Sunday, August 7, 2011

a bit of two cents on being conservative

Or how do you survive calling yourself conservative if you don't believe the crap out of Fox News all the time and the Republican machine.

I didn't vote for Obama and won't next year, but it amazes me the amount of misconception Fox spills out. I was going by a tv set the other day and Fox was discussing the possible Republican Candidates and their responses to the current economic crisis.One comment caught my attention was that the President Obama was responsible for the crisis,, no, not the debt debacle over the last few weeks, but the whole crisis facing our country.   Really...... this crisis has been building for decades and both parties are neck deep in responsibility. And even more currently Obama inherited the current recession, he didn't create it.

I haven't voted for a democrat or republican since Carter and Reagan and yeah I have had to vote for some real interesting characters to vote and not vote main stream.  I am not a tea party supporter because they are coming out of the machine with just more extreme right wing views, not truly a grass roots movement as they proclaim to be.  Now do I get to say I am not to blame for our current fiscal disaster, no, all of us are to blame, but for the so called leadership of our country to push off blame on each other and a so called news  organization helping to polarize this problem is sometimes too much to put up with nowadays.

Being conservative doesn't mean you should let others do your thinking for you, but I see way too many Republicans parroting what they hear without any true critical thinking of what they are saying. Yeah some of the ideas are great, as a conservative you do want smaller and less government, less taxes, more encouragement of economic growth, and there are very specific conservative social values like right to life. What kills me is if you try to convince someone to understand how conservatism can work you run up against the fact that Fox and the Republican leadership are short on facts, short on new ideas, short on ownership of their responsibility, and short on credibility. So any decent argument is torn apart by trying to distance yourself  from them and say there is more to conservatism than what they are doing.

Another issue I run up against is the business issue. Way too much energy is spent on doing things they way we have always done it. You cannot expect to maintain economic growth on a dynamic planet with the same old thing. Times change.Corporate America is big on telling its workers you need to be flexible, but in reality this is a smoke screen to basically squeeze out more profit from a shrinking market. There is nothing wrong with working hard and driving to be more efficient. This does help corporations be more successful, but an economy as a whole needs to be ready to adapt to changing markets not squeezing out what is left from the last economy.

An example is the current economic situation in our country. Times are changing and yet we keep expecting to rely on the same energy sources as last century. As a true capitalist you have to see change coming and become part of the change. We became great because of the railroads in the 19th century and automobiles in the 20th century and yes oil had a huge role in this growth. ( and yes this wasn't the only driving force behind growth in our country, but it was huge).  Now though people want to invest more and more in finding more oil and even to the point where people were saying a few years ago that oil at $150 barrel and gasoline at $4-5 gallon was good because it would now be worth it to invest the billions needed to get new sources of oil. Quite frankly I don't get why we should ramp up the price of something to spend excessively to keep it going where there are other alternatives. Oil is going to be part of our energy mix for a long time to come,but if we develop other sources of energy we can help moderate energy costs, which in the long run helps our economy. And a lot more people win. There is an obsession with us relying on oil completely that is madness.

Yes I know some people equate alternative energy with a social agenda, but you have to get over this kind of thinking. Really alternative energy is not about tree hugging anymore, okay yes there maybe a side benefit of less pollution etc, but why not take advantage of a good thing.  One of my issues is I would like to vote for Green Party candidates, but there social agenda is way too liberal. So where does a person go to develop support for business models for alternative energy in a conservative world. So a bit of thanks does have to go out to Mr Pickens here in Texas, but we need much more.

I want to say more on this so will try and come back to it, but got to go pick up the wife and granddaughter, they are at the circus,,,, one thing every child should see is the circus.

Keep praying for rain, we need it for way too much of the country.

Again think about desalinazation,,,,, wouldn't hurt our agricultural output right now.... way too many cattle being sold to market too early this year.

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