Fundamentals!

I'm no economists but this is what I see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is another civic-ally bent post.



But I am learning a ton during this campaign. More than I have in years from other campaigns.This one is important,more than the last four or five (okay, at least to me), and it is heated, as you know unless your an ostrich. But I tell you, it may be uncomfortable to hear scorching ads against your candidate or you may even cringe if your fellow is saying something rather nasty about their opponent. But I think it is sideways thinking to be angry that elections are angry and wish they were like elections of yesteryear. Elections were never nice. Only one president ran uncontested. And for contests it is not their nature to be nice. But you most certainly have the right to not listen, so feel free to slip out the back door no one will mind. I hope you come on back tomorrow night, I'll have something cute, silly and sweet about the girls and the farm I'm sure, it is a beautiful time of the year and they are fun to watch and figure out. But for now I am exercising my freedom, freedom to blog about current politics as I see it.

The freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the freedom of political expression must be exercised and must be exercised in complete freedom even when our conscience is seared because these are essential, that citizens remain informed and able to vote in their personal interests. Not that you swallow what is said but that it causes you to challenge the information and you check it out and then you come to know, to understand.

If we had sweeter-than-candy disposition in our political race no one would challenge the nice sweet things they hear. That is then when they could say anything and instead of lying about their opponent and themselves they would just lie about themselves, fudge on their applications. Please don't rely on any particular piece of media to not slant it. Newspapers came into being precisely because the persons writing it and printing it had a bent, a perspective, a cause that they wanted everyone else to hold. The reader's job, the hearers challenge is to
listen and to check it out.

That is the tradition that this blog is written under. I write because I have a bent; in family life, in what I believe should be sitting on our dinner tables, in the way I believe children should be raised, marriage should be entered into, God should be thought of.

For me this election from the very beginning has prompted strong feelings toward the candidates, unlike any other election. I find it fascinating that from the very beginning of the primary season I did not like the man who has become the pick of my old party. The man who was the pick of the party that I have in the past had a great deal of trouble with, is the guy I said that I would love to vote for if he could only win the nomination (if you'll remember he wasn't looking likely at the beginning).

There has been a lot of talk about how charismatic and smooth Obama is, granted there has also been poo that has hit the old political fan about the fellow who appears to be ahead. But how come, in a time when the current administration's approval rating is so low, can't the fellow from the Opposing side not garner much more than a couple of points over the man from the current administration's party? Anyone with a decent anything to offerin the past, when the incumbent has such a lousy showing in poll, is usually in landslide mode, so why isn't he this time?


You got me! I don't get it, because I think he should have a lot less, but then we are sucked in by a pretty face and a nice suit. But he is an empty one. He is a puppet. He was hired years ago by Kellman as a puppet, a puppet with the perfect qualification they needed, he read the same handbook they did and he had particular credentials that Kellman was lacking and could never get and from what I have read that appears to come from Kellman's very own mouth. (1) I think people see that he is a puppet, more than most politicos are, and that bothers people. They can not really grab hold of who he really is and not because he is so eclectic and diverse. But because he is being used and he is asking for us to be used.


I wish that my old party would not have chosen him but... I think if you really looked closely at what the truth is you will see that there is much to question about him. There is much of it that is factually based and much that you are not really hearing any of even on that station that is unbiased, unspun. I am finding myself addicted to checking things out. But this isn't really what I'm going to vent about today (tonight) this morning. But please on those other things, read what he says, read who his friends and supporters are and what they stand for and what they say about America, you.

But for now what is on my mind was a completely obvious statement at the beginning of last week and no one really seems to be stopping and taking a look at what McCain said which is correct and what Obama is spouting in opposition to that statement which is wrong and things like this continue to show that Obama is the wrong choice for America.


And remember what I said at the top of this post, "I'm no economists but this is what I see." so this will be a common only slightly educated persons view.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary the definition of fundamental is:


1a. Having to do with the foundation; the elemental; basic.
b Major; central; key

2 Having to do with the origin; generative; primary.



Ahh. There we go, that's what I thought.


Comes from fundus meaning bottom.

So what would be our economic fundamentals?

Well they aren't what Barak Obama says they are when he attacked McCain for saying that American economic fundamentals are strong:

"What's more fundamental than the ability to find a job that
can pay the bills and that can raise a family?

"What's more
fundamental than knowing your life savings are secure ... and that you'll have a
roof over your head at the end of the day?

"It's the same
philosophy we've had for the last eight years -- one that says we should give
more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to
everyone else."

McCain was later to respond to his opponents attack with :

"Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working,
the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world. My opponents
may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong."

Thank you John McCain. Thank you for standing by the principles of this county whose flag I fly out in front of my house daily. Thank you for reaffirming for me what we all know, that even though we may tweak with and try new things, both sides, and somethings succeed and somethings don't, the bottom line, the fundus of America if you will, is that we have a very strong economy, one that is based on ingenuity, enterprise, determination and competition.

The beginning key is competition. Competition pushes people, and for the most part cooperation comes in as we cooperate to compete. Pursuit of our own needs and wants, cooperating in opportunistic situations.

This is a fundamental that is strong.

It is strong because it works, it may not appeal to your Christian sensibilities or your humanistic tree hugging sensibilities but as far as economy goes it is strong because it works. It is based on human nature which existed before Adam Smith told about the invisible hand and it will go on forever.

Now sometimes competition can be problematic for the competitors (humans don't make good parasites often they accidentally kill the host, like the CEOs of Mae and Mac) as well as those caught in the cross hairs and that is why there are regulations. Because in America we live by the Constitution and its preamble states that:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And those regulations come from a government that is:

"of the people, by the people, and for the people."

This fundamental is strong and this is the fundamental that will get all of us through this crisis.


The first fundamental, competition, has worked all along, it worked before Adam Smith described it when he talked of the invisible hand, and it will work long after. The second fundamental, regulations, have worked when balanced with competition, when controlled by the people through their voice and their representation, which is what we actually fought the revolutionary war over, not the size of tax necessarily, but the lack of representation, when being taxed, in the governing body.

These are the fundamentals that McCain knows, understands and encourages. Obama doesn't think of these as fundamentals, he does not even cite those things that are the policies that are built up from the fundamentals, that are tweaked and changed and worked with in each generation since the marriage of the two fundamentals, married by a nation built and grown toward maturity on the Constitution.

Obama cites the symptoms of current policies as fundamentals. This shows a complete lack of understanding. You can not confuse fundamentals, with current practices and policies, nor with symptoms that come from poor policies. The word policy comes from apódeixis which means a showing or setting forth. Policy is built up from the foundation, you can change the look of the house without touching the foundation. But the foundation is what keeps your house from falling. The lumber, the stuff you put on the foundation to make the "showing" of a house can not become the foundation. You would be absolutely silly to try and put the symptoms of the building down as the foundation, that goes beyond ridiculous

To not acknowledge that there are problems with the economy would be absurd and that is not what McCain said. He reassured us that we have good, strong, proven foundations in our economy. He acknowledges that the showing or setting forth needs to be re-worked. But there is no reason to get out the jack hammer and tear apart our foundation. Our foundation is solid.

And I personally would rather vote for a person who has a strong grasp that our foundation is solid, that Americans have a solid strong foundation based on human nature and what drives it and what protects the people.

I also have more trust, more confidence in a person who steps up to the plate, dives into the pool, (what ever metaphor you care to use) puts aside his pursuit of his own wants and needs and attends to the very type of service to his country he is competing to hold office to do.

I can't hire a man to come and prune, spray, water fertilizer my trees if he keeps confusing the fruit - that hangs from the branches, falls to the ground, the fruit that goes through the cider press, and grows back next year - for the actual tree itself. I wouldn't say he was ready to be my arborist. Obama isn't ready, nor do I think he will be ready and this is one of the reasons why.







1)http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZDQwYmNjMGIxNDYyZGE1ZDNmZTU1MjhmMzA0ZDlmY2M, http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/08/25/will-obamas-race-matter/