Sarah sez

One in a series that takes a look at some of the zany and madcap things said by the former Governor of Alaska.



Here's Ms. Palin on wanting to know who's been naughty and who's been nice:

You know, I’ve been looking at these worldwide riots that are developing. They’re all a reflection of deep passion, deep resentment and fear. Now the question is “Where will this go? How can this be sort of concretized?” And one thought that has occurred to me — and let me sort of mention it here casually without having really thought it through systematically — I think it would be increasingly helpful if there was a movement to publish, worldwide, lists of who make, largely through speculation, enormous amounts of money almost instantly, and basically hide the fact from their social context. You know, how many Americans are really fully aware of how many other good people, let’s say like Warren Buffett and others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to philanthropy? But how many more are there in the hedge funds, in the banks, in a variety of other places, who, on the basis of speculation, literally make millions of dollars that would take a century or two for the average person ever to make? I’d like to see those lists. And they shouldn’t be that difficult to produce.

Woops. Upon further review that wasn't Palin at all, rather Jimmy Carter's old National Security Advisor and currently one of President Obama's foreign policy advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on MSNBC the other day.


Compiling people lists... Is it a hard-left authoritarian thing?

To what end does this achieve except for being a raw display of jack-bootled thuggery? What effectively does Brzezinski want to do with this list and why in god's name is how much people make and how much they give to charity any of his damn business? Perhaps Brzezinski can strike the first blow for transparency by volunteering his own W-2s but as the case with Warren Buffet calling for higher taxes on the rich, moral preening always seems to be a not so much for me sort of thing.

Tales from Bailout Nation Pt. XXIX

Do you remember when they told us that if we voted for McCain it would mean at least 4 more years of Jesus Land in the White House? Well they were right.

At least $140 million of the $787 billion stimulus package was directed to "religiously inspired" groups, Politico reports, making the Obama initiative "the largest-scale embodiment of what was, not long ago, a conservative priority: directing tax dollars to 'faith-based initiatives.' " While the stimulus was initially attacked for being "anti-religious," a Politico investigation finds that a significant amount of money went to groups associated with religious organizations, including charities and the secular arms of churches. (Politico didn't include universities and hospitals with religious affiliations in the study). The money, which came from agencies like the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Energy, went to programs for school lunches, energy-efficiency, and education, among other things. To make sure faith-based organizations got the money, federal agencies also launched an "aggressive" outreach campaign to educate groups about how to apply for the funds and to ensure that state officials gave it to them. While Obama has been alternately praised and criticized for taking "what President Bush did and [expanding] it," White House officials maintain that funding faith-based groups isn't part of a political strategy. "Part of our job is to ensure that there's a level playing field—we don't encourage anyone to favor faith-based groups over other organizations, but we do want to ensure that there's no discrimination against faith-based organizations," said administration official Joshua DuBois.

To head off the inevitable yet fair question: Yes, we were opposed to Bush's faith-based initiative program as well.

Charities, whether faith-based or not, would appear to operate more efficiently and be better structured to pursue their ends free of government entanglement.

Unfortunately, we were unable to link to the Politico story and while the SLATE piece does not suggest anything untoward, what is to keep the government from attaching conditions to their hand outs in the future?

The dubious value of "doing it for the children"

Two Charger home games thus far this year and so far, two blackouts as the team did not sell the requisite amount of tickets as dictated by the NFL.

Now short of the NFL revising this long-standing policy in this age of recession and 52" inch LCD televisions, what is to be done?

Some enterprising folks here in town have set up a site Stop Chager Blackouts that will accept donations in order to purchase seats for the Boys and Girls Club of San Diego.

Now, assuming everything is on the up and up, what a great idea. Blackouts are lifted, we get football on Sunday and some disadvantaged youngsters get to see their home town, 2-4 Chargers.



The drawback as we see it? To paraphrase Beano Cook upon learning that then-MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn had granted free life-time baseball passes to the released Iranian hostages back in 1981: "Haven't they suffered enough?"

A play-doh offensive update

It's pretty simple. Get yourself to the post office and pick up a 12"x12"x5" military flat rate box and then to your neighborhood Target, Long's Drugs, Walmart, whatever and fill it with school supplies and clothing. Crap that you probably hated getting for Christmas but would definitely make the day for a child in Afghanistan. OK, you can throw some toys in there also so that Afghani kid doesn't think Americans are a bunch of cheerless Scrooges.*




Said box will be sent to Camp Phoenix in Afghanistan where our troops will distribute these boxes and others like it to schools, villages and clinics in and around the Kabul area.

Our buddy Mongo has set up a FaceBook group with the details including the address/mailing information, here.

Other updates can be found here.

Supporting the troops is more than a bumper sticker.


* A colleague at work who has returned from Afghanistan working as a community affairs officer told us that while there is no shortage of soccer balls, what is really appreciated is pumps to keep them inflated. Just a hint.

Quote of the Day

“We have a niche population, a subculture of people who are sacrificing their lives for us. And it seems to me that the rest of the country is oblivious,” he said. “That hurts me. That’s a disconnect hard to bridge.”

That from Del Mar's John Cote who is walking across America to raise awareness of our nation's military as well as funds for the Fisher House foundation which builds rest homes for injured service members and their families to use during treatment.

Cote began his 2,140 mile journey on April 1st and is on schedule to complete it at Fort Benning, Georgia on Wednesday.

Cote has raised $20,000 thus far. The Fisher House website is here. Give as the spirit moves you.

Link of the day

File this one under: Our bad.

Our bad for not linking to this in far too long.

Our buddy, Mongo, started up a Facebook group, Camp Phoenix, Afghanistan, Operation Outreach known colloquially in these parts as the Playdoh Offensive.

Our troops over there in the Kabul area send out convoys on a regular basis not to hunt down the bad guys but to the villages in the area for humanitarian purposes. The Playdoh Offensive has chosen to focus on the children. The link has all the details on the left-hand margin but it's as simple as going over to Target, Long's Drugs or Wal-Mart and filling up a cardboard box with pencils, crayons, drawing paper, soccer balls, basketballs, used clothing (good repair), shoes (huge need!), baby clothing (huge need!) and, of course, Playdoh and having the post office ship it over for about $12.

Basically the stuff you would love to have if you were a kid growing up in an impoverished, war-torn, 3rd world nation where the simple act of showing up at school can be death defying.


On a related note:

The husband of a co-worker of ours will be deploying to Afghanistan in a short while. We are kicking around the idea of our Project Office heading-up an "Adopt-a-Platoon" type program and hosting it on FaceBook with regular updates here at BwD.

Bumper stickers are swell but there's more to "support the troops".

We'll keep you posted.

How did I get stuck over here on the left side of this post

Got back in from the desert yesterday evening. We did have a chance to spin around the 'net just enough to realize there is a lot going on out there with respect to tax day and local politics and our posts over the next few days will most likely reflect that.

In the meantime, please enjoy this short Milton Friedman clip from 1978 at Stanford University.



"Government doesn't have any responsibility, people have the responsibility"

If there is anything we do know will result from ObamaCare, it will be a paradigm shift with respect to charitable givings and volunteerism. As one of the most charitable nations on Earth, we possessed a collective responsibility to care for the poor and those who had been victims of unforeseen circumstances, be it natural disasters or medical difficulties.

With government intervention into the health care decisions of our lives being thrown into overdrive with the advent of ObamaCare where the role of government as the provider of well-being becomes more and more increased, will that cause a paradigm shift in our national psyche that deadens the sense of urgency we have for charitable giving and volunteerism?

We're going to find out and we are by no means optimistic about the results.

Doing what it does

Last Tuesday morning the Comfort was sitting at pier 11 in Baltimore with no power or people or supplies. A big chunk of cold steel. From the time the President said go, in 66 hours we were turning knots. That means getting all the people and supplies and getting the ship seaworthy. This was a major accomplishment!

We sailed with almost 500 crew on board. The remainder of the crew will be flying into Haiti over the next few days. Some crew members will be hot racking. That means two people will share a bed on different shifts. For the first two days the crew ate MREs. We’ve got meals now as they’ve brought up the galley.

When the ship has its full compliment, with the water requirements of the patients and the water making capabilities of the ship at anchor, the crew will probably not be able to shower every day. And when we do it’ll be a ‘Navy shower.’ Turn the water on and get wet then turn it off. No more than 15 seconds. Soap down and wash, then turn it on and rinse. No more than 30 seconds. And by the way, the water may not always be very warm… oh well.

I started to write, “So that’s the bad side.” But that’s not the bad side. It’s just the way things are. And I’ve not heard a single complaint from anybody on this ship. I say again these are professional caregivers. The best the country has to offer.

The USNS COMFORT, one of two Navy hospital ships (the other is the San Diego-based USNS MERCY) is in Haitian waters as we speak providing medical care, making clean water and dispensing food and medical supplies to that quake-ravaged country.

Read more here from one of the volunteers aboard the ship.

Astroturfing good deeds

And lest you may think I’m blind to other families who don’t have insurance, consider this: Haven’t we, as a country managed to find ways to provide healthcare for those who couldn’t pay for it? Even for people in other countries? We have ALWAYS done that. Our compassion for those less fortunate arises from our freedom of choice. We already have invented and implemented (both in the private and government sectors) good social programs that help millions of people. And the farther they are from government intervention, the better they run.

Government intervention IS the problem. But once we centralize healthcare through a government-administered master plan, one that will complicate and de-sensitize our compassion and sense of charity, our freedom of choice is gone. Our compassion and morality becomes legislated and soon we just won’t care about anybody else other than ourselves. Our liberty, charity, and sense of community are lost in a bureaucratic nightmare. Charities and other entities currently connecting needy people to health care will disappear or be sucked into the government plan, rendering them ineffective.

Charity. It’s an entirely relevant point and one which deserves addressing because we tend to look at the healthcare debate in terms of economics (how are we going to pay for this thing?) or from the vantage of loss of liberty and freedom (keep your politics off my body!) but what current healthcare reform also represents is a fundamental cultural shift in how we view our individual and collective responsibility to the less-fortunate.

As a percentage of GNP, we are the most privately charitable nation on the planet and it isn’t even close. The next closest are our Anglo-democratic cousins, if your keeping cultural-score at home.

This hasn’t happened by accident. Along with the individualism that we cherish as Americans comes also a private sense of community that is entirely voluntary in nature and is informed because we have the freedom to choose. A community that is enforced by our own personal convictions and not by structural or legislative fiat that it is our duty as citizens of this country to look after the less-fortunate.

We have personal knowledge of people that read, contribute and comment on this blog that have expended considerable time, talent and treasure to causes even if borne of situations which they did not concur because of a personal and entirely voluntary sense of obligation to do the right thing.

That’s the part of American exceptionalism that becomes threatened by the current version of healthcare reform. That sense of urgency, that sense of laying responsibility upon yourself to donate money, to volunteer time, to get on the phone or email to inform others of a dire situation that needs tending to gets blunted… gets diluted or muted in a culture where “everyone’s covered” and “everything’s going to be OK” when in reality it’s a damn lie.

Overreaction? Perhaps. It’s not like we are going to let people fall through the cracks when government-managed healthcare proves to be a complete failure, right? Well, maybe… because when charity starts becoming more of a black market enterprise or our collective will towards charitable action becomes disincentivized, all bets are off.

Is it Warm in Here or is it Just Us?

First off, we want to thank both B-Daddy and the Substitute for their excellent work in keeping things rolling and leaning forward while we were enjoying our Rocky Mountain beer and lifestyle extra-long weekend in West Yellowstone. The writing was superb and its always gratifying to know that we can bail for a few days and its like… its like… well, its like nothing happened at all… or something like that. Seriously, thanks guys! (And no, there is nothing to the rumor that Subby will be sent off to Barry Goldwater Day Camp at the site of the Yuma Territorial Prison for some “re-education”).

Speaking of getting caught up, we noticed we have been tagged by KT. We’ll be checking that out shortly but we surmise our Maximum Leader is going to make us put in some actual work.

That old adage of “Time away from work on vacation gets your batteries recharged so that you return to work refreshed and re-energized” never made one bit of sense to us. Always sounded like “boss-speak” or as an appropriate tag-line to a positive affirmation poster offered up by the corporate luddites at despair.com.
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To be perfectly honest... its not nice to be back. We were having too much damn fun to be bothered with details like work and the minutiae of miscellany like bills, relationships and other mundane crap of that nature.

A few days away from the ordinary grind always allows for some reflection and reflect we did on numerous topics. Regarding this blog though, it seems we have probably been devoting more time than we would like to politics. That can be easily rationalized as just staying current at the height of the Presidential primary season that has been the most tumultuous ever in our memory.

Fair enough perhaps, but the nagging suspicion we have is that our own “wall-to-wall” coverage is due in part because politics means too much anymore. By that we mean the “politics” as applied by the folks running for office has or will have (depending on how many campaign promises are kept) far greater impact on our lives than we desire. So forgive us our tick when we hear Hillary speak of some as-yet determined enforcement method to get everybody to sign up for healthcare.

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So if we are to put up a campaign sign in our yard this coming fall, rest assured, we will be endorsing no one person but rather posting a friendly but inferred endorsement of minimalism amid our flags and star-spangled bunting: “Thanks, No. We’re, Fine”.

Helping ourselves and helping others in need was the standard M.O. this past week up in West Yellowstone and it bore out the truism that the more imminent danger is the more charitable we become towards others.