Getting back Reality

The Promise of Andrew Breitbart

Alive and Kicking.

Andrew Breitbart was a bear of a man. Put him in a fur coat strap on some snow shoes and a fur hat and he would be the picture of a Mountain Man. The reality is far from it. Andrew was a confessed liberal to start with and partied with the best of them. That is perhaps why he knew what buttons to push when arguing with liberals. Plus he had no fear of pushing those buttons, in fact he reveled in it. The hate the left had for him could be explained by his cross over to the other side as well as his vociferousness.  But also his effectiveness at fighting them with their own tools.

We see others who have crossed over which ignited the rage of the left. Ronald Reagan immediately comes to mind. Also on the more esoteric side there is author and playwright David Mamet who wrote a book titled “The Secret Knowledge” which tells of the Left’s effort to dismantle American Culture. I read it and found it pretty insightful. He too was attacked but he never wavered, he just kept on producing great plays with great bottom lines, while the "critics and tastemakers" who control the media would have you believe Mamet is dead, the general public says the opposite. http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/07/conservative-playwright-david-mamet-isnt-going-anywhere/

Also there are other Conservatives who actually practice what the Left preaches and are hated all the more for it. Think Sarah Palin. The left talks of women’s rights and the right of women to be strong and how they should take on the male dominated power structure. Well Ms. Palin did just that and outed the Old Boys Club in Alaska and became Governor. She raised a “damaged” child, the Left you would think would be singing her praises. Why then did the Left reap so much hate upon her? It seems obvious that they disliked her because the Conservative Principles she used worked while the Progressive Principles the left has been espousing have never worked. They hate her for this.

This brings me to the topic of my blog. What matters more, the reality or the appearance of reality? As I write this blog and research through the internet I find myself at the mercy of the “critics and tastemakers”. Even when I search for an alternative to the lefts mind numbing prodigiousness to spin everything their way I too admit to being forced into an alternative route with alternative "tastemakers". To find some truth in between is hard.  However the control of the media by the left’s “tastemakers” needs to be fought against.

Andrew Breitbart knew (and let me borrow Mamet’s title) that “Secret Knowledge”. He tried to create internet platforms for an alternative to the left wing media in all aspects of it from movie to plays to music to news to government to politics to business. His main focus was to break into pop culture to give the young a conservative alternative to what they are inundated with. He tried to break the generational cycle and counteract the liberal educational system in his own way.  He did this through the internet.

We of the right need to make our feelings known as we did in the last election. But not once every four years. Not just in politics either, we need to do it in everything we do. We need to make it personal.  Sure we voted for Trump but where were we when Shelby school canceled an appearance of a Constitutional speaker? 

We need to get local and vocal.We need to go to conservative movies and not go to liberal ones. We need to go to stores that espouse conservative values and not buy at Liberal espousing ones. We need at this point to climb out of the pity pot and choose sides.

If the financial “bottom line” is the only avenue left for us to use in our free enterprise system, so be it, let’s not shy away from using it. As David Mamet’s plays are still popular in the larger audience hence his continued successful “bottom line”, so too can we say no to the “critics and tastemasters” who try to tell us what we should like. Come to think of it lets support Conservative “critic and tastemasters”. I realize to the pure of heart this seems like trading one taskmaster for another but sometimes sides have to be chosen. After the war the pure of heart can blame it all on Churchill and throw him out after the victory as long as they chose his side till won the war.

I think this is that time to choose.

I think the conservatives have for so long been in the minority position that they do not know how to actually lead anymore. Plus human nature is to complain rather than to actually do something. I’ve seen this from the beginning of the Tea Party and since. Conservative groups like to sit around and complain but not do anything. When it comes time to gather up volunteers, from the 50 people in the group you are lucky to get 4 or 5. This is just not found in the conservative world but in the whole of human nature. The problem is the liberals are in control and those “4 or 5” liberals of the 50 have the control of the media and the government. They are the taste and task masters now. As the government takes over more and more of what we individually had to be responsible for we as a people are becoming more and more reliant upon that government and less and less upon ourselves.

The giant wheel of government now takes so much effort just to slow down that I fear sometimes in my darkest thoughts that we will never be able to reverse it.

We are seeing more and more of Orwell’s “1984”s predictions coming true but thankfully we are not there yet. But is “2084” that far away. My kids may live to see it, my grandchildren will grow up in it. Do I want to be part of changing what they will see or not? What will the world we give them be like.?  What am I willing to do to change that dire future? That is the question.

I’ve heard Rush lament about this and he says that the truth will overwhelm the wall of falsehoods the media erects, but Rush mispoke because that wall will not crumble without us as a people pushing it over.  Without our demanding that the truth be told?

Now more than ever is the time to pick sides and start demanding.



Regards,
Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
Bob Carr
glhotdogs513@gmail.com
231-728-3455

Here is a film I haven't watched but will.

The Circle staring Tom Hanks.  Not a great film by any means and this probably isn't meant to be Conservative but it definitely tears down the Progressive panasea.
Also I'm re-checking out "Pursuit of Happiness" with Will Smith all about working hard and family struggles.

When something you make to help you decides to help itself instead.

When is a System Too Big?

Simply stated a system is too big when it can’t accomplish the goals it was set up to fix. A corollary to that would be that the system becomes too big to be accountable for making the changes necessary to accomplish its original goals. Or again simply, the institution becomes more important than those it’s trying to help. The case below shows how a Hospital in its drive to save money and get the patients out leads to a pretty sad and catastrophic end. Its inability to change is causing deaths.

Case in point.

The tragic death of Lauren Bloomstein 20 hours after giving birth to a healthy child. She was a neo-natal nurse and Larry her husband was a doctor.

https://www.propublica.org/article/die-in-childbirth-maternal-death-rate-health-care-system

Please read the entire article and keep in mind the problem we are having with the education system which seems unable to change its practices and punish the unqualified with the resulting dumbing down of the educational system through a model which seems based more on what is good for the system than what is good for the students.

You will see the parallels - to me they were obvious. Everyone shifting blame until they landed on the fact that maybe the system was a fault and everyone seemed to agree that to fix that was too big to handle and it wasn’t their job. Nothing got changed.

Does this remind you of any other problems?

It does me.

I see this in all aspects of society today, as industries whether it be schools, governments or businesses as they consolidate and become these mammoth entities incapable of change whose main goal in life is to protect themselves and less about protecting the individual for which they were started in the first place. If you still have doubts look at the VA Hospitals.

A great movie about the inability of the education system to change is “Waiting for Superman”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbCZB_sy6Ws

The problem is - there is no such thing as superman. It is only when enough individual people get together and create the political will does something get done. Or as the case in education, a system I feel is beyond fixing, individuals out of self-defense for their children have been able to over decades drop out and educate their own children. That has proved to be dare I say it, educational.

Individual liberty when actively pursued will force institutions to change or go under.

We do this in the free enterprise system when it is not monopolized.

Perhaps Lauren and Larry Bloomstein were too much of the system to see it clearly, but their lawyers are not and I expect they will hit the system where they hurt. But will that really solve anything? Probably the only changes will be the hospital will have to raise the costs to the patients for the bungling of its doctors and nurses to cover its rise in mal-practice insurance rates. Just another example of a system too big to fail passing on the costs of its failures to those they are supposed to be helping.

That is what I call the breakdown of the “Free Enterprise of Ideas” that used to run this country that made it great.

Why is it so hard to change something as simple as reading charts and taking the patients’ blood pressure? Why does it take a Superman?

Because we have let the villains become a Supervillains.



Regards
Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
Bob Carr
glhotdogs513@gmail.com
231-728-3455

"Rule of Law"

“Rule of Law” Now and Forever

After years of working for the election of a “Rule of Law” Supreme Court in Michigan, I was apprehensive when I heard Chief Justice Robert P. Young was resigning. Who would Snyder pick to fill the vital role Justice Taylor played in our “Rule of Law” Court?

I was pleased when Governor Rick Snyder picked Kurtis Wilder. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/05/09/snyder-judge-kurtis-wilder-supreme-court/101469748/

As to his bonefides concerning “Rule of Law”, he is quoted in the above article as follows. "The court ought to say what the law is -- not what it ought to be." Add to that he is an appointee of Gov. John Engler. On top of that our new Supreme Court Chief Justice Stephan Markman had this to say about Justice Kurtis Wilder. "(he) brings what has been a consistent commitment to the equal rule of law and unwavering support for the values of the constitutions of the United States and the State of Michigan."

That is good enough for me, if you’ll remember I was able to get various candidates for the Supreme Court to come to speak to us in Hart over the years. The “Rule of Law” in my opinion is the corner stone of a free and independent people. It is the check upon Mob Rule or as Former Chief Justice Robert P. Young categorized it an “empathy court”.

There will soon have to be another appointee to the Mi. Supreme Court as current Justice Joan Larson has been nominated Trump to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. As you remember her name was in the running for the recent vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. All of these people were initially appointed by Governor John Engler. Mi. could be said to be the hotbed of “Rule of Law” judgeships.

We need to keep that all in mind as these Justices face re-election in the future.

Let us all remain ever vigilant.

To keep what we’ve gained and continue moving forward.

It is as always up to us to keep the “Rule of Law” now and forever.



Regards,
Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
glhotdogs513@gmail.com
231-728-3455

The Slings and Arrows of being in the Middle.

The Slings and Arrows of being in the Middle.

and

Some Fun Stuff

We all know who the sling throwers and arrow shooters are. They are too numerous to mention because they have picked the easy way. It has and always has been easiest to tear down someone or something that is trying to do something. To pick apart what has been done. To destruct vs. construct.

Usually they cloak themselves in far left/right rhetoric to disguise their lack of understanding of the real world or their inability to think original thoughts. You know the ones – the people who like labeling others and decry being so labeled themselves.

The real world we live in is not that way.  Individuals are not one thing –never one thing- they are many things all mixed up and self-formed to make a package that can survive in reality. Everyone makes compromises with reality in order to survive. We see it in literature. The greatest novels are all about the conflicts within ourselves over the righteous and self-righteous, over the ideal and the real. Of what we dream of doing and what we end up doing. Even the best of us can’t come close to perfection. But the best of us try.  That is where real beauty is sometimes found, along with the happiness in overcoming the struggles found in that journey.

People such as Glen Beck revel in labeling people and telling us what the “real” reality is. Other people such as Al Gore tinker with computer models and flimsy science while they both run around pontificating and getting rich by saying that the “sky is falling”.

What is their answer to the question of what can we do to avert disaster? Nothing except Pollyanna/Miss America answers like - do what I do and everything will be wonderful and the world will be saved and peace and harmony will be here. While one says all we have to do is use one sheet of toilet paper, the other is saying buy gold. The sad thing is – people believe them – a lot of people.

So what side should we be on? Wow – Now that is a really stupid question I just asked. It accomplishes nothing. I say neither side is right. If you really want to fight the good fight and suffer the slings and arrows try being in-between – in the middle of those two forces. Try getting something constructive done.  That is exactly what elected officials are elected to do. They have to dig through all the BS piled up on both sides and decide what to do. They have to actually construct something then listen to all the criticisms from those of a more destructive ilk.

But that is what makes a good leader, his ability to dig out the reality of the matter and find a solution that works for the group they are leading. The far Left and far Right seem to all have Right on their side and they all claim at some point to be best for the majority or the common good so how do we decide what to actually try to get people to do. What concrete things do we try to do?

First above all is to figure out what allows American Individuals to decide for themselves – then let them.

Thomas Sowell in his book “Conflict of Visions” which was his definition of the difference between the right and the left came to the conclusion from history that the Right thought we were born flawed and had to work at overcoming our baser instincts to create a workable society. While the left believed we were all born perfect and if we just passed the right laws that perfection would assert itself and create a perfect world. That is a great book and while my summary is a cheap shot at his great book, the point is that neither side is right and in my opinion we need to quit attacking everything from one side or the other and try sitting in the middle more. We need to find solutions that simply work. Americans are getting fed up with the inability of Congress to get things done.

It is from the middle where reality is found. Woodrow Wilson (whom Beck would call the father of American Liberalism) had a counselor by the name of Louise Brandeis whom he later appointed to the US Supreme Court. Below is a NY Time article about monopolies of the current day and they allude to Wilson and Brandeis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/is-it-time-to-break-up-google.html

From that I quote the author of the article, Jonathan Taplin.

“While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.”  A compromise in the face of adamant Ideological opposites.

This Brandeis fellow didn’t like regulation of companies which would seem to put him at odds with the “Father of Liberalism” because he saw how corruption followed but at the same time something was needed that would keep the efficiency of monopoly while keeping some type of curb on the corruption monopolies too inevitably caused. In a word he needed a compromise from the middle. That compromise was the forming of a semi-regulated of what he defined as a “natural” monopoly. Today we call them utilities.

Brandeis at this point was as I would say jumping in the middle in order to actually solve a problem with two conflicting sides. He soon found out how much harder that is because the slings and arrows were coming from both sides at once.

It is in this middle that the President we call Trump is putting himself as he tries to do what is best for all America. He is catching it from all sides because he is trying to govern from there, a space that includes the Hard Hat working steel workers, the coal miners to the small town folks trying to get by and just want to be left alone.

When most of America understands that the President needs all in his administration working with him to do the job, the media and the political elites do not get that concept. –  The truth is in the pudding.  Trump is getting results.

The steel workers applaud him as their industry is rebounding as this quote from the New York Times by Patricia Cohen shows. {“If you could design a perfect administration from the perspective of the steel industry, this would be it,” said Thomas Gibson, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, ticking off the president’s promises to hack away regulations and lower taxes, while fending off foreign competitors and embarking on a “Buy America” building program.”} https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/business/economy/steel-nucor-trump-policy.html?_r=0

The coal miners applauded him too as he signed an executive order that starts to unravel Obama’s war on coal in March this year. Vice President Mike Pence said “The war on coal is over.” The President said. “The action I’m taking today will eliminate federal overreach, restore economic freedom and allow our companies and our workers to thrive, compete and succeed on a level playing field,” http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/28/coal-miners-rejoice-as-trump-unwinds-obama-era-rules.html

Good works will out albeit faster in business than in politics. The stock market is on a tear and the Dow is setting new all-time records.

Who says trickle-down economics doesn’t work? The US Government just recorded a surplus of $182 billion. Need I say that what Trump is doing is working with business? https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-government-posts-182-billion-surplus-april-180943488--business.html

As Trump goes on attack from one front to another the Dems are losing their minds as Rush Limbaugh gleefully says “the Democrat Party is going bananas — completely, totally unhinged — on the road to literal insanity.”

The beauty of all this is that the Dems still don’t see why they lost the election. Any old line “CIO – Democrat” could tell them. They have lost the blue collar voters in droves. What used to be their solid go to base of support is leaving the Democrat Party. Why? Because the Democrats ignored and took them for granted and ended up calling them all the filthy names they used to reserve for Republicans. They in effect put them in the “Deplorable Basket”. The question is can the Republicans get their head out of D.C. long enough to take advantage of that?

So my advice is to keep the faith and keep talking about the positives of what Trump is doing and let the Left walk off the cliff by themselves.

Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
Bob Carr
glhotdogs513@gmail.com
231-728-3455