Tag / Politics

by Greg

Humble Scientists

We received a complimentary copy of the latest edition of Creation magazine (the Answers in Genesis folks) and I have been perusing it the past couple days. I really enjoy the subject matter they cover, and I believe that my worldview is similar enough to theirs that I can mostly relate to what they are presenting, so it’s generally a good read.

What makes me sad is that as I read it, I sense the same (or greater?) arrogance that I would get from any staunch “Darwinist” in their writings. Their conclusions—really just most of the words they choose to use—drip with arrogance. Their angle seems mostly to tear down the “prevailing” scientific thought of the day, which seems to begin with the parameter that there is no God (or supernatural) and so all of life happened on its own.

As I said, the arrogance permeates all of science, no matter which fundamental worldview you happen to hold to. Whether you feel the evidence points to evolution and all of those conclusions, or a creator and his creation and all of those conclusions (or somewhere in between I suppose?) why the need for such definitive certainty? In most cases, we just can’t know everything. We know what we know now, and usually that’s only a part anyway.

So I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if there was some organization for humble scientists? Scientists who pledged no allegiance to a theory or a doctrine or, even worse, a financial underwriter or a political party? How great would that be to just have intellectually honest investigation of the facts, based on current theories, and then a neutral (although, can never be completely neutral) presentation of the current conclusions from the current studies? What could be wrong with that?

If I was a scientist, in the scientist community… that’s what I would do.

by Greg

$100,000,000.00

$100M sure sounds like a lot of money. And as you can see in the title, it sure is a lot of zeros. However, this blog post by radio talkshow guy Glenn Beck, points out how ridiculously small it is both in comparison to the already large budget as well as the outlandish amount of “money” being spent in all of these “stimulus” packages. Interesting look at the numbers. How do these crazy politicians think we won’t realize this, and just go along with them saying, “Wow! They cut $100M from the budget!!”

by Greg

US Government Now Running the Auto Industry? Ludicrous!

Folks, you know that I don’t often comment politically here, but this is just so completely insane that I would like to go on record here, officially, at GregsHead.net and say that we are so far from what the founders of this country intended our government to be that within a very short time (perhaps only a couple years?) our country will no longer exist as it has for over 200 years.

It’s certainly been a gradual decline over the past decades (decline into government controlling, rather than representing the people) but it’s been kicked into high gear by the election of the “rock star” president (and initially, the party wars that landed a majority of his party in the congress to help push through his very centralized, big-government policies) who is implementing plans to put us another trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) in debt. Ugh.

But I seriously can’t even believe this. (The article)

The US government is making top-level business decisions for General Motors, a private business?????? WHAT?? Why is a “task force” assembled by our federal government dictating what a private business should do?? Why? Because the dummies at the private business decided it would be a good idea to become indebted to the federal government. Makes me even more proud of Ford for standing up and saying, “No thanks.” (Commented on that here previously.)

Wow. Just… wow.

I’m inclined to be concerned for our kids, grandkids, and beyond, but recently I have been reminded of these words from the Message translation of Matthew 6:34:

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Definitely words to keep close to the front of your mind these days.

[LINK] Obama outlines plan for GM/Chrysler (Wall Street Journal)

by Greg

What Does a Trillion Dollars Look Like?

Got an e-mail from my Dad today, one of them there e-mail forwards. (He enjoys those…) I try to read most of them (sorry, Dad, can’t read them all…) and several I comment back to him on, but only a very few do I share. (Almost none do I forward. If I share, I share via the web. A more passive “share”.) 🙂

This particular one, a website visually presenting what a TRILLION dollars looks like is both impressive and staggering, while really easy to comprehend visually.

These days, the word trillion is thrown around like the word million perhaps. We know it’s a big number, but ignore the true immensity of it.

And just think, before this so-called “stimulus” plan that is near a trillion dollars itself, aren’t we already in debt as a country near the sum of ten trillion dollars? Yikes.

So, check it out, if you have the stomach for that sort of thing.

by Greg

Speaking of Inaugurations…

Hulu has over a dozen of the most recent presidential inauguration speeches uploaded to their site (Eisenhower’s was the oldest one). Pretty cool to watch history like that. Unedited, uninterpreted. But looking back after we know the outcome. It was the present – speaking of the future – when they were giving those speeches. Pretty fascinating.

Here’s a link to the page with all of the speeches:
hulu.com/inaugural-speeches

by Greg

Bailouts

As you are well aware, I do not frequently comment on things in the political realm here. Mostly because it either seems irrelevant to me, or too annoying to talk about anyway. (Or, too volatile to post thoughts here… why are some people so tied to their political thoughts/beliefs/affiliations??)

But today I saw the first “bailout” news I really felt I could applaud.

I’m sure you are well aware of all the government efforts to “bailout” various private institutions. Banks, mortgage lenders, other creditors, and most recently, the auto industry. Chrysler announced cut backs, extended layoffs, and various things indicating they are in serious trouble. The thought behind these bailouts is that if these giant foundational pieces of our economy were to “go under” then our entire economy would collapse. And, that would be bad.

But not entirely.

When poor choices are made, the consequences of those choices are bad, painful, difficult, hurtful, etc. What the government is doing is trying to avoid the natural consequences of these poor decisions. But the problem is, they are just borrowing more money (in the trillions) to “bailout” these large industries. Who is going to bail them out? Who is going to bail us out??

Who is going to pay this debt, and how?

So, when I saw this headline (thanks to a Twitter post by Scott) I felt good about one company in America. I was proud to see Ford state publicly that they do not want/need the government’s short-term financial assistance. Their plan is to restructure their business and make wise choices to keep going – without a hand out from the federal government. And I applaud them.

I don’t think it would be a bad thing if these institutions were allowed to suffer the consequences of their spending choices. All will balance out. Someone new will rise to the occasion. Jobs will be found. The economy will get over the bump in the road. It may be a big bump, but it might be a deserved bump. Dumping more money (that doesn’t really exist) into the problem will only exacerbate the problem.

So, I applaud Ford, and though my loyalty has been to General Motors, thanks to my Dad’s working for them for 31 years, I admit to adding a big star next to their name on my imaginary star chart on my wall. They are now (if they stick to this) one of my favorite American companies.

Maybe one day the government will stop meddling in private sector business… but I’m not thinking it will stop for at least the next four years. Hopefully more of the private sector will say, “No thanks.”

by Greg

Smart Voter

I was curious who else was on the NY State ballot for the impending election, and stumbled upon this site with a list of each candidate as well as some cursory information and links to more. Thought that was pretty cool. They call the site “Smart Voter”, and boy would that be nice. It is not my impression that most people are “smart” voters. I would not consider getting information on who you might vote for from any of the media a “smart” source to draw upon. (Note: I’m not certain this is either, but at least you can do some of your own research.)

Who knew there were so many people running for president? I thought it was only three. Thanks, media…

(I’m not too happy with most people involved in this whole election thing at the moment… can you tell?) 🙂

by Greg

Election

We’re only a few weeks away from the election now. I wish I could say I am excited, but I am definitely not. I really don’t want to vote for either of these guys. In the end, I’ll probably end up choosing the lesser of two evils. That’s no fun. I must say, I still really don’t trust Obama. Partially due to the craziness of his followers.

Are you excited about the election? Or, are you like me, and just voting because it’s great that you do have a vote… but rather apathetic to (or disdained by) the candidates we get to choose from?

I’ll be flipping levers in a couple Tuesdays, and at least… it will be over. 🙂