I Agree with President Obama

I was very pleased to see the way President Obama handled this hostage situation. Approving the use of force after negotiations failed was the right thing to do and I was happy to see him act appropriately. According to the article, not once but twice he authorized the use of deadly force if necessary to save Capt. Phillips including expending his initial approval of force to allow for a larger display of force (more people and assets, etc.).

This is precisely the way our nation should act when threatened so much so that when lawless pirates on the high seas take over a ship and learn that there's an American on board that the American is immediately freed for fear of what is to come. This isn't egomanical nationalism, it's care and concern for our country's own. Other people and other nations should not fear us unnecessarily but if other actors - be they other nations or terrorists or pirates or whomever - threaten to do us harm, God help them.

Trick or Treat

I'm just not a "spread it around" kinda guy. I'm all for helping other people but people also have to be willing to help themselves. If I leave it up to the government to decide who should be helped then there's major problems with inefficiency, waste, and sometimes downright corruption. Those same things can happen with charities as well but with charities I can reward those that distribute my money more effectively. I can't do that when government is my charity.

When government is the charity and people are legally compelled to give, I also lose any moral benefit from giving and helping others. If you've ever sarificed to help someone else, you know what I'm talking about. It feels good to feel like you're making a change to better someone else's life and situation. When my money is forcibly taken by the government there's no feel good sense from having done the right thing and helped someone else. When there is no choice, there is no benefit to having made the right choice.

There's also the issue of practicing what you preach. If Obama is such a big fan of spreading it around, why doesn't he do it in his personal life? According to Bloomberg the Obama's donated a total - a TOTAL - of $10,772 from 2000 - 2004. Now it did jump in subsequent years but still amounted to only about 5% of their total income. I'm certainly no standard of charitable giving or philantrophist in the making but I give a far larger percentage of my income to charity than does Obama. A FAR larger. Just last year my charitable giving was larger than Obama's total giving from 2000 - 2004. There's just something wrong with someone wanting to spread your money around but not being willing to do the same with his.

Obama Yomomma

Reports out today say that in a book Barack Obama wrote in 1995 entitled Dreams of My Father that he admitted to cocaine use. Most people that I usually line up with politically are, I'm sure, outraged. Me? I honestly don't think it's a big deal.

Let me say a couple of things before people jump to conclusions. I'm not in favor of drug use. I've never used drugs myself - never even tried them. But I don't think the fact that Obama tried cocaine when he was reportedly in his late teens or early twenties means that much. If he still used drugs or if he looked back on that time wistfully then that would be one thing. But to say, yeah, I did it, I made some mistakes, don't make the mistakes that I made - which is totally the attitude that it sounds like he has - then that just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. We've all made mistakes and having made a mistake in a previous life shouldn't necessarily make you unworthy to serve as an elected official. Especially not when it's a mistake that most other elected officials have probably also made.

Another word on Obama since he's grabbing so many headlines nowadays. I like the dude. I won't be voting for him in the Presidential election. I disagree with him on way too many issues. I genuinely like the guy, though. He seems like someone I could work with one day. The same goes for Harold Ford, Jr. I wouldn't have voted for him for Senate in TN either but what I know of him, I like the guy. We need good people in elected office, regardless of their past mistakes.