What about the other side?

Hiya,

Do you want to read what people in other parts of the country are thinking?
How about outside this city?

Durand

from The WSJ, Nov 5th 2009

Rebooting the Democrats

Voters fear that liberal policies are endangering economic recovery.

Tuesday's GOP gubernatorial sweep revealed an electorate deeply anxious about jobs, the state of the economy and the wider Obama agenda. We realize we sound like St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, but if the Democratic establishment wants to avoid a repeat in 2010 they'll dump their current ambitions and start over.

In New Jersey and Virginia, the Republicans campaigned on lower taxes and more disciplined government as a way to boost growth and jobs. With unemployment brushing up against 10% even as gasoline is nearing $3 a gallon, voters were obviously sending a message about Washington's Great Reflation bet. This was particularly true for independents, who voted in droves for President Obama but broke for the GOP this year by more than two to one in both states. Suburban voters, too, went for Bob McDonnell 55% to 44%, and 51% to 43% for Chris Christie, according to exit polls.

These elections should signal Defcon 2 for the 49 Democratic Congressmen who come from districts that John McCain carried in 2008, as well as Senators like Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln and Indiana's Evan Bayh seeking re-election in 2010. New Jersey's budget, with its surging taxes and structural deficits, looks remarkably like Mr. Obama's—and even the President's all-out "Weekend at Bernie's" campaign to prop up Jon Corzine couldn't save the former Goldman Sachs executive despite a huge Democratic voter-registration advantage.

View Full Image

Associated Press

President Barack Obama

In Virginia, which has been trending leftward and Mr. Obama took handily, voters in the Washington suburbs of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties all went heavily for Mr. McDonnell on their anxiety about high taxes and the expanding federal government. The former state attorney general played down his social conservatism in favor of a bread-and-butter economic message.

In New York, the national media focused on the narrow (49%) Democratic victory in the 23rd Congressional district thanks to a Conservative Party challenge to the liberal Republican nominee. But even in the blue bastion of the Empire State, the three-term Democratic Westchester County executive was ousted, while Republicans captured the Nassau County legislature and almost won the county executive seat too. Michael Bloomberg nearly lost his third term as New York City mayor to the inept and unknown comptroller Bill Thompson, which shows that it's not a good time to be an incumbent even if you have an acceptable record and billions of dollars for TV ads.

Some rejections of national liberal priorities were far more explicit. Virginia's southwestern ninth district, long represented in Congress by Democrat Rick Boucher, went 67% for Mr. McDonnell—largely over the prospect of a cap-and-trade energy tax that will obliterate the coal production that underlies the region's economy. For the first time in decades one part of this United Mine Workers stronghold also elected a Republican, Will Morefield, to Virginia's House of Delegates.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already forced House Democrats to walk the cap-and-tax plank, adding to the policy uncertainty that is helping to depress what ought to be a more robust recovery after a long and deep recession. The White House and its liberal allies believe government can drive prosperity. Yet the costs that cap and tax would impose—whether through Congress or via the activist EPA regulation that the Administration is pursuing—is part of the political uncertainty that is slowing the revival of risk-taking and job creation.

Democrats are imposing wage controls and continuing to embrace a phony populism against Wall Street, while the new liberal industrial policy has annexed the auto sector. The Energy Department is now the largest venture capital firm in the world and is redirecting capital that could be devoted to more productive uses than green energy gambles. Private lenders to college students are being run out of the market.

Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to spare 95% of Americans from tax increases, but the American middle class is slowly figuring out that it will eventually be asked—that's the polite way of putting it—to pay for all of this. These looming bills, and not only from the $787 billion stimulus, are clouding the investment outlook.

Nowhere is this more true than on health care. The House bill is the very definition of a job killer, funding another entitlement program with a payroll tax equal to 8% of wages on businesses that don't offer insurance even as it inflicts a huge 5.4-percentage-point marginal rate tax hike on those earning over $500,000. The Democrats' own Joint Tax Committee says that one-third of the $460.5 billion this is estimated to raise over 10 years will come from small businesses that create most new jobs.

The tragedy is that while ObamaCare is running into ever-deeper problems among moderates and sinking in the polls, Democrats could easily shift gears and build a genuine bipartisan health reform. The compromise worked out earlier this year by Bob Dole and Tom Daschle is not our policy ideal, though it would address some of the cost drivers created by the tax code and maybe garner durable political majorities. Even the bill released this week by House Republicans, and quickly trashed by Democrats, would hand out $50 billion in "incentive payments" to states that reduce the number of uninsured. Once upon a time in Washington, $50 billion counted as a lot of money—and it still does to most voters.

***

Democrats entered this year well positioned to get political credit for a recovering economy, whether or not their policies had much to do with it. Yet a year later their willy-nilly expansion of government is creating fear and uncertainty that are inhibiting the animal spirits crucial to job creation—and, as Tuesday showed, endangering their political ascendancy.

More of the Same Change

Hello Again,

I was having a conversation last night about what the fundamental difference was between a Conservative and a Liberal. I am speaking about the persons most basic view on the role of Government in peoples lives.

I told him that Conservatives believe the Individual is the best person to allocate resources while the Liberal believes that the Government should allocate resources.

I know that I am better at choosing where to put my resources then the Government.
Are you worse than the Government at choosing where to allocate your resources?

I believe that people should allocate resources and the Government should be the referee making sure people play by the same rules.

If the Government decides it must add resources into the economy it should do so in ways that stimulate the entrepreneur and reward those who take risks to create something new instead of merely making transfer payments into current liabilities.


This article today in the WSJ summed up my thoughts nicely.

Durand


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• SEPTEMBER 11, 2009, 3:37 P.M. ET

The Keynesians Were Wrong Again

We won't see a return to growth without incentives for job-creating investment.

By PETER FERRARA

From the beginning, our representatives in Washington have approached this economic downturn with old-fashioned, Keynesian economics. Keynesianism—named after the British economist John Maynard Keynes—is the theory that you fight an economic downturn by pumping money into the economy to "encourage demand" and "create jobs." The result of our recent Keynesian stimulus bills? The longest recession since World War II—21 months and counting—with no clear end in sight. Borrowing close to a trillion dollars out of the private economy to increase government spending by close to a trillion dollars does nothing to increase incentives for investment and entrepreneurship.

The record speaks for itself: In February 2008, President George W. Bush cut a deal with congressional Democrats to pass a $152 billion Keynesian stimulus bill based on countering the recession with increased deficits. The centerpiece was a tax rebate of up to $600 per person, which had no significant effect on economic incentives, as reductions in tax rates do.

Learning nothing from this Keynesian failure, which he vigorously supported from the U.S. Senate, President Barack Obama came back in February 2009 to support a $787 billion, purely Keynesian stimulus bill.

Even the tax-cut portion of that bill, which Mr. Obama is still wildly touting to the public, was purely Keynesian. The centerpiece was a $400-per-worker tax credit, which, again, has no significant effect on economic incentives. While Mr. Obama is proclaiming that this delivered on his campaign promise to cut taxes for 95% of Americans, the tax credit disappears after next year.

The Obama administration is claiming success, not because of recovery, but because of the slowdown in economic decline. Last month, just 216,000 jobs were lost, and the economy declined by only 1% in the second quarter. Based on his rhetoric, Mr. Obama expects credit for anyone who still has a job.

The fallacies of Keynesian economics were exposed decades ago by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Keynesian thinking was then discredited in practice in the 1970s, when the Keynesians could neither explain nor cure the double-digit inflation, interest rates, and unemployment that resulted from their policies. Ronald Reagan's decision to dump Keynesianism in favor of supply-side policies—which emphasize incentives for investment—produced a 25-year economic boom. That boom ended as the Bush administration abandoned every component of Reaganomics one by one, culminating in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's throwback Keynesian stimulus in early 2008.

Mr. Obama showed up in early 2009 with the dismissive certitude that none of this history ever happened, and suddenly national economic policy was back in the 1930s. Instead of the change voters thought they were getting, Mr. Obama quintupled down on Mr. Bush's 2008 Keynesianism.

The result is the continuation of the economic policy disaster we have suffered since the end of 2007. Mr. Obama promised that his stimulus would prevent unemployment from climbing over 8%. It jumped to 9.7% last month. Some 14.9 million Americans are unemployed, another 9.1 million are stuck in part-time jobs and can't find full-time work, and another 2.3 million looked for work in the past year and never found it. That's a total of 26.3 million unemployed or underemployed, for a total jobless rate of 16.8%. Personal income is also down $427 billion from its peak in May 2008.

Rejecting Keynesianism in favor of fiscal restraint, France and Germany saw economic growth return in the second quarter this year. India, Brazil and even communist China are enjoying growth as well. Canada enjoyed job growth last month.

U.S. economic recovery and a permanent reduction in unemployment will only come from private, job-creating investment. Nothing in the Obama economic recovery program, or in the Bush 2008 program, helps with that.

Producing long-term economic growth will require a fundamental change in economic policies—lower, not higher, tax rates; reliable, low-cost energy supplies, not higher energy costs through cap and trade; and not unreliable alternative energy surviving only on costly taxpayer subsidies.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama seems to be wedded to his political talking points, and his ideological blinders seem to be permanently affixed. So don't expect any policy changes. Expect an eventual return to 1970s-style economic results instead.

Mr. Ferrara, director of entitlement and budget policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation, served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as associate deputy attorney general of the United States under the first President Bush.

High hopes...Dashed

We are about to enter a new world...a world of change. Sadly this is a change I believe we will come to regret over the next 10-30 years. I had high hopes that Obama would be a centrist, using the best parts of Conservatism and Liberalism together. Instead he has demonized the choices of the past 30 years, during which our country has grown by leaps and bounds, the quality of life ever improving, by casting derision on anything conservative, fomenting a populist rage that will result in a dramatic reshaping of America into a place where Government decides how the economy should be run instead of the private sector. We are going to watch the unprecedented expansion of Government into every aspect of our lives. I do not think people understand how this will change what we understand to be 'America'.

And it will be very hard to stop it or change it once in motion. I believe it is already too late.

The party line is that these 'investments' ie spending, will all be cut back in 2 years. Fat chance. Government never gets smaller...only larger. Once these programs are in place who will have the will to cut them? Nobody. That is what the Democrats are counting on. These new constituencies who are on the receiving end of the Governments handouts will have a powerful interest in maintaining their newfound gifts.

If I believed that all this spending was for future looking projects that would show a return greater than that of the money being used in the private sector I would give it a chance. But what government agency has ever made a profit? Or created something that makes new jobs, not just make work? A much more practical approach would be to fund start ups, give tax breaks to entrepreneurs and encourage people to create new ideas and business. Dumping Trillions of your tax dollars into the same old system will just get the same results.

Will throwing another 100 billion dollars at education (doubling the budget, which already had doubled under George Bush) do anything unless the incentives for teaching change? Unless Obama reforms all of these institutions we are going to see good money going after bad.

I have included an article below from the WSJ....check it out. The numbers are staggering.

With trepidation I am looking to the future...

The more things Change, the more they stay the same,

Durand

The Obama Revolution

Paid for by the people.

In the closing weeks of last year's election campaign, we wrote that Democrats had in mind the most sweeping expansion of government in decades. Liberals clucked, but it turns out even we've been outbid. With yesterday's fiscal 2010 budget proposal, President Obama is attempting not merely to expand the role of the federal government but to put it in such a dominant position that its power can never be rolled back.

AP

The first point to understand is the sheer magnitude of federal spending built into this proposal. As the nearby chart shows, federal outlays will soar in fiscal 2009 to $4 trillion, or 27.7% of GDP, from $3 trillion or 21% of GDP in 2008, and 20% in 2007. This is higher as a share of the economy than any year since 1945, when the country was still mobilized for World War II. It is more spending by far than during the Vietnam War, or during the recessions of 1974-75 or 1981-82.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Obama is right that this spending is needed now to "jump-start" an economic recovery. Though the budget predicts that the economy will recover in 2010, spending will still be 24.1% of GDP that year, and the budget proposes that spending will remain higher than 22% for the entire next decade even as the defense budget steadily declines. All Presidential budgets predict spending will decline in the "out years," if only to give the illusion of spending restraint. Mr. Obama tries the same trick, but he is proposing so many new and expanded nondefense programs that his budgeteers can't get anywhere close even to Jimmy Carter spending levels.

These columns focus on spending, rather than deficits, because Milton Friedman taught us that spending represents the real future burden on taxpayers. Nonetheless, the 2009 budget deficit is estimated to be an eye-popping 12.7% of GDP, which once again dwarfs anything we've seen in the postwar era. The White House blueprint predicts that this will fall back down to 3.5% as soon as 2012, but this is based on assumptions about Washington that aren't going to happen.

For example, Mr. Obama's budget assumes that nearly all of the new stimulus spending will be temporary -- a fantasy. He also proposes to eliminate farm subsidies for those with annual sales of more than $500,000. This is a great idea, and long overdue. But has the President checked with Senators Kent Conrad (North Dakota) or Chuck Grassley (Iowa)? We hope we're wrong, but a White House that showed no interest in restraining Congress during the recent stimulus bacchanal isn't likely to stand athwart history to stop the agribusiness lobby.

The falling deficit also assumes the largest tax increase in U.S. history, starting in 2011 with the repeal of the Bush tax rates on incomes higher than $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. The White House says this will yield upwards of $1 trillion, if you choose to believe that tax rates don't affect taxpayer behavior.

In the real world, two of every three tax filers who fall into this income category are small business owners or investors, who are certainly capable of finding ways to invest that allow them to declare less taxable income. The real impact of this looming tax increase will be to cast further uncertainty over economic decisions and either slow or postpone the recovery. Ditto for the estimated $646 billion from a new cap-and-trade tax, which no one wants to call a tax but would give the political class vast new leverage over the private economy. (See here.)

Then there is Mr. Obama's plan for national health care. The White House has put a $634 billion place holder in the budget to pay for covering tens of millions of uninsured Americans with government subsidized coverage. But even advocates of this government plan say the cost will be closer to $1 trillion over 10 years, and probably much more. Meanwhile, the President is promising to reform entitlements, but his budget proposes a net increase of about $1 trillion in Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements.

The biggest illusion in this budget may be its optimistic economic forecast. The White House assumes that the economy will decline by only 1.2% this year, before growing by 3.2% next year. This assumes the recovery will begin later this year and gather steam quickly to return to normal levels of growth. By 2010 to 2013, the budget adds, the economy will be cooking by an average of 4% a year -- which is also how it conjures up magical deficit reduction.

This growth is a lovely thought, but how? The only impetus for growth in this budget comes from the government spending more money that it is taking out of the job-producing private economy. With $1 trillion of new entitlements, $1.4 trillion in new taxes, and $5 trillion in new debt, America's entrepreneurs aren't getting any help soon from Washington.

Democrats will want to rush all of this into law this year while Mr. Obama retains his honeymoon aura and they can blame the recession on George W. Bush. But Americans are only beginning to understand the magnitude of Mr. Obama's ambitions, and how much of their own income will be required to fulfill them. Republicans have an obligation to insist on a long and considerable debate on all of this, lest Americans discover in a year or two that they live in a very different country.

An Inflection Point...We swing Left

These are interesting times we are living in...I am hoping we are up to the challenge. These past few weeks have galvanized this great country in a way I have not seen in my lifetime. While 9/11 was a powerful and defining moment I do not believe we took advantage of what it could have offered the world. A chance to offer Hope... to be a symbol for people in this world. To collect all of our sum parts and make something bigger than the sum.

Instead we continued down the road of petty Left/Right, Right/Wrong, Us/Them thinking driving the problems deeper into our collective whole.

I had thought long and hard about my vote this past election. What would I be supporting? What principles do I want to see guiding this country? Who deserved my vote? Who would grow into a leader capable of dealing with this storm of challenges facing our future?

Obama is a thoughtful, intelligent, measured man and I think he has the skills to be a wonderful leader of this country. I disagree with most of his policy decisions however.

McCain is an experienced politician, a warrior and a man of principle. He is no Bush... he is his own man. He foolishly let himself get dragged into the Republican miasma and it suffocated him, drowning out the very quality that made him special. Instead of taking a stand against those in his party and drawing in 'the independents' he went to the Right and scared the middle into the arms of the Democrats.

My concerns about an Obama presidency lie not with Obama...but with all the other Liberals who now dominate the Senate and Congress. It is THEY who will be truly shaping what the future looks like... and I am afraid of them, their policy choices and their special interests. All will be lined up and ready to take their piece of the American pie now that they have their grip on the levers of power solidified.

It was my hope that the Government would remain divided, so that neither side would have total control and forcing compromise. It was a disaster when the Republicans controlled all three branches because nobody was there to keep them in check. I fear the same thing is about to happen again except this time the expectation is to grow the government...

I live in a place where people are glowing with pride and hope and love of their country at this moment... and it feels great. I wonder however what is running through the minds of those people who live elsewhere... places that want smaller government and lower taxes. Are they feeling this Obamatism as well?

I voted Libertarian this election. It happened when I looked down at the ballot and could not in good conscience vote for either McCain or Obama. It had been weighing on me how I could stay congruent with my beliefs and principles and go with either. So I decided on neither.

McCain had my vote until he picked Palin as his running mate...a political neophyte on the National stage was a foolish and dangerous choice for an old man to make. Plenty of talented, centrist women would have helped his case, filled out his resume, given him more depth in Economics, and drawn in the middle. Instead he 'went with his gut' and came up short.

My hope is that Obama will stand up to the Liberal left now that he has the job...however his record in that department is sorely lacking. He has voted in lockstep with his party on every issue up till this point, never taking a hard stand or breaking from Liberal orthodoxy.
There are a long list of favors that must now be payed back...to Unions, the anti war crowd, the environmentalists and they will want it NOW.

I am a believer in Capitalism... let people work and enjoy the rewards of that work. Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other of mans inventions, policies or ideas. These past few months have stained the idea of capitalism. There is a populist backlash against "those Wall Street fat cats" and blame is getting heaped on anybody who believes in letting the markets do their work. My fear is that the Liberals will use this fear and anxiety to push through their Big Government agenda of income redistribution and regulation and we will be suffering under it for the next 30 years while the rest of the industrialized world continues to lower their taxes and create a more hospitable environment for work and entrepreneurship.

When I say this, it doesn't mean that I agree with how the Republicans have run things for the past 8 years... I feel that the politicians in Washington have been an embarrassment to our fine country and the citizens they should be representing. Instead of the political infighting and horrors that they have wrought they should be leading by example.

What kid grows up today and wants to be a politician? What good examples are there of decent, hardworking, community minded politicians looking out for the common good...the good of "all" instead of their narrow interest groups. The only one I know is my mom.

Leaders step up and make hard choices... Great leaders galvanize those that are being led to become more than the sum of their parts. They make you feel good about doing hard things, they give you pride in what is being accomplished and created even when it hurts.

I am hoping that Obama will be a Great leader and forge this country into one powerful and cohesive unit that will face the future together.

I am Proud of our country. I want us to be Proud of each other.

People wanted change and now they will have it.

I hope it is the change they thought it would be.


Durand

A hopeful Conservative in our newly Liberal country

The top 40% of earners pay 95% of our taxes...

Did you know that the top 40% of earners pay 95% of the federal income tax bill?

How much do the bottom 40% pay? Zero. Zero federal income tax.

So when liberals talk about a progressive tax system, how much more progressive can we get?

Lets think about this... If you are already paying no income tax, what is your incentive for the Government to have lower taxs? You already are paying nothing, so it has no impact on your life to have the "fat cats" pay more. Sure, raise taxes!

When people have no "skin in the game" it costs them nothing to ask for more.
The problem is that this money must come from somewhere... that somewhere is from the people who are creating/owning/running small companies and employing 80% of the people in the country.

These people work hard and create jobs. By taking more and more from them you will eventually cause the incentive to work to be so low that they will work less or move to a more hospitable environment.

Read the following article... I would love to hear your thoughts.

Durand

Obama and the Tax Tipping Point

How long before taxpayers are pushed too far?

By ADAM LERRICK

What happens when the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes? Economists Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard posed this question 27 years ago. We may soon enough know the answer.

Barack Obama is offering voters strong incentives to support higher taxes and bigger government. This could be the magic income-redistribution formula Democrats have long sought.

Sen. Obama is promising $500 and $1,000 gift-wrapped packets of money in the form of refundable tax credits. These will shift the tax demographics to the tipping point where half of all voters will receive a cash windfall from Washington and an overwhelming majority will gain from tax hikes and more government spending.

In 2006, the latest year for which we have Census data, 220 million Americans were eligible to vote and 89 million -- 40% -- paid no income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center (a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute), this will jump to 49% when Mr. Obama's cash credits remove 18 million more voters from the tax rolls. What's more, there are an additional 24 million taxpayers (11% of the electorate) who will pay a minimal amount of income taxes -- less than 5% of their income and less than $1,000 annually.

In all, three out of every five voters will pay little or nothing in income taxes under Mr. Obama's plans and gain when taxes rise on the 40% that already pays 95% of income tax revenues.

The plunder that the Democrats plan to extract from the "very rich" -- the 5% that earn more than $250,000 and who already pay 60% of the federal income tax bill -- will never stretch to cover the expansive programs Mr. Obama promises.

What next? A core group of Obama enthusiasts -- those educated professionals who applaud the "fairness" of their candidate's tax plans -- will soon see their $100,000-$150,000 incomes targeted. As entitlements expand and a self-interested majority votes, the higher tax brackets will kick in at lower levels down the ladder, all the way to households with a $75,000 income.

Calculating how far society's top earners can be pushed before they stop (or cut back on) producing is difficult. But the incentives are easy to see. Voters who benefit from government programs will push for higher tax rates on higher earners -- at least until those who power the economy and create jobs and wealth stop working, stop investing, or move out of the country.

Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and slashed taxes to restore growth and jobs in Great Britain. In Germany a few years ago, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder defied his party's dogma and loosened labor's grip on the economy to end stagnation. And more recently in France, Nicolas Sarkozy was swept to power on a platform of restoring flexibility to the economy.

The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.

The economic tides will not stand still while Washington experiments with European-type social democracy, even though the dollar's role as the global reserve currency will buy some time. Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.

Tomorrow's children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of "fairness" -- whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.

Mr. Lerrick is a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Awareness and Survival- A great primer

I just finished an excellent book about "awareness"... Written by a Marc "Animal" MacYoung it candidly discusses what you need to know to survive. This is a much broader subject then 'carry pepper spray'... I would highly encourage both men and women to read this book if they care about their personal safety.

I am a very peace loving guy... being the tallest or biggest guy in the room 95% of the time means that when somebody wants to rumble they look around the room and see my big blond head sticking up out of the crowd. I have no interest in fighting people for real, while the art and science of the fight do interest me very much. I had a friend in high school who got into to a stupid altercation with some guy who was alone (my friend had a group with him), the guy got scared and pulled a knife and my friend got stabbed a bunch of times, losing an eye.

I like my eyes and I like living so fighting=possibly losing an eye/life/friend/etc. and is not an equation I am interested in being part of.

Only once have I been in a fight... at the delightful Levende Lounge in SF. What is strange about that place is that I have seen two other fights there on separate occasions! I was minding my own business when a friend of mine starting getting hassled by a guy. I had noticed the idiot and his friends earlier (bad energy) and so stepped in between, turned around (oops) and walked my friend Andrew away from the guy, saying "these guys are idiots, dont get into", when the guy behind charges me, wraps his arms around me and throws me to the ground...

Lets say I was a big surprised...My arms were out wide, hands open, 5 feet away and the guy just went for...as I went down his small, sneaky scumbag friend ran over and kicked me in the ribs.

What? We are in a fricking lounge! I twist and spin into the lunkhead and wrap the guy up with my arms while my two friends are watching in amazement...luckily they had been in a number of fights so as the crowd closed in to "break it up" they jumped in and pounding the guys face in. I saw the sneaky little bastard and clawed my way through the crowd wanting to leave him a parting gift...I landed one good one on him and then the whole thing was over, the crowd locking everybody up.

Total time? Maybe 10 seconds. It felt more like much longer however...The Lounge staff then kicked out all of the scumbags and asked if we were ok. I was shakey but seemingly fine...It was only later on that the adrenaline wore off and I noticed the bruises. The ribs began to hurt more and more... not healing fully healing for 6 weeks. So that sucked...

What I am saying is that even if you do everything you can to avoid a fight, sometimes some idiot while jump on you...I was lucky to have my friends there to rearrange his face for me.

This book helps to bring awareness to situations... like helping to give you a radar that is always on, pinging out for out of the ordinary things. I have been working on this skill for years... only it was through my acting training. Learning to move through space and know where people are is a very important skill in the dance and theater. It is honing an awareness that is larger than the 2 foot bubble that most people instinctively have...it is pushing that awareness all the way to the back of the theater, space, room so that you can adjust your energy to suit the crowd.

Reading his book I was surprised at how similar the ideas were relying on that inner energy meter to feel out people and crowds. There is some interesting information regarding power hierarchies and world models... the Alphas and betas, how they interact, how to be careful in situation where the relationships are unknown.

The author uses very colorful language and lots of humor to get his points across... you will enjoy learning the lessons he has gained from 17 years of street fighting.

What I found most refreshing is that one of his biggest survival tips is "run". Just get out of the situation before it gets bad. Fights usually dont come from out of thin air, so read the signs and make haste. Take your ego out of it and bounce... or end up maimed. If however you must fight for your life, then give it everything you have, no holds barred, maim and destroy the person. Most people who will attack you dont want to end up really injured and so will run away once they have gotten an ear torn off, etc.

Of all the 'survival' or self defense books I have read this one is the clearest, most concise, most fun to read, and honest about all the bad stuff that combat and fighting entails. It also is applicable to much more then just 'the street', its lessons will inform you about your interactions at work, at play, on the field and generally about life. Written by somebody has actually been there getting beat up or beating up. Also touches on the legality of what is happening...it all well and good if you defend yourself, but what if it still lands you in jail? That is not survival either... Check it out. Would love to hear peoples thoughts on it.

Durand

Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons
by Marc MacYoung

http://www.amazon.com/Cheap-Shots-Ambushes-Other-Lessons/dp/0873644964/ref=pd_sim_b_7

A Vast expansion of Government...hold on to your wallets or put your hand out

How effective is Government?

When it takes your money in the form of taxes, how much of that makes it to the end product/project? All of it? 90%? 5%?

My understanding is about 60%.

So when Government uses your money in such a wasteful way, why would we want to give over even more to it? Why we would let the people responsible for so many catastrophes keep on doing what they are doing?

Liberal politicians believe they know where to allocate resources best. This is one of the cornerstones of Liberal thought...that the Government is wiser than the citizen and knows how to pick the winners and losers.

Conservatives (true conservatives...not the politicians who have had their hand in the cookie jar these past 10 years) believe that the Individual will allocate resources in the most efficient manner by watching out for their own self interest. While some may fail, the winners will help everyone to prosper by creating new industries, jobs and ideas that propel the world as a whole upwards.

I do not like when the Government is run by all of the same political party... Republicans or Democrats. It means there is nobody to keep them from their worst impulses.

This country has a Center-Right leaning to it, regardless of what the San Francisco liberal elite seem to think... yet what is about to happen means that Liberals... very left leaning liberals will control all branches of the government. That means higher taxes and more entitlements... a redistribution of wealth, chosen by these 'progressive' politicians.

Once you hand out an entitlement it is almost impossible for it to be taken away...So this expansion into all avenues of private life is going to be very difficult to undo. We will be suffering through its consequences for generations to come.

Please read the article below for a more detailed description of what lays ahead...

I am filled with trepidation.

DF

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

A Liberal Supermajority

Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933.

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.