Do Not Feed The Bird Brains...

People used to tell me when I was young that you shouldn't feed birds.

This seemed cruel to me back then. We lived in the mountians of North Carolina, and sometimes there would be snow on the ground for weeks at a time. I felt sorry for the poor birds trying to find food through all that snow.

But it was explained to me that if you feed birds in the same place every day for any length of time, they learn that this is where the food is. If you start feeding them, you can never stop, or the birds you are feeding will stand around waiting for you to provide them with food until they starve.

Eventually I understood that the compassionate thing to do for the birds was to let them look after themselves, so that they never forgot how to.

Having said that, please consider this:

From the UK Daily Mail...

Raised on welfare, the 'Why Bother?' generation that doesn't want to work...

A "why bother?" economy has been created in Britain which has left thousands with no motivation to work, a report published today concludes.

The findings by the public services think tank Reform suggest that increased welfare dependency has made it more difficult for those on the lowest incomes to do better...

Means-tested benefits and higher taxes have reduced the incentives available to those on low incomes to better themselves, Reform says.

It concludes: "The unintended consequence has been a 'why bother?' economy in which a significant minority do not have the capability or motivation to succeed."

The article goes on to tell the tale of a family with ten members living in a three bedroom "council house" (whatever that is...), and none of them, for three generations, have ever worked.

And from what the article says, they are not the only family in the U.K. who are living this way. According to the article, they have become a drag on the National Economy.

But that's not their problem...

It's a problem for everyone else in the whole country...

Think about this when you hear the Democrat Presidential Candidates' speeches as they cross the countryside, heavily engaged in "Pander-Fest 2008".

When the government pays for everything for everybody, why should anybody do anything for themselves?

When everyone is on the public dole, and nobody works because it is more profitable to stay home and be a loser than to go to work, who will pay the taxes to support everyone?

The article says that the U.K. has made the mistake of feeding the bird-brains... and now they are starting to run short on bird seed...

The same thing is going to happen here, and soon, unless the American people wake up...

It can be avoided, but in order for that to happen, a few bird-brains may have to be allowed to starve.

Bitter...

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." - Barack Obama

He was talking about the poor slobs in small towns in Pennsylvania and around the country who haven't had jobs in twenty-five years, and who (according to him) believe that the government has not done enough for them.

Well, I don't live in the "Rust Belt", but I do live in small-town America, and I am bitter.

You're doggone right, I am.

I'm bitter when I see my government planning to spend a trillion (or more) dollars of taxpayer money to prop up the mortgage industry and keep housing prices impossibly high in perpetuity, even though they have absolutely no Constitutional authority to do so.

I'm bitter when I think about the fact that I decided last year to rent a house rather than buy one, and instead buy my own truck and try to better myself through hard work, and then partly because of flawed (and again, extra-Constitutional) governmental meddling with the petroleum industry, fuel prices ate up whatever profits I could have realized, and my truck was reposessed.

Nobody offered to bail me out.

But now, I get to help bail out the millionaires at Bear Stearns.

I'm bitter because I am being asked to choose between possibly the three least qualified Presidential Candidates in the history of the United States. None of these people have any business anywhere near the government at all, let alone the highest office in the nation...

But I have to choose one of them... or not. I cannot in good conscience vote for John McCain, and neither can I vote for an unabashed Socialist panderer running on a Democrat ticket.

I still believe that the Constitution means something, and that it limits what the federal government can do for me, or to me, and no matter how good an idea it seems to be, or how many people think that they might benefit from government bailouts and interference in their (and my) life, the Constitution prevents MOST of what the federal government does now.

I'm bitter because none of the Presidential candidates seems to understand that.

I'm bitter because my nation, the greatest nation in the history of the world, seems to have forgotten how to win a war. Regardless of whether you agree with the reasons for going to war, we shouldn't be having this much trouble defeating an enemy that basically fights with sticks and rocks.

War is a terrible thing for all concerned. But if you are going to engage an enemy, for whatever reason, it should be so much more terrible for the enemy than for you, that they beg you to stop, and then for decades to come, any potential enemy you might face would rather do ANYTHING than have to engage you in armed conflict.

It's a simple concept. DEFEAT the enemy, soundly and without remorse or mercy, and then you will have peace.

Then comes the nation-building, the aid for refugees, the humanitarianism.

No one in our government seems to understand this, and I learned it on the playground when I was five years old.

These are just a few of the things that I am bitter about.

Not that the government hasn't done enough for me, but that the government will not leave me alone, and it screws up everything it touches.

So yes, I cling to my Constitutional Right to my gun, my religion, my expectation of border security and fair trade practices.

I cling to them because these Rights are under attack by the very people who are supposed to be defending and protecting them.

Obama is right. I am bitter.

And I have every right to be.

The Problem...

What can I say?

I have been slack. Fallen behind in my ranting and raving.

But I'm back, so, here we go.

How much petroleum can you eat?

Who among us hasn't enjoyed a nice evening, hanging around with friends, tossing back a couple of quarts of 10w30 and enjoying an asphault burger hot off the grill?

Which one of us doesn't tear up when we remember how our dear old Mom slaved over a hot stove when we were young, cooking up a pot of home-made tar for our supper? (Sticks to the ole' ribs, don't it?)

I personally simply CANNOT get going in the mornings until I've had a steaming hot cup of diesel fuel...

Sounds silly, don't it?

We all know that we cannot eat or drink petroleum products...

You know what we CAN eat, though?

CORN!

That is, unless stupid Liberals among us mandate that we burn our corn in the gas tank instead of eating it...

From the New York Times...

Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing

The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.

But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people.

Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.

In some countries, the higher prices are leading to riots, political instability and growing worries about feeding the poorest people. Food riots contributed to the dismissal of Haiti’s prime minister last week, and leaders in some other countries are nervously trying to calm anxious consumers...

So, in order to solve a problem that does not exist, the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to burn the World's food supply in our cars (even though by all accounts, ethanol is horribly inefficient and almost impossible to transport), while insisting that we leave our own oil supplies in the ground so that we will not spoil the view.

REAL smart.

And get this-

The EU Commission on Monday rejected claims that producing biofuels is a "crime against humanity" that threatens food supplies, and vowed to stick to its goals as part of a climate change package.

"You can't change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives," which could see the EU landmark climate change and energy package disintegrate, an EU official said.

So, basically, Liberals and Global-Warming Environmentalist Know-It-Alls all over the World are saying that they are willing to starve the poorest children on the globe to death rather than admit that they are wrong.

So, let's recap.

Oil is the cleanest, most efficient substance currently available for use as fuel, it isn't good for anything else, and we (The U.S., We The People...) have BILLIONS of barrells of the stuff right here at home, which we cannot access because of Liberals.

Corn is sadly inefficient in the gas tank, is an important part of a nutritious breakfast, but it is being burned by mandate of our Government while the children starve because of Liberals.

So, the problem isn't a shortage of fuel supplies, the problem isn't global Warming, the problem isn't high food prices.

The problem is Liberals.