I voted, but I'm not happy...

For two years we've endured this presidential "race." I wish it had been more like an Usain Bolt sprint, and saved us the dragged-out drama. Today it ends, in most aspects.

In the words of a blogger on The Liberty Papers:

"[After today], the government can go back to screwing us quietly instead of auditioning for the job of screwing us."

Back to my rant. I voted, but I'm not happy. I did not vote for the candidate I felt best represented me, and my beliefs, attitudes, ideals, etc. I voted defensively, and I'm pissed that I was put in the situation.

You see, I'm not a McCain fan. I mean, I like him, I guess, but he was down near the bottom of my list during the primaries. He is a moderate Republican, one of the heavyweight centrists who have pulled the moorings of the Republican party towards the middle of the road. Let me say here that I'm not a die-hard Republican. I am registered as one because, for the most part, the party platform reflects my beliefs about government, taxes, culture and moral issues. But that has slowly been changing. If not in words in the official platform deceleration, then in the very actions of those who claim the name Republican.

In the words of Ronald Reagan, "I didn't leave the Republican party, it left me." It has become a party of moderates, willing to compromise on what defines the party in order to bring in more votes.

Heck, maybe I'm wrong? Maybe I've only been witness to the recent Christian Coalition push begun a few decades ago with the Moral Majority and such? Maybe the Republican party never stood for what I thought it did? Maybe it was only redeemed in certain ways through its adoption by Conservative Christians?

Anyways, here I am with my vote, my privilege, power, and voice, and I am forced to fill in the circle next to McCain's name because, as sad as it sounds, he has the best chance at keeping Obama out of office. And there is my biggest motivation for voting for McCain. A defensive move to protect this country from Barack Obama and a liberal majority ruining our country and culture.

If I'd had my choice, truly felt that it wouldn't let Obama descend from the heavens on a cloud of light and tax credits right into the Oval Office, I would have voted for Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. After him, maybe Bob Barr, or a write-in for Ron Paul. At least these guys understand the responsibilities of government and how out of control our beast is.

I am praying that Obama does not win. Not, I'm praying that McCain wins. I'm praying that the greater of two "evils" does not become president. That's really lame, and I'm angry that we as voters, Republicans, even Christians, have let this happen.

Political Poetry

I just had to share this poem by Vox Day. Enjoy!

An Infernal Economy

In a dark woodland I espied a bear
Vicious, hirsute, with a low, evil brow.
His stinking breath befouled the forest air;
A roar, and animal spirits somehow
Vanished, like ghosts dissipating in mist,
Taking with them nearly half from the Dow.
I knew not how I should hope to resist
This great beast, when before me then appeared
A genius, albeit one much dismissed,
For espousing truths both exact and feared
By men economical in wisdom.
"No man, yet I act," said him I revered,
"To spare thee much needless pain have I come!"
Then he raised a gleaming sword of pure gold
Before which the terrible beast did succumb
And turn away. Thus inspired I made bold
To inquire of insights he might convey.
"No, I shall not teach, instead shall I scold.
Come, thou shalt witness how ends the soiree!"
We found ourselves before a wide Abyss
From which came moans and cries of great dismay,
The regrets of men who'd been so remiss
As to believe markets will always rise.
"Speak, damned broker," I said with a hiss,
To a wretched shade with dark, haunted eyes,
And naked but for his well-tattered suit.
"All of the long-term charts showed we were wise."
He protested, with contrition acute.
"Dollar-cost averaging, interest compound,
We thought they'd invest risk free, absolute!"
My Guide laughed, it was a cold, hollow sound
Of scorn for innocence so misplaced.
"That which goes up must finally come down,
And asset inflation will be retraced.
For growth cannot last indefinitely
When debt is rising and money debased."
Behind us we left that sad misery,
Weeping and wailing under the cliff's edge,
Descending down to the second degree.
There we encountered the god of the pledge,
Visa the Master of living and dead.
Who sneered at my Guide: "From whence didst thou dredge
This old fossil, academic unread
By my countless servants, my serfs, my slaves?
He shall not enter, but for thee, instead
I'll offer a card that actually saves
Thee five percent even as thou doth spend!"
Temptation rushed o'er me, enticing waves,
Cast by the fat goblin off'ring to lend
Me all that I wanted, and more beside!
"Stand fast, man, and do not think thou shalt bend!"
So spoke my Guardian, that consummate Guide,
Who, bare-handed, tore that false god in half!
"His day is done, comest thou alongside.
Seest the shades blown like wheat amidst chaff?"
Throughout the depths blew a most fearsome wind
Hurling poor souls around, all the riff-raff
In mighty numbers, those fools who had sinned,
Caught up in the feverish gluttony
Of consumption, and now, too late, chagrined.
They tumbled through clouds of fiat money,
Faith rendered faithless in one mad moment,
Then came a pair still in matrimony
Bound. They shrieked and fought for they did resent
The ties that held them linked close together
In bitter rage and mutual dissent.
The woman cried, clawing at her tether.
Impoverished, angry, seeking divorce,
And falling for the netherest nether
They plunged to the depths like a Russian bourse.
"New house, new clothes, new car financed with debt
They married for better, but found the worst,"
Said the Master without seeming upset.
"So now, they can't even afford to split!"
Such countless horrors no one could forget,
Happily did I that fell mirk acquit.
But new torments I saw, new terrors. I found
Myself standing in the midst of a pit,
Where an icy rain came tumbling down
Upon the unjust, and the unjust alone,
For there the just simply did not abound.
Suffering journalists wept to atone
For lies and deceits practiced on the crowd.
While above towered three heads overgrown
From one horrid shape better disavowed,
Kudlow and Cramer and Bartiromo.
Three slavering heads drooled and barked aloud:
"Buy with both hands, surely this is the low!"
All the while snapping and snarfing up dirt.
Souls sold for nothing, not even a show,
No newspaperman had a single shirt
As hatless, shoeless, they froze in the rain,
Lamenting the truth they'd tried to pervert.
Shivering, I asked to depart this plane
A request to which my Guide acceded.
Thus we left behind the media's bane,
The encroaching ice quickly receded.
Before us now were rows of giant stones
And behind each a small man proceeded
To push it back and forth, with moans and groans,
Across the dismal field of outsized dreams.
"Economists," I heard the amused tones
Of the Guide, "and duly damned for their schemes
That served as the key to open the door
For terrible tax-and-spending regimes."
I spared but a brief sigh for Nobel's whore
As we fell to a field of sepulchers
Uncovered and belching forth with a roar
Crimson flames that seared those entrepreneurs
Of finance, gamblers, investment bankers
Who played games with exotic wire transfers.
Those who had been for their banks anchors
Howled in unending agony, the fire
Fueled by derivatives, lethal cankers
Of financial cunning that now require
Unthinkable time to fully unwind.
Until then, each shall scream in his stone pyre.
No more could I bear, horror smote my mind,
I reeled before sights I could not forget.
And then my adviser did me remind
We'd yet to meet the political set.

Thus ends the first canto.

As posted on WND,

Vox Day is a Christian libertarian opinion columnist whose latest book is The Irrational Atheist. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and IGDA, and has been down with Madden since 1992. Visit his blog, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and spirited discussions open to all.

Obama Leading In Polls Because of Bad Economy!?

The same Facebook friend mentioned in my previous post put up a link to an article a while back that claimed that the poor economy and market crash were reasons why Obama was ahead in the presidential poles. Knowing the truth, I was appalled that a Democrat could benefit through lies, blaming the incumbent party for the debacle his own party created. The discussion went as follows:

October 14th

Me:

"How can Obama stand in public, or any Democrat anywhere, and have the audacity to blame the current economic mess on Republicans or Bush? The only blame they have is not having the stones to just shut the mess down and fix it.

It was a Democratic administration who required the "affordable housing" (loans for people who couldn't qualify - for good reasons) and forced Fred and Fannie to back and absorb the poisonous loans, who turned Fred and Fannie in GSE's, and those same players who oversaw the banking regulation, had live-in relationships with banking VP's, fought off Republican attempts to fix the issue when they saw it, claimed nothing was wrong, asked for $700B to fix the problem, and now turn around and blame Reps for political gain!

Worst part is that so many Americans are drinking their Kool-aid!"

Him:

"Deregulation thats why, developed by a Republican congress of the late 1990s. Your right wingers who lead the Republican Revolution of 1994 who didn't want health care for poor people. And remember, your boys held the majority until 2006. Theres no kool aid bro and Americans understand who to blame in the crisis, which has helped turn the tide of this election."

Me:

Jon, thanks for responding! I get excited about debating people, especially folks who respond in thought-out and respectful ways like you.

Now let's fight!

You failed to respond to any of the points I made. All of the points I made above are indisputable fact. They are the driving forces behind our market crash, and the loss of billions in retirement savings.

Based on those facts, then, NO, people don't know who to blame. The Banking Oversight Committee had a Dem majority, and the 2 or 3 times anybody tried to address the Fan/Fred looming debacle, the votes when straight down party lines. Your Dems opposed "regulations" on the top two mortgage banks, which they also helped make GSE's. It was their "deregulation" that caused this issue.

The majority liberal media has spun it as much as possible and failed to report the facts.

1. What deregulations do you say are to blame for this?

2. How does health care for poor people play into the market crash at all?

The Rep majority is culpable insofar as they failed to play hardball, get ticked, and do something about the problem they saw. I do hold them responsible for that. All it takes for bad men to win is for good men to do nothing. And they did not do enough, which I lay directly at their feet. I'll be harder on them then any Dem would.

That's all I got out of him. Does that mean I won!? When someone stops arguing, is it because they think they've won, lost interest, or can't come back with anything better? I don't know. But I do hate it when people failt to address specific issues.

Facebook Political Debate

It seems Facebook has been bringing out the political pundint in me. With it's ever-reaching and interconnected web of social contacts and opinion publishing tools, it has afforded me many opportunities over the past few weeks to engage friends, and strangers, in discussions and debates over various political and economic issues. While not the first, this is the first I am sharing.

A friend posted a link to an article about Christopher Buckley endorsing Barack Obama.

CB is the son of William F. Buckley, seen by many as the founder of the Right-wing Conservative movement, championed by his magazine, the National Review.

Read the article here. Then read WFB's mission statement for the National Review here.

My friend tagged the posted link by asking where I was, asking me for my opinion with a smirk. I shared it.

Since you asked...

Kathleen Parker couldn't have made the article more ridiculous if she tried.

Her argument:

WFB was a radical non-conformist, disgusted by the middle-of-the-road, luke-warm conservatives.

CB is just like his dad because he is a radical non-conformist, disgusted by the middle-of-the-road, luke-warm conservatives.

This is so off base it's silly!

Truth:

WFB was a radical non-comformist who saw the so-called "conservatives" and Reps being lazy and not doing anything to stem the Liberal Left tide. They were too close to the middle. He established a far-right stance. Some quotes, from 1955:

"The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly... Read More. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side."

"...we are, without reservations, on the conservative side."

"The most alarming single danger to the American political system lies in the fact that an identifiable team of Fabian operators is bent on controlling both our major political parties (under the sanction of such fatuous and unreasoned slogans as "national unity," "middle-of-the-road," "progressivism," and "bipartisanship.") Clever intriguers are reshaping both parties in the image of Babbitt, gone Social-Democrat."

"The competitive price system is indispensable to liberty and material progress. It is threatened not only by the growth of Big Brother government, but by the pressure of monopolies, including union monopolies. What is more, some labor unions have clearly identified themselves with doctrinaire socialist objectives."

"No superstition has more effectively bewitched America's Liberal elite than the fashionable concepts of world government, the United Nations, internationalism, international atomic pools, etc. Perhaps the most important and readily demonstrable lesson of history is that freedom goes hand in hand with a state of political decentralization, that remote government is irresponsible government. It would make greater sense to grant independence to each of our 50 states than to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a world organization."

Before sharing the previous convictions, WFB finished his column with this:

"For we offer, besides ourselves, a position that has not grown old under the weight of a gigantic, parasitic bureaucracy, a position untempered by the doctoral dissertations of a generation of Ph.D's in social architecture, unattenuated by a thousand vulgar promises to a thousand different pressure groups, uncorroded by a cynical contempt for human freedom. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us just about the hottest thing in town."

He established the National Review to fight the Liberal Left.

CB has endorsed Obama, designated the most liberal member of the Senate, and who adheres to the very ideas, systems, and strategies that WFB viewed as militant, and set out to thwart as best as possible.

WFB, like Regan, asserted that he did not leave the Rep party. The Rep party left him. He stood at the Right, and the Rep party drifted to the center.

This has happened again. I feel the same as Reagan and WFB did. The Rep party has abdicated its responsibilities and abandoned its core values, looking more and more like the Left it supposedly opposes.

CB is looking at a party that has drifted to the center, and Parker has the baseless audacity to say that he is following in his father's footsteps by jumping all the way to the left? Ridiculous!

Jesus was a radical who stood up against the Jewish leaders, leaders who had turned Judaism into a crushing burden. He trained his disciples to follow in his footsteps, to free people.

Then Peter, seeing Jesus' followers becoming lazy and content, not doing their job, and reverting back, did his best to imitate Jesus by standing up in a radical way, and siding with the religious leaders and the Roman gov't.

See! They're both alike because they did something radical! That would make Jesus proud.

Correction: CB quoted Ronald Reagan, calling him a real conservative. Makes it even crazier.

Basically, his reasoning is this: McCain and the Reps of the last 8 years are not enough to the right, so I will go all the way to the Left to solve the problem. I was on the Right, my party drifted towards the Left, so I will support the far Left.

The problem with McCain and the current Reps is that they are too often like the left with various issues. It makes no sense to go even further.

Overwhelmed by Where To Start

Here I have this whole forum that affords me total freedom to express the opinions and convictions I have about what is happening in the world (and trust me, they are numerous), yet I have two posts about basically nothing, followed up by more of the same.

My problem? Too much material! Too many thoughts and opinions to express. Too many issues to tackle. I don't know where to begin, and once I do, I'm afraid I just won't stop!

There is so much CRAP going on right now, and the worst of it is the massive MIS-information and MIS-education that is going on through our politicians and Main Stream Media (MSM).

I'll just throw some topics out there, and maybe I can back to each one later.

Socialism

Irresponsibility

Bailouts

Debt

Private Bankers Running Our Economy

Government Ownership of the Private Sector

Moral Relativism

One-World Government

Oligarchy

Elitism

Corrupt Politicians

Fiat Monetary System

The Federal (private) Reserve (printer)

Wealth Transfer

That's all I've got for now. There is so much here, and even more beyond it. I need to bite the bullet and put the churning in my mind into words. I hope this catapults me into a few areas. We all know there's enough material.

Name Change

A soapbox is simply something to stand on that allows added height for better communication to a large audience. This particular blog allows me this, but I feel that the name The Soapbox is passive, and does not relay my truest intent.

So, I've changed the blog name to The Stand, which means a lot more to me. I realized that ultimately this would be a place for me to speak my mind on things that matter to me, things I desire others to understand with more clarity or to change their thinking on. It would be a platform (like a stand) from which I could try and inform and educate people on things that affect them, that carry a cost.

Here, I can take a stand on any number of issues, and do my part to empower others with truth that is so often hidden, oppressed, and diluted.

Why another blog?

Just in case anyone was asking the same question, I figured I'd open this bad boy up with an explanation.

I was going about my day, mulling over the current "economic crisis" concerning AIG, Lehman Brothers, Meryll Lynch, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, and even all the way back to Bear Stearns (well, we could go further). I had opinions, opinions that needed let out, aired, shared, appreciated. In fact, I have a multitude of things to I want to discuss, teach about, shed some light on; to hopefully open people's eyes and shake them out of their American malaise. And my biggest problem was where to put them. I've got a blog for my diet, and a blog for the baby (soon to include the dog). So that left two. Well, these sorts of discussions don't seem to fit with updates from the Dinclers' daily lives, and aren't the normal topics I would include in a quasi prayer journal.

So, I was left at an impasse. To blog, or not blog, and where? As much as I read and try to educate myself on current events, political issues, and the sorts of things that affect and shape our culture (WND is a popular starting point for me), well, doing that only leads to formulating opinions, and I don't have a whole lot of room to store a bunch of undisclosed opinions (sometimes they can spoil, even) so I just knew I had to get them out and find them a home.

So hear we have my sappy-titled soapbox (like no one else in the whole world has ever had a blog/website/newsletter with the same name!). My one concern is the possibility of compartmentalizing issues and truths that, in reality, are all connected, so I'm sure I'll be cross-referencing my journal and my family updates often.

Here's to me clogging up the blogosphere.