Jeffrey Quick´s last blog post..OMG! Senators with brains

Second of all, I’m well aware of the meaning of the phrase “rebooting the system,” having worked in various parts of the IT industry for most of my adult life. And there is nothing wrong with my usage, thanks. The system is overloaded, lacking adequate resources to run properly, a boatload of hidden programs that were sneakily slipped into the start lineup are running without people’s knowledge and using up valuable RAM, the registry is loaded down with remnants of old programs, sometimes conflicting, and we’re in real danger of a blue screen of death style crash. I’d prefer to manually press the restart button, let the boot process go through some maintenance and housekeeping style tasks, free up the RAM, run msconfig to clean out the startup, delete old useless and/or unwanted programs, run ccleaner on the registry and then defrag the hard drive. (i.e. stop government from doing a good deal of what it’s currently doing, and make it refocus on the important tasks we originally formed a government to do.) So yes, I believe it’s about time for a reboot. Feel free to disagree with my thesis, but my usage was spot-on.

As to whether I’ve considered the ramifications of going Galt – if it works, and the economic hit our country takes when the minority of us decide to stop funding the majority of moochers and an ever-growing, ever WASTEFUL government – yes, I have. That’s exactly why I’m doing it. People are already going to suffer under Obama’s disastrous economic policies. I hope to make it worse for a short period, because if things collapse quickly, the amount of suffering will hopefully be less overall, and we can soon return to a just and rational system where people are not penalized for producing and rewarded for NOT producing. Ever ripped off a bandaid? What hurts less, picking at it for hours or just giving it one good yank and getting it over with? I’ve considered it carefully and I vote for the latter.

I don’t worry about our enemies attacking us. They WILL attack us, because Obama will not effectively fight them, regardless of how much money the military has. His foreign policy decisions to date have been based on magical thinking and are actively harmful. But believe me, we have more to fear from wide-open borders and political correctness than we do an underfunded military. You use 9/11 as an example – the military could not have prevented that. Rational immigration policies and political incorrectness could have. Those things are not materially affected by funding; they are policy decisions.

Have YOU considered the ramifications that the increasingly larger number of people who take services for which they have not paid is completely unsustainable? Just how much money do you think the Chinese are going to loan us? And since you’re worried about people’s welfare, have you considered the human rights ramifications of our indebtedness to the Chinese? That’s just one aspect of this train wreck, but it’s an important one. Are we going to come out and call our banker a human rights disaster and pressure them to change, or give them a pass for their vicious policies? Real people are affected by these decisions, by America’s lust for things which we cannot afford. The laogai overflow. Do those people have any rights in your view?

Barack Obama and his SecState Hillary Clinton have already made their intentions crystal clear.

On February 21, in Beijing, Clinton cynically shed the patina of human rights concern that formerly cloaked the Obama administration by dismissing Chinese abuses in Tibet and elsewhere, claiming: “Our pressing on those issues can’t interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

She went on to reveal the motivation behind this U-turn when she said: “I appreciate greatly the Chinese government’s continuing confidence in United States Treasuries.” That is politico-speak for “You can hang Tibetan monks up by their thumbs, if you like, but for heaven’s sake don’t stop buying US Treasury Bonds.”

Yes, in the long term everything has an effect. Like this debt we’re piling on, without regard for the consequences to the small minority of Americans who are going to get stuck with the bill, to the millions of Chinese who just got thrown under the bus so that people who used their houses like ATM machines get a mulligan, auto unions can continue to pay people not to work, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can go on making outrageously bad loan decisions, and ACORN can cash in to the tune of 4 billion, last time I checked.

Oh, and God bless you, Roberta. You may feel I’ve taken too harsh a tone with you here. If your feelings are hurt, I hope you’ll stick around and develop a thicker skin. A tough debate leads to better opponents and more well-thought out positions. It’s a failure to be challenged that makes us weak. I don’t mind being challenged and I always admit when I’m wrong. Tough but polite is always well received. Just don’t patronize or condescend, and be sure to check the political correctness and postmodernism at the door.

So go ahead and not pay your taxes, because you feel it makes a point for the short term, but in the long term, everything effects our way of life.

God Bless.

You mention considering long-term/hidden effects and setting a better example – will you provide more details on what you mean by that?

One of the problems with politicians is that they consider only the visible short-term effects of their actions. You are imitating this behavior. If we consider the long-term and the hidden effects of our actions, we can set a better example.