No Virginia, There Is No Obama Claus.....

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December 8, 2010 - We received the following letters to the editor at "The Nosy News" from 10 year old Virginia.  Virginia asks hard questions.

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Dear Editor:

Conservatives believe in helping themselves at the expense of others; Liberals believe in helping others at the expense to themselves. Everyone knows that.  So, why don't you people believe in the Obama Claus?

Your Friend,

Virginia





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Dear Virginia,

You have it all wrong. You assume that only conservatives are greedy people.  There are greedy people of both political persuasions that believe in helping themselves to other people's money (see redistribution of wealth and Ponzi schemes - which are the same thing).  In fact, Bernie Madoff, convicted of the largest Ponzi scheme in history (he defrauded his clients of billions of dollars), was a heavy donor to the Democrat party and was a major Obama supporter.

Percentage wise, conservatives actually give more to charity than any other group. They give more foreign aid annually than the federal government - it just goes to people that need it instead of to greedy warlords and corrupt third world government officials.

You say "Liberals help others at the expense of themselves."  Really? Who is it that wants to take money from the wealthy (not themselves) to fund all this giving? Liberals claim to represent the poor and downtrodden, who are, by definition, from lower income groups.  Folks with no money probably don't pay any taxes anyway.  So I have to ask myself, Virginia, from whom is all this largesse, that liberals supposedly give, going to come from?

When we give to charity directly, to our church or to people who need our help directly, all the money goes to help people in trouble, not to support a fat bureaucracy that generates more paperwork than help.

Obama Claus is, after all, a myth designed to convince us we don't need to to be generous - that someone else will do it for us.

Your Friend,

The Editor

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Dear Editor

My family donates hundreds of dollars and hours to our church. They haven't exactly offered to help us with my Dad's unemployment or my sister's medical bills. They did however, ask us to make an extra, "end of the year" ...donation to make sure they make budget.


I love my church and it provides me with spiritual guidance and education, but I don't quite see how it is going to help us find a job. It did teach me that I should feed the poor, comfort the hurting and help the sick, but that sounds too much like medicaid and healthcare reform.

Exactly what are we supposed to ask them to provide?

Your friend,

Virginia

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Dear Virginia,

I don't know what church you belong to, but in mine, I'm actively involved in the process of deciding where the church budget should go. If you want to feed people or help people who are struggling , be part of the decision-making process when you grow up. Get on the church board. Become a deacon or volunteer to run the food pantry or soup kitchen. When you have a home of your own, give a homeless person a room till they get on their feet.

You talk about your church as "them" in the same way you talk about the government in the third person - as though both church and governments were some kind of magical god-like creatures that are supposed to fix our problems for us. The government and the church are "us", Virginia.  Both organizations are run by people with various philosophies and values systems.
The question then is, dear Virginia, "Do you trust your pastor and the church elders or the politicians and the bureaucrats." My money's on the church folks.

And "What exactly do we ask them to provide?"  The answer is, "Whatever you think your church should be providing."  It is, after all, YOUR church.

Though I think sometimes the government is helpful for stuff like this, I'm not sure they are the most efficient way to dispense charity. 

Besides, I think the Obama Claus is up to something, myself.

Your friend,

The Editor

Separated at Birth?

James Carville and Lord Voldemort?

J.C.:  Trust me, they'll improve your aim a hundred percent, Bro.

L.V.:  How do you keep these things on?

J.C.:   Hey, you're the magician. Conjure up yourself a nose for cryin' out loud!

Did Some Good Come Out of Wiki-Leaks

One thing Wiki-leaks recent document dump may have inadvertantly done is blown away the liberal fiction that the United States has acted the bully in the Middle-East all this time and that our presence is not wanted in the region.

As it turns out, apparently the leaders of the surrounding Arab nations are just as creeped out by folks like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Saddam Hussein as Western nations.  Arabs, as has been pointed out by historians and as many Arab commentators themselves have explained, the Arabs are basically businessmen. The political aspirations of tyrant powers like Iraq and Iran are destabilizing to the region. An unstable Middle-East is bad for business and many local Arab diplomats have, apparently, expressed their concern about Iran's leadership over the years, even to the point of suggesting the U.S. "cut off the head of the snake". 

Sadly, these concerns have all been expressed in private. Publicly, the leadership of Iran's neighbors have been conspicuously silent all these years. Liberal pundits and politicians have seized on this silence to criticize Republican presidents for becoming militarily involved in the region.  What has not been revealed clearly before the recent Wiki-leaks dump is how heavily the more peaceful Arab nations of the region depend on U.S. military might to back their own security.

They'd never say it, but secretly, I bet many Arab leaders (and a significant portion of the U.S. diplomatic corps) would really love it if Israel would bomb the heck out of Iran's nuclear facilities. That way the threat would be eliminated and everybody could blame the Israelis for "over-reacting" and make the the villains in the piece.

It appears from Wiki-leaks, that the U.S. understands how to play Islamo-politics better than most liberal pundits would ever admit.  The name of the game for the Arab nations in that volatile region is to get the U.S. or Israel to slap around the local bully-boys, while they register "official' disapproval for our actions. They are like the kids on the playground that won't challenge a bully for fear of attracting his attention to themselves.

In a region where people blow themselves up and you with them if you make them mad, it's little wonder local Arab leaders avoid criticizing thugs like Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. It's a good way to get yourself personally blown up.

Business people can't do business if you blow them up.  So a practical businessman wants to avoid that sort of thing and as we all learned on the playground in elementary school, the best way to avoid drawing the attention of bullies is to either remain silent or laugh at their jokes. Everyone is always relieved when the teacher shows up to enforce the rules.

Anti-American Wiki-leaks founder, Julian Assange, may have inadvertantly helped America in posting all those documents.  If that's the case, you can bet the documents will soon "disappear" or be universally ignored.  Can't have United States policy proved to have been correct, now can we? I'll bet old Julian is really unhappy about that.


Tom