The GOP Death Spiral and How to Avert It.

First post in a long while, but I'm just mad.  This whole GOP autopsy thing has got me irritated.  The GOP RINOs and Bush-ites have got it in their head that the reason they lost is that people hate them.  Okay, sure, I can sort of go with that.  But the solution is wrong.  WRONG WRONG WRONG!  Steven Crowder did a video about the Fiscal Cliff arguments, and asked a bunch of self identified democrats about specific policy points, and they all supported the Republican side!  Many of them then ran scared when told they agreed with Republicans!  Well, good job guys.  You looked the fools, AND PEOPLE AGREED WITH YOU!

Okay, enough with the capslock.

Look, here's the way I see it.  The Republicans keep playing the Democrats game.  The 2012 election should have been about two things:  Obama's Handling of the Economy, and how Obama failed to handle the economy by his own standard of measure.  Did the GOP do that?  Heck no!  Democrats screamed "War on women!!!" and the Republicans dropped the economy and started insisting that they really like women, then made some gaffes that then became played over and over again in the media.  (side note: Akin was stupid, but others did stupid too.  But democrats defend their own, while GOP threw him under the bus.)  They lost because the Republicans let Democrats set the rules.

Well forget that!  Here's the rules we need to play by (note: sample, not exhaustive).  Conservatism is about loving the poor, progressivism is about enslaving them.  See, free market capitalism moves lots of people out of poverty into self-supporting wealth and even some into high levels of wealth.  And you know what a lot of wealthy people do?  Well, I'll let you take a guess. I hope you get my point.  Now, what about progressives?  Well, high points of progressivism would be, say, the New Deal?  Great Society?  Jimmy Carter?  All three of those lead to growth in the poor.  Oh, they gave them some nice things, say money and food stamps, but you know what happened?  They stayed poor, and now were the slaves to the government.  So, conservatism makes less people poor, and then helps those who are still poor.  On the other hand, progressivism talks about helping the poor, but really just makes more and more people poor?  I hope the GOP takes notes on all this.

See, here's the deal.  Whenever a GOP politician or conservative pundit is accused of hating the poor, they need to fire back with "What are you, insane?  I want poor people get rich.  You want to make more people poor then force them to depend on the government.  You hate the poor, not me.  I hate poverty."  Quit fighting on their terms!

Here's another one, racism.  It's really pretty easy.  When accused of being racist, simply tell them, "I don't believe in race, I believe in cultures."  When they start wondering what you mean follow up with, "You say you're for Latinos (as an example).  Do you mean to say the ones that work in agriculture in the country, blue collar in the city, white collar or what?  Do you mean first generation from El Salvador or do you mean the lady who doesn't remember any other country?"  If they try to say all of them, bam, perfect.  "So you're saying all Latinos are the same?  What sort of racist are you?"  We don't need to play identity politics, we need to reveal the idiocy of it.  In my experience, the African-American kid and the Caucasian kid in North Kansas City have a lot more in common due to an overlapping culture than either them do with a kid in rural Alabama of either race.  But that's not what racial identity politics forces on us, so don't play that game!

See, we as conservatives believe in individual liberty, with the government acting as a modest restraint in providing order and rule of law.  We ally nicely with libertarians on a number of issues, we just get a little nervous as they sound borderline anarchic at times.  We believe that you, as a person, know more about what's better than you than a bureaucrat   But do they say that?  Heck no.  They argue over how they don't hate women because they don't want your boss to have to pay for birth control?  Why talk about it that way?  Why aren't they screaming, "Why do you want women to have to depend upon the whims of a bureaucrat, a faceless person they will never meet, to decide whether they can get birth control?  Why do you want to run her life?  At least all an employer can do is not pay her, or at worse make her find another job!  The government doesn't go away because you leave town."  What would that do to the dialogue?  Why isn't it that the discussion is about how the Democrats want a government agent to be part of your health care decisions?  That's what they are doing.

Please, if any politician is reading this, please take this fight to heart.  You need to stop being reactive, and start taking conservatism forward as a champion of the little people.  Hang the albatross of pro-big business, oligarchy of intellectuals, sacrificing the little man around the neck of liberals.

New project

Wow, it's been a long time since the last post.  Anyway, one day I will get back to books, politics and news.  However, at this time I am doing a new project, and you can find it here.

Move Review: Transformer Revenge of the Fallen

This is the first review I've posted of a movie, but thought I'd go ahead and do this one.  We checked it out last night (yay for redbox's 1 dollar movies).

I'd like to point out that my biggest problem with the first movie is that, in my firm belief, a Transformers movie should be 80-90% giant robots fighting, and instead got 50% teen romance, 30% teens outwitting experts employed by the government, 15% people fighting giant robots, and about 5% of actually giant robots fighting each other.

So, initial overall:
90% -Movie was mainly about giant robots fighting.  Glad you learned your lesson Mr. Bay.
+5%- Optimus Prime is awesome, from nostalgia to just kick butt coolness
+2%- Geriatric Jetfire was well done, and very amusing

However, this movie had a lot of small detractions.
-5%- Excessive amount of scrotal jokes and references...I don't want to hear or see that thank you very much
-5%- "Pseudo-gangsta" talking robots, wow, obnoxious.
-3%- Potty mouth robots.  Related to the above, but not only.  In a movie with a bunch of soldiers and military dudes, it's the robots that are cussing like a sailor, well and the kids mom.
-2%- Stereotypical over the top annoying parents.  We got it last movie, we get it again, it's still not funny.
-3%- Cheese/"Fan service" Megan Fox shots.  I don't want this junk in my movies, why the heck does it keep showing up?
-2%- Still to much teen romance, in fact, between the parents and the protagonists you wonder why they let the real actors on at all, the cgi-animated voice actors do much better job acting...
-2%- Stupid trope of "higher authority who doesn't get it taking over the job" and this one doesn't even make sense.  How can the US threaten to "order the autobots off the planet?"  Out of the country maybe...and all the justifications for the threat are meaningless to.
-2%- Dude in a thong...it's not funny just gross.
-1%- Dude who constantly cries like a girl.  It was annoying in the first one, why do we have to have another one in the second one?
-1%- Coming up with a new villain that only Optimus can beat.  Okay there was enough bad guys in the original group, couldn't you use those, why do you have to come up with something new?
-1%- Optimus almost got his butt whipped by megatron, why then does he beat down the BBG in like 10 seconds...worst fight ever.

Final grade: 70...C-

Long time, no book

My I-Pod died...don't know why, but it makes me sad.  And bored.  And, no more book reviews for a while.  I'm behind on the ones I did read to.  Ah well.

Book Review: The Four Seasons of Marriage

I've enjoyed Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages so when I came across this, it made an impromptu introduction to my reading list (the fact that I was still #2 or 3 on all my holds was a contributing factor as well).  This made an interesting "read" and I really enjoyed it, as a husband and as a student of counseling.  The premise that all marriages shift through various states of marriage was a gain in useful knowledge in itself.  Note, the seasons are not stages, they are states.  You move from one to another in some order, yes, but people do not begin in spring and end in winter, they fluctuate between them all.

The crux of the book was that Spring (the growing joy of marriage) and Summer (the warm and happy time of marriage) is the place we want to be, so we need to learn to move from Fall (the rough spots) and Winter (the spot of absolute despair/misery) to those happier states.  He details the states quite well, but mentions there is some overlap.  You can't point to a given place in your life and says "There is where we moved from Spring to Summer."  But they are different, and useful to understand. 

Probably the best part was the ending where he discusses seven different methods of moving out of fall and winter and into spring and summer.  I think the best, and hardest, was learning where you failed your mate, both through your own meditation on the subject and consulting family and your spouse!  That would be so hard, to go to others and say, "Tell me how I failed."  Then, and only then, you can begin to repent and ask for forgiveness.  There were many others, but this one really amazed me, to commit that much would seem hard in the season of winter.

Overall, great book on marriage.  I'm almost considering adding it to my mandatory reading list for marriage (which I should put on this blog I guess).   Great read for anyone in marriage to think of how their marriage is and where to go from here.

Book Review: Who Moved My Cheese?

Okay, this was kind of a silly tale.  However, I think once you get over the silliness of the story, it gets really good.  It seems to me to make a very good point about how we as people over complicate things.  We DO NOT LIKE CHANGE!  Who took my stuff?  Why was I fired, I worked hard!  These things are all bits of whining we have done over the years and it shows how we over complicate our lives.  Change happens, you need to roll with it.

Short review for a short book:  I like it, it has a good message about an aspect that is deficient in our own lives.  I would recommend it, especially in light of the current increase in joblessness and lay-offs.  It's a good place to learn about how to deal with the curve balls of life.

Book Review: The Millionaire Next Door

Amazing book.  I really enjoyed this one.  A book on money, backed by research on how the rich handle money.  It is very enlightening to hear a description other than that of Trust Babies and Super-Stars.  To hear about people who make money in a slow and steady way, to hear and find how people best become wealthy.

It is a very through book, describing multiple levels of the way money is handled.  A couple of interesting things to me were:  The largest indicator of wealth accumulation seemed to be the way the spouse that stays at home.  They referred to two aspects of wealth building: financial offense and defense.  Financial offense was acquiring money.  You know, high salary, good yielding investments, being born into the right family, etc.  Financial defense was keeping expenses low, spending on what is necessary without fluff, etc.  They found sound financial defense was the strongest indicator of wealth building, and the wife most often was influential one in this realm.  Very interesting.

Another interesting aspect is how they view the acquisition of vehicles.  One thing they mentioned is how once someone remarked flippantly how the wealthy tended to buy their vehicles by the pound.  Then, when they checked, they found that they were in fact buying vehicles that were cheapest by weight!  The buying techniques were interesting to.  Once those with a "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" arrangement with a dealer was removed, the most prevalent car shopping technique was to shop all locations for used cars.  They said that people who do this are always casually looking for a car, but never in a hurry.  They will often check, even test drive, then make a low ball offer.  If it's not taken, they politely say good bye and walk off.

I really liked this book, and found it very interesting.  It's actually kind of nice to know I already have a number of these habits having been taught by my parents.  Not that wealth building is my goal in life, but being able to be wise with my money is, and it's nice to know I'm on the right track.  A recommended read.