Simplicity. Clarity. Discipline.

A friend of mine (Thanks, Chris!) recently sent me a video of Canadian soldiers disassembling and re-assembling a low-hood Willys Jeep during a holiday event in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Some people simply see a cool and amusing video on YouTube.
Instead, I see something completely different:

I see the physical embodiment of three primary factors necessary in societal and national success:
1. Simplicity
2. Clarity
3. Discipline
First, Simplicity: we have purposely made life way too complicated. We revel in making life too complicated. I submit that we have deliberately done this because Man, by his nature, will and has pushed thoughts and theories to points they’ve not themselves demanded to travel.
Whenever things look grim, whenever things look too complicated, whenever you think things are irreversible and unchangeable — then it’s time to go back to what I call The Basics.
Because, in our personal lives, in our professional lives, in our corporate lives, in our working lives, if we can’t accomplish The Basics — if we can’t build and buttress and support a solid and strong and immovable Foundation upon which all else can be built — then everything beyond that Foundation is pointless.
Second, Clarity: without Clarity we are doomed. Clarity is also known as Truth. If we can’t call things what they are, if we can’t acknowledge words for their definitions, if we can’t admit to ourselves the things as They Are vs the Thing We Wish Them To Be, then we are merely deluding ourselves. We cannot exist isolated in Theory; we must deal with actual Reality.
Finally, Discipline: this is best expressed in our national motto: E pluribus unum.
Out of many: one.”
It is not the individual that moves the nation. It is the individual working towards a common goal, embraced by freedom, that creates the myriad links providing our unified strength. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

From many seemingly disparate individuals, we work towards a national unification and sovereignty. We are the United States of America.
And it is Discipline that will get us there. A committed goal and a common vision. Michael Savage expresses it best: Borders. Language. Culture. And not so-called “personal esteem.” And not T-ball or minimized scores or parsed phrases or lawsuits or emotions or fear of failure. But Discipline and striving and risk and daring. And the freedom to make mistakes, to fail, and to let our paths be determined by our work. Our Constitution mentions opportunity but guarantees no outcome. To achieve our goals we clearly require: actual Discipline.
Sometimes the most truthful things are the simplest and clearest things.
BZ

Obama: Get Behind Entrepreneurs And Business!

According to NPR:

With no money left in the government coffers, the “only strategy” for growth is to get behind America’s entrepreneurs, President Obama has said.

In a speech to his party’s spring conference, the president declared war on the “enemies of enterprise” – and said he was on the side of “go-getters”.

And he vowed 23 March’s Budget would be the “most pro-growth this country has seen for a generation”.

Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, has already told the media in DC that his Budget will be “unashamedly pro-growth” and will include 10 new enterprise zones to boost some of the most deprived areas in the United States.

Mr Obama used his speech to reinforce his pro-growth message, and to promise a “fundamental rebalancing of our economy” with “less debt, more saving; less borrowing, more investment; less dependence on financial services, more new industries, exports and trade”.

With interest rates at a record low, and no money to spare, the president said he wanted to champion the growth and ingenuity of the American people.

He said: “The spark of initiative. The courage to make your dream happen. The hard work to see it through.

“There’s only one strategy for growth we can have now and that is rolling up our sleeves and doing everything possible to make it easier for businesses to grow, to invest, to take people on.”

“Back small firms. Boost enterprise. Be on the side of everyone in this country who wants to create jobs, and wealth and opportunity.”

The words you’ve been waiting to hear from Mr Obama, yes?

Except: NO.

Those words are from Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, spoken on March 6th and documented here.

Britain “gets it.”

America does not.

Mr Obama has Historical Alzheimers and demands that our country repeat the failed ministrations of the UK and Europe. Europe is starting to come around. The US is on a crash course with history and finds itself startlingly ignorant of the past. And the oh-so-recent past!

Mr Obama, the dolt that he is, thinks that somehow he can do what the UK, Europe, the USSR and China hasn’t been able to do in over 100 years: install true Ideal Socialism.

Note to Mr Obama: you are clearly “educated.” But you have “learned” nothing.

BZ

In Obama’s World, The Homeowner Would Go To Jail:


From The Smoking Gun:

After breaking into an Oregon residence last night, Timothy Chapek, 24, barricaded himself in a bathroom after the owner unexpectedly arrived home. Chapek, you see, was worried that Hilary Mackenzie might be armed (or that her barking German Shepherds could prove problematic).

So he called 911 seeking help. “I just broke into a house and the owner came home,” Chapek told a police operator. “You broke into a house?” the surprised operator responded. “I think she’s got guns,” Chapek added.

Simultaneously, Mackenzie called police to report that there was an intruder in her Portland home (she told an operator that Chapek had reported he was taking a shower).

In the Perfect World envisioned by Mr Obama, it is clear to me that the homeowner would subsequently be arrested whether she possessed a gun or not, her home searched, a background check conducted on her personal affairs (Is she a TEA Party member? Subscribe to The Weekly Standard? What are her radio listening habits? Does she have a blog? What is her political affiliation?). Mere suspicion of possessing a handgun for defensive purposes would be sufficient for an arrest, “registered” or not. Clearly, it’s every bit as important what the female homeowner was thinking as compared to how she acted.

Just as clear is the fact that the true victim in this crime is the so-called “trespasser” who, obviously, isn’t a homeowning elitist.

He obviously had unfulfilled needs and the economy, his societal position and lack of personal empowerment placed him into that unfortunate circumstance.

There’s a glimpse at one possible future, America.

You like it?

Then re-elect Mr Obama come 2012.

BZ

P.S.
Finally:

According to a Portland Police Bureau report, Chapek told cops he was “taking a shower, nothing more.” Mackenzie reported that none of her belongings were out of place and that Chapek had “earlier made some utterance…that ‘Mexicans’ had kidnapped him and put him in the bathroom.”

Chapek, pictured in the above mug shot, was arrested and charged with criminal trespass. Go here for access to both 9-1-1 calls.

Huh. Imagine that. There still exists a bit of sanity, even in Leftist Portland.

I’m sure, however, the protesters are gathering who will insist he was framed. Framed, I tell you!

Corporations To Obama: We’re Not Indentured Servants

Businesses and corporations aren’t perfect. We know that. But they create the wealth, not government. Small businesses employ most people, but big businesses do what’s left of heavy manufacturing and allow the US to have a presence in world markets for goods and services. Even and particularly in down economic times, business needs a break with regulations and taxes. And the die has been cast:

3M chief warns Obama over business regulation
By Hal Weitzman in Chicago
Published: February 27 2011 19:27 | Last updated: February 27 2011 19:27
The head of one of the US’s biggest industrial groups has launched a scathing attack on Barack Obama’s attempts to repair relations with companies, dubbing him “anti-business”.
Manufacturers could shift production out of the US to Canada or Mexico as a result, warned George Buckley, chief executive and chairman of 3M.
So who demands more taxes from business? The US or other countries? (Go here for a photographic presentation of same.) Forbes.com answers:
But it’s the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us. It only makes sense that multinationals “put costs in high-tax countries and profits in low-tax countries,” says Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. Those low-tax countries are almost anywhere but the U.S. “When you add in state taxes, the U.S. has the highest tax burden among industrialized countries,” says Hodge. In contrast, China’s rate is just 25%; Ireland’s is 12.5%.
Corporations are getting smarter, not just about doing more business in low-tax countries, but in moving their more valuable assets there as well. That means setting up overseas subsidiaries, then transferring to them ownership of long-lived, often intangible but highly profitable assets, like patents and software.
Mr Obama and other like-minded Leftists seem to think that it’s a private company’s duty to lose money specifically so the US government can disburse it to pet political projects, more entitlements for cronies, do-nothing welfare types, illegal immigrants who will vote for them, and for themselves, of course. Everyone knows the laws Congress makes for others and, for themselves, exempted, yes?
On the other hand, I have said and will continue to emphasize that with fewer taxes and regulations, corporations are on their own. There should never have been any bailouts for businesses perceived as “too big to fail” (a political phrase if ever there was one). GM and Chrysler should never have been bailed out; GM failed anyway. The money to banks and other financial institutions? Never. They should all have been allowed to fail completely. That is true freedom.
Now look where we are.
Still and all, 3M Chairman Buckley makes some more excellent points:
Mr Buckley, who has run the diversified manufacturer since 2005, said: “There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It is about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington, attitudes towards science.”
He added: “Politicians forget that business has choice. We’re not indentured servants and we will do business where it’s good and friendly. If it’s hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico – which tend to be pro-business – or America.”
Precisely. American businesses, simply by dint of being in America, are not and won’t be held hostage under indentured servitude. They have choices. I suspect they truly would prefer to stay right where they are but larger ones have sufficient capital to move, lock, stock and balance sheet.
Further, we have all spoken about illegal immigration repeatedly. Isn’t it about time we give priority to those who actually have something positive to bring to America — like their education or their dollars — such as Canada does? Buckley continues:
The 3M chief also criticised US immigration policy, saying the difficulty of obtaining visas was forcing companies to move research and development overseas. “About 68 per cent of our science PhD candidates are from outside the US,” he said. “Many want to stay here afterwards but we’re not allowed as many visas as we would like.”
“We are now exporting science overseas to China, India, Germany, building labs there. There’s a good strategic reason for it, but we also have no choice – if we can’t get the people here and we’re competing with the people there, we have no choice but to do it locally.”
America’s predominant Urban Thug Environment (honed and polished by America’s young black males) in school makes it, ahem, “unfashionable” and in many instances, unwise to succeed in learning, to even want to learn. That attitude and purposely-defeatist lifestyle has now run rampant through not just the black community but a good portion of the Mexican, Asian and Caucasoid young communities as well. Kids wish to be basketball players, tattooed “celebrities” or nothing at all. What they fail to realize is that, at this point, America is basketball-player’ed and celebrity-player’ed out. The Inn is beyond full and space was limited anyway.
Other countries have been lowering their tax rates, but not America. Continuing, from Forbes.com:

Naturally the Obama administration has proposed doing away with tax deferrals on overseas income. If the plan passes, a U.S. company that pays a 25% tax on profits in China would have to pay an additional 10% income tax to Uncle Sam to bring it up to the 35% corporate rate. “Eliminating deferrals would put U.S. companies on an unlevel playing field,” says the Tax Foundation’s Hodge, “especially if competing with the likes of Germany, which only taxes companies on domestic operations.”

So: let’s kill America’s ability to compete globally. Isn’t it the hallmark cry of the Leftist to “think and act globally”? Apparently, not if it involves business.
What most Americans forget to consider is this:

Would no more tax holiday for GE really end up helping Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer? Doubtful. “The average Joe should be in favor of lower corporate taxes,” says Hodge, “because ultimately they are paying the corporate income tax. Either as workers, getting lower wages and fewer jobs, or as consumers, paying higher prices, or as retirees, getting lower dividends and earnings on their investments.”

Because:

In the same vein, JPMorgan Chase ( JPM – news – people ) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has spoken out against an Obama proposal to levy a special tax on banks to recoup bailout costs. “Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea,” said Dimon. “All businesses tend to pass costs on to customers.”

I redundantly state the obvious: it is not the duty of businesses to lose money so that DC can piss it away for themselves, cronies, and those segments of society perceived to vote Leftist — such as illegal invaders, prisoners, non-producers and parasites.
The hosts, at this point, are truly beginning to wither on the vine.
BZ

Bean Bags vs AK-47s


Kind of like taking a carton of eggs to a gunfight.

With some sarcastic language and sense of irony thrown in.
From FoxNews.com (thanks, Chris):

The U.S. Border Patrol is under fire for allegedly ordering its elite, SWAT-style units to use non-lethal bean bag ammunition before responding with deadly force – even against suspects armed with high-powered semi-automatic and automatic weapons like AK-47s.
The controversy over the agency’s “bean bag” policy began in the days following the Dec. 14 killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and has escalated recently as more information is uncovered in the investigation of the fatal shooting.
“When the suspected aliens did not drop their weapons, two Border Patrol agents deployed ‘less than lethal’ beanbags at the suspected aliens,” according to a FBI search warrant request filed in the U.S. District Court in Tucson on Dec. 29. “At this time, at least one of the suspected aliens fired at the Border Patrol agents. Two Border Patrol agents returned fire, one with his long gun and one with his pistol. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot with one bullet and died shortly after.
The warrant appears to support claims made by Terry’s brother, Kent, and former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo that Terry’s team — part of the U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit, also known as BORTAC — was under standing orders to always use bean-bag rounds first before using live ammunition.
“There was a group of four guys with my brother and two had lethal and two had non-lethal weapons there,” Kent Terry told Fox News Friday.
Tancredo wrote about the issue in a Dec. 18 op-ed article here.
Would your federal government ever purposely send its own very precious CIVILIAN agents into battle less than perfectly equipped?
For “Politically Correct” purposes?
You figure that one out.
BZ
P.S.
May the good Lord keep and hold USBP Agent Brian Terry, and look after him and his family.