks looking for a better government than what Obama is giving us need to emphasize the importance of staying on message and only using legitimate criticisms of Obama. If the Tea Party's message start leaning towards crap like "Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii" or "Obama is Stalin," they will lose me and a whole lot of other people.

2009-04-23T15:22:00.002-04:00

I'm a big, big fan of this Tea Party thing. In this age where economic concerns easily trump social issues like abortion and gay marriage, it's a perfect time to forge a new coalition of libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and Democrats who understand that our wealth comes from business, not big government, and that strangling business and overtaxing consumers will not lead to prosperous future.

Anyway, I had a little friendly debate with some other folks who are fans of the movement over how it should present itself. We never really came to agreement, but the crux of the issue was a poster from the Atlanta Tea Party that had Obama in a Russian military uniform. I said comparing Obama to Stalin is off-point and will hurt recruitment of more folks to the cause, whereas they thought it was a perfectly reasonable sign for the context and that people at the Tea Party understood it was a comparison involving socialism, not Stalin's mass murdering of millions of people. I see their point, but I call it preaching to the choir. Yes, the people there may have gotten, but the people watching on TV that might come to the next protest may not have gotten the message, and just like Bush/Hitler comparisons made legitimate opponents of Bush look like fringe wackos, I think Obama/Stalin comparisons will hurt the cause. I find it hard to separate Stalin the communist from Stalin the mass murdered, so when I see a comparison to him, I think of both of those things.

An analogy would be a Bush-hater having a sign comparing Bush to Hitler and saying the comparison is not that Bush is a mass murderer like Hitler, but that they both spend tax dollars to make the trains run on time. Somehow I don't think that's gonna fly.

2009-02-23T06:30:00.002-05:00

So I'm going to really try hard not to spend my time on my blog trashing Obama. There's no point. Anyone with any common sense has looked at this "stimulus" package and realized that our current President is a clueless idiot looking for political cover. He doesn't know what to do with the economy, he just figures he could capitalize on peoples' fears to pass a massive spending bill. If the economy improves through no fault of his own, he'll get credit, and if it doesn't, he doesn't care because he's already got his new programs paid for. Since Jimmy Carter have we had a President who was so willing to kill our hopes and make everything seem really bad? What a depressing leader Obama has turned out to be. Hope and change? More like fear and more debt. But that's enoough Obama trashing. From here on out I'm going to try to suggest solutions, not bash others' mistakes. We'll see how long this lasts :)

2009-02-20T09:54:00.002-05:00

Did you see this ridiculous new cartoon controversy? The New York Post published an editorial cartoon that made Obama out to be a chimp and criticized the stimulus. Sharpton and other likely fellows called it racist, and are making a big stink. Once has to wonder where they were the last 8 years as editorial cartoonists made drawing of Bush as a chimp. Funny how criticism of Obama is evil, but it was wonderful to criticize Bush.

This is exactly what many of us said would happen if Obama was elected. Any disagreement would be met with accusations of racism. If not by Obama directly then by the media and other folks that so willingly cover for him at every opportunity.

2009-01-18T22:41:00.002-05:00

Well how about this! The Dalai Lama, champion of non-violence and a hero of many on the left and the right, says that terrorism cannot be fought by non-violent means and that he loves George Bush.

2009-01-18T16:49:00.003-05:00

The way the media is portraying the saga of flight 1549 is really ticking me off. It's not a "miracle" that no one died, it's the result of a highly skilled individual doing what he was trained to do and landing the plane safely in water despite everything he had to deal with. To call it a miracle demeans the pilot's training and skills and makes it seem like it was the hand of God. Why is the media always so quick to ignore the contributions of individuals?

I also want to point out that the first people on the scene, the folks that pulled people from the water and got them to shore, were ferry workers and dockworkers, not part of any government rescue team or something like that. The government, in many cases, would like "civilians" to wait and let the experts handle things, but when it really comes down to it, rescue teams, cops, firemen, whoever else can only get there so fast, and are often hampered by bureaucratic crap. Thankfully these folks in New York had more sense than to wait for someone "official" to show up, and they did things for themselves. You can't always wait of the government to save you, and your life will be much richer and happier if you learn to take care of yourself even in extraordinary circumstances, instead of waiting for the often anemic government to take care of you. Of course it's that entitlement attitude that the government should take care of everything that got us in our current financial mess and is making it worse with more and more bailouts to companies and individuals that should instead learn to take care of themselves.

2009-01-08T06:37:00.003-05:00

Here's a fantastic column on why Israel has to do what it is now doing. Read it, and make it available to folks you know who need some education on the truth.

A couple of things that really bug me about the situation. Egypt has a border with Gaza, and Egypt keeps it mostly closed. Why was Israel the only one being vilified for keeping their border closed? If it's really all about oppression, shouldn't Hamas send rockets into Egypt, too? But it's not about oppression, it's about hate. It's obvious that Hamas cares far more about killing Jews than living peacefully or saving the lives of their own people. Anyway, read the column, he's got major points that I'm not bringing up right now.

2008-12-01T14:12:00.002-05:00

I want to mention a couple of things regarding the recent massacre of innocents by Muslim terrorists in Mumbai, India. First off, my prayers go out to friends and family of all the victims, and especially to the Rabbi and his wife, who I understand were tortured before they were killed. The surviving terrorist said that Jews were top targets. And what the heck do Muslims in India have to do with Jews? Nothing, except hated. You can't put this on Israel/Palestine. None of the people involved are either Israeli or Palestinian. It's simple hatred from radical Muslims, and anybody who is still preaching tolerance of that crap deserves bad things, because they only encourage more of it. There ideology that is leading these psychos to do these things is contained in the Koran. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to interpret any sort of writing, but a plain reading of the Koran provides self-justification of the actions of Islamic terrorists. Why the west (and former British colonies like India) continue to put up with this crap is beyond me. When will they get serious about fighting back? First they have to admit there's an enemy. How many people have to die first?

The other thing I wanted to point out is that India has very strong gun control laws. It's interested how almost all massacres involving guns, be it by terrorists or crazy high school kids, happen in legally gun free zones. And the typical response of politicians? More gun control. When will they figure out that gun free zones basically beg psychos to go there and shoot people? "Well I want to kill a bunch of people. I could go to the mall and run into a bunch of people carrying concealed weapons, or I could go to a place that is a 'gun-free' zone, and have plenty of time to kill people before anyone with a gun shows up. I'll go with door #2." Politicians, by and large, seem to be one of the stupidest demographics on Earth.

2008-12-01T13:00:00.002-05:00

The whole economy thing still drags on. "Black Friday" sales were actually up 3%, which is surprising only in that the media has been telling us how bad it was going to be for months. The fact is, even with unemployment up about a percentage point nationwide, most people still have jobs, their incomes haven't been reduced, and plummeting gas prices have actually put more money in their pockets. The only surprise should be that anyone still listens to the mainstream media (by which I mean the AP, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FNN, the New York Times, and all the outlets that blindly follow their leads), considering how wrong they are over and over and over again.

That said, the economy still has issues. The bailout will cause us problems for years to come. The auto industry, whether it gets bailed out or goes bankrupt (bankruptcy would be MUCH better for the economy in the long run) is going to cause plenty of problems. And the big one, the mortgage mess.... Well instead of fixing the causes, we're just trying to fix the symptoms. The cause is pointed out very well in this article. Whatever fools tell you, the primary cause of all of this was the CRA. It was created in 1972 to help poor people own homes. The real problem came during the Clinton administration when he gave the CRA teeth, and also launched an anti-redlining campaign. $13 TRILLION of wealth, just flushed down the toilet. If someone says, "Yeah, but the CRA only applies to actual banks," respond by telling them that:
1. 4 of 10 sub primes were from actual banks
2. An even higher % of the money involved in sub-primes was from actual banks
3. Even if only 1 of 10 sub-primes was through actual banks, Clinton's pumping up of the CRA created a marketplace to sell those sub-primes that didn't really exist before, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government backed corporations, did everything they could to make it happen
4. Large non-bank lenders like Countrywide did not technically fall under the CRA, they faced immense pressure to do what the CRA specified
5. A lot of the sub-prime lenders were not banks, but were owned by banks, and, in effect, fell under the CRA anyway

Instead of getting rid of the CRA and thereby fixing the mortgage industry, our Democrat friends in Congress would prefer to blame the whole thing on George W. Bush, and create even more bad regulations with incentives that lead to bad ends.

That's what it's really all about. Unintended incentives created by government meddling in the economy. Sure, it sounds nice in the short term to give out riskier loans to help the poor and minorities own homes, but in the long term it leads to economic destruction. But hey, they can always count on their pals in the media to cover it up and blame Bush.

2008-12-01T12:57:00.004-05:00

So Obama picked Hillary to be the secretary of state. I'm not really sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, as a right-leaning libertarian, my instinct is to dislike Hillary. On the other hand, she's gotta be better than if he picked some far left nutbag, and she seems well disposed towards Israel. At this point, we'll just have to wait and see.

2008-11-20T15:00:00.002-05:00

I keep seeing people talk about how the US economic issues are dragging down the rest of the world, and it sucks, because it the fault of the US. Well yes and no. Other countries made the choice to be economically tied to us. If they thought there was risk there, then they shouldn't have bought in, but they did, and you can't blame the US for decisions other countries made.

2008-11-14T14:50:00.002-05:00

One thing libertarians like myself like to harp on is all the unintended consequences of various government actions. Most entitlement programs create perverse incentives that are fairly obvious, but let's look at a program that most people would probably think is entirely a good thing: student loan programs sponsored by the Federal Government. At first glance, you think, hey, how bad could it be, the government is helping people who can't afford it yet to go to college on a low interest loan. The problem here is that once schools saw the easy availability of loans for college age kids, they realized they could raise their tuition rates.... And they just keep on rising, because Federal loans keep on rising to meet the higher tuitions. So more and more people are forced to get Federal loans to go to college because the rising tuitions lower the numbr of families that can afford to send kids to college without loans. And now we have ridiculously high tuitions that far outpaced inflation, and millions of people in their 20s and 30s who have many tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Just another unintended consequence of the government trying to help people.

2008-11-12T13:51:00.002-05:00

This is interesting in an ironic kind of way. The sum it up, Obama has reached out to a Republican, former congressman Jim Leach, to be one of his reps at the upcoming G20 Economic conference. The ironic part is that Leach was one of the prime movers behind the Gramm-LEACH-Bliley legislation that broke down the wall between commercial and investment banks. This is the exact bill that many of Obama's commercials point to as the reason why the economic crisis is happening and why deregulation is bad, bad, bad. If it was really so bad, then why is he using one of the act's authors in his administration? Seems like if that bill caused all the problems Obama said it did, he would want to stay as far away from the people involved as possible, and certainly not let those people have any hand in forming economic policy. Does this mean Obama was lying all that time, and he knew, like anyone who slightly understands economics, that the bill, if anything, helped the country in the current crisis?

2008-11-05T09:40:00.002-05:00

Obama has won. I wish him the best, and I truly hope that everything works out just wonderfully. Of course, I am skeptical, but I wouldn't be able to call myself a true patriot if I wanted to see my President fail.

I saw an article this morning entitled, "The End of Racism?" I haven't read the article itself yet, but there's plenty to think about in that title. It's certainly not the end of racism. The actual racists out there are still going to be racist. What it might end is the tendency to try to align any disagreement along racial lines, and make racists out of people who simply have a differing viewpoint. I don't find this likely, however. If things said during the campaign continue, then criticism of Obama and his policies while in office will often be met by charges of racism rather than rebutting the actual substance of the criticism. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.

2008-11-04T15:42:00.001-05:00

From the Crossfit website

World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

Looks like I have a lot to work on...

2008-10-18T10:20:00.002-04:00

Cynthia Tucker's column discusses the voter registration fraud being perpetrated by ACORN, and comes to the conclusion that those upset are a bunch of whiny Republicans. I don't understand how it's not a problem, however. If ACORN registers 12 fake names at 12 different voting centers, and gives me a list of those names, there's no reason I can think of that I couldn't go and vote 12 different times. There's no ID requirement, right? And there would be no proof of voter fraud after, because they were all registered names. I can't see how this isn't a huge problem, and I can't understand how someone like Tucker isn't upset by this.

2008-10-18T09:02:00.002-04:00

This Joe the Plumber thing has gotten out of hand, and is a perfect example of how the left will rule when in power. Joe was just a guy who was around when Obama did a campaign appearance, and Joe was randomly grabbed from the crowd to ask Obama a question. He wasn't a plant, he was just a normal guy who was grabbed by Obama's flunkies. So he asked a question. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't the kind of question Obama wanted to answer. Obama did answer it, and revealed to the world his socialist leanings when saying, "I want to spread the wealth around," which means he wants to take more money from people who earned it to give to people who did not. So what happens to Joe, a normal guy that Obama randomly picked?

Joe gets hammered by the national media and by the left wing, he gets pilloried on blogs, on TV, in newspapers, even at the water cooler. Almost no one actually talks about the substance of what he asked, or Obama's answer, they just bash him in any way he can. They say he's a liar because his name is really Samuel (he goes by a shortened version of his middle name, Joseph, oh horrors, what an evil man), they say he's not really a plumber because he doesn't have a license (you don't need a license if you work for a licensed company, besides it's not like journalists and bloggers have licenses), they say he's a plant for the GOP (Obama picked him randomly, how exactly is that a plant?), and, perhaps worst of all, someone on a very popular left wing blog published his hime address on the internet for all the left wing haters to see. He's probably getting death threats by the thousands in his mail today.

So watch out, this is how it's going to be when Obama is elected. If you ask any uncomfortable questions, the left wing will make you regret it. They will stifle any dissent, they will refuse to talk about the substance of what you said, instead they will attack you character, they will punish you, they will threaten you, they will give out your private information to the poublic so that random left wing activists do the dirty work and keep the politicians out of it, and, as we saw from Obama, he will support this all the way.

They said if Bush was elected, we would see censorship, but we never did. Obama hasn't even been elected yet, and we're already seeing signs of it from his followers.

2008-10-14T08:33:00.002-04:00

Have you heard the news about ACORN? Probably not, since much of the media is ignoring the story. ACORN is a left-wing group that was definitely involved to some extent in causing the sub-prime mortgage mess, and also registers people to vote. For this election, they were paid $800,000 by the Obama campaign to register people, and of course they concentrate on people likely to vote Democrat. That's fine. The problem is that they are under investigation in like 12 different states for registration fraud. They've been signing up thousands, ten of thousands, hundreds of thousands of fake people. Some say, "What's the problem, it's just registration?" There are several problems. One, if it was a right-leaning group, the media would be calling foul big time and trying to pin it on McCain. Two, fake registrations open the door to fake votes, and if you can't make that connection, then you are a fool. Three, if states are spending all their time trying to sort out the fakes from the real registrations, will they have time before the election to process all the real registrations, or are some legitimate voters who sent in their registrations by the deadline not get to vote because their registration didn't processed in time? And there are probably other reasons, too.

Obama, by the way, used to represent ACORN as a lawyer in various bits of fraud they've been involved in. How many disreputable associates does a man have to have before people start thinking he might be disreputable himself?

2008-10-11T09:48:00.002-04:00

The desire to purchase stock is supposed to represent good feelings about the future earnings of a company. Or you may think the price of the stock is overrated compared to the future earnings, and sell said stock, contributing to the price going down. Short sellers bet on the stock being overvalued, and often do a very good job at figuring out issues with a company that the SEC hasn't discovered. The ban on short selling is disallowing this sort of thing from happening, and that is helping to contribute to the volatility we are currently seeing. But I digress. Back to the future earnings of a company....

Is it possible that the current fall in the market isn't so much panic, or reaction to the bailout and/or credit freeze, but instead the market discounting basically every company because of a fear of an Obama presidency? At this point, I'd say there's a much better than even chance Obama wins, and the market knows what that will mean; a lot of new quasi-socialist programs that will create restrictions on the ability of corporations to raise their earnings in the future. Who knows, in 30 years finance textbooks may call this a correction based on the upcoming Presidency and years of government meddling that destroy value. Again, the market is supposed to be based on future earnings, not current earnings, so institutional investors are scared of the future. I am, too.