Observations From A Hill

for liberal Hollywood and Planned Parenthood.

Just when the liberal star is in the ascendant, here comes, Angela Suleman, a perfect opportunity for someone in the liberal camp to demonstrate just exactly how much they care.

It is just custom made for one of those wonderful liberal Hollywood couples, say Brangelina. They could create a trust fund to support Angela and her 14, yes, that’d be fourteen, children. Heck, they could afford to do so just not flying all over the world to find poor children to adopt.

And then there is Planned Parenthood. You know, them of the ‘Every Child A Wanted Child’ slogan. Clearly Angela wanted 14 children - minimum - given that she underwent fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization to have the babies. Heck, not having a husband, or even boyfriend, was not going to discourage this woman who so wanted to have more babies. She is the perfect poster child for Planned Parenthood to demonstrate that they actually do care that children are actually wanted. They could take some of those millions of dollars they spend on offing the children that some mother’s don’t want and help to support this mother who clearly has more love than common sense.

I just wonder what the probability of either of the above occurring. I’m willing to bet that there’ll be more rabid, right wing conservative church members willing to assist this woman and her brood than left wing liberals in any organization.

I meet with a group of men at the IHOP here in Newhall, at least I think it is Newhall, every Thursday morning during the winter. We used to read My Utmost For His Highest which is a collection of daily devotionals written by Oswald Chambers. Jim is our reader but we all have books to follow along.

Today, we changed to reading a collection of John Wesley’s writings, also broken up into daily devotional format. Somehow, this morning, we got onto the topic of folding a dollar bill so that you could see the twin trade towers burning and Greg, the pastor, did the folding to show us all. Then of course the jokes started to flow but we got to talking about the first use of the American dollar. I volunteered to look it up and found, as we had guessed, that it was indeed in use before the declaration of independence. In fact, if you follow this link

you can read a bit more about the early minting.

Well, this kind of thing always starts my brain off on a tangent so I thought I would ask the men what value the dollar really represented to them. After a few complaints about it being too early in the morning for such a deep discussion I just told them what it means to me.

To me, for the dollar to have an underlying value of any kind, it must be based on something. To me, it isn’t good enough to say “well, it’s based on the gold standard”, or at least it was, because the question then just becomes, on what is the value of gold predicated ?

In the end, the only thing that has an unchanging, meaningful value to us humans is time. When it comes down to the nuts and bolts the only real thing we have to ’spend’ is the time we are alive. So, naturally, the dollar’s ultimate value to me rests on how I value my time.

So where am I going with this ? Well, the value of my time never really changes. I can only spend it once and it is the ultimate arbiter against which I value everything else. The value of a TV set, or watching a program on said TV, is how many of my days on earth ? A car, a holiday, the time spent climbing to the top of a mountain to seek out a view, or the value of a conversation on a Thursday morning at IHOP. They all have a time cost.

I’ve considered this issue before, but what makes me think about it more these days is the economy. I’ve heard accountants and economists talk about the current economy and recommend borrowing as much one possibly can because, in some twisted fashion, the money one borrows today is going to be cheaper to repay in the future due to something called inflation and devaluation. I don’t think that is really true. Ultimately, I’m not borrowing dollars today, I’m borrowing against my tomorrow time. As I’ve said, in my view, the value of that time doesn’t change. We can have philosophical arguments about how, as you get older, your time becomes more valuable because there is less of it left to spend, but I think that’s a matter of changing priorities, not a measure of the changing value of time.

So, where does that leave me, if not you ? It leaves me with the thought that borrowing money is probably the worst thing I can do, ever. While it may give me $500 to spend today, it actually discounts my time tomorrow by the accumulated interest and I can tell you, I have no desire whatsoever in paying my time against an interest rate. None. I just don’t believe that can ever be a good expenditure and makes me a terrible steward of my days.

It also leaves me with a great deal of concern about the amount of money the U.S. treasury is about to print. Not just the U.S. treasury, but many nations. What the governments are proposing to do is apply a levy against the time you have available to you tomorrow. Not just you, your children too. It is my opinion, as tough as it may make it for some people today, perhaps even me, none of us has the right to encumber our children’s future to support our unsustainable lifestyles today. It is one thing to encumber your own time, it is unconscionable to encumber that of our children and grandchildren. Now that’s just plain selfish and down right immoral.

Being somewhat conservative, listening to President Obama talk about responsibility should be heartwarming. But I am having a real problem, already, trying to align what he says with what he does. I am presuming, of course, that when he talks about an era of responsibility he is talking about individuals taking personal responsibility for their actions. To whit:

President Obama smokes. That, given all we know, does not seem to be a very responsible thing to do.

President Obama, during his campaign to be President, had his technology team disable address verification for accepting credit card contributions on his web site in order to avoid the responsibility of having to account for who was making those contributions. I don’t call that responsible, at best, and dishonest at worst.

President Obama, before being sworn in, was already distributing the second $350 billion of the bailout to the irresponsible jerks who had irresponsibly spent the first $350 billion of the irresponsible $700 billion bailout package.

President Obama, before being sworn in, was already spending a very irresponsible $850 billion in additional bailout funds in an attempt to kickstart the economy despite historical precedents aplenty that indicate government kickstarts do nothing but make economic engines sputter.

President Obama, in possibly the most irresponsible manner possible, spent $170 million on an inaugural party at a time when millions of people are losing their jobs and thousands of others are losing their homes.

President Obama has selected a tax evader to be Secretary of the Treasury and does not see anything wrong with putting an irresponsible person, at best, or a dishonest person at worst, into a very important position. That’s irresponsible.

President Obama has selected a person with zero, absolutely zero, experience in security at the head of security. I call that irresponsible.

President Obama considers an unwanted pregnancy a punishment. A punishment for what ? For being irresponsible perhaps ? It seems that President Obama considers the responsible reaction to an unwanted pregnancy is to abort, at any time.

There are more examples of course, but why be boring ? It just strikes me that President Obama has a warped sense of ‘accepting responsibility’.

So far, I am not impressed with President Obama’s leadership style. It tends more to do as I say, not as I do than personal responsibility. Hopefully one of his friends will quickly impress upon him that it is easier to lead by example. At least, that’s what I learned from my parents.

I realize that for many this will sound like sour grapes, but I really am tired of hearing about Senator / President-Elect / President Obama.

The poor man has not yet been President for a day and I am utterly nauseated by the sound of his name. It’s ridiculous really. Talk about being over-exposed.

If it weren’t for the degree to which the media sluts are in the tank for the President I think the poor man would be doomed before he even begins. He has a lot to live up to, after all.

To begin with, he is following a man of real character. A humble individual that inherited the worst security situation the United States has ever known and an economy that was stuttering. A man that, despite being attacked from every side, retained his sense of composure, if only in public, and demonstrated real courage when all those around him were calling for surrender in Iraq and declaring failure in Afghanistan and his attempts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden.

No, Mr. Obama’s Presidency is not going to be an easy one. He not only has to live up to the character standard set by President Bush - rather than Clinton - he also has to demonstrate that he can manage at least, or preferably rebuild, a ravaged economy, meet the expectations he set in the minds of the electorate with his election promises and keep them all safe from terrorist attack.

Mr. Bush managed to do so. I expect nothing less from Mr. Obama. I want to be able to take Mr. Obama at his word and be hopeful, not driven by fear and despair.

I hope he will keep the country safe, I hope he will not cause further damage to the economy than his Democrat colleagues have already done, I hope he will discover a desire to protect ‘the least of these’. Above all, I hope he will disappear into the oval office and the media will find someone else on whom to report. That would be a welcome change indeed.