By Daniel B. Kline
Now that president Barack Obama has taken over the auto and banking industries with shockingly little outrage from the American public he has an almost entirely free hand to pursue his anti-capitalist agenda. Not precisely a socialist, Obama is more a deluded idealist who believes that everyone can be middlingly successful but nobody needs to be especially well-off.
In Obama's fantasy land, everyone has a house, a decent job, health care and enough money to take a vacation now and then. It's a nice fantasy, as nobody (except maybe Dick Cheney) wants to see people fail, but it's a fantasy nonetheless as there cannot be success without failure.
Every Obama policy seem to reward people for failing, making bad choices or not working as hard as those of us who manage to get by without government help. Obama hands out tax credits for folks who don't own a house, authorizes billions to help people who default on their mortgages, and doles out government money to businesses that should have paid for their mistakes.
Instead of investing in failure, why not make government money available to successful people and successful businesses? Give General Motors and AIG a few billion dollars and they might continue to eke out an existence. This forestalls people losing their jobs, but it's throwing good money after bad and rewarding companies which did everything wrong.
Why not take the billions wasted keeping these companies afloat and make cheap loans available to people and businesses who demonstrate a pattern of success? In the private world, if you can show that you have succeeded before, than venture capitalists will give you money much more readily and on better terms than someone with a less-than-stellar record.
Basic logic dictates that money handed to someone who has spent money well before has a better chance of being repaid than money lent to someone who hasn't. Banks don't look at people who have declared bankruptcy and hand them more cash because they've had a rough go of it and the government should not either.
Obviously, the recession has caused tough times for some people who have made mostly good choices and suffer through little fault of their own. We should separate those people and businesses from the ones that gambled heavily, took unwise risks and generally behaved irresponsibly. But, the people who made bad choices and spent money well must not be bailed out.
President Obama must stop his reckless behavior and stop believing that everyone can be saved. He seems like a nice man who feels the pain of the people he serves, but being a leader involves making the right choices for the country in the long run not bailing people out in the short-term.
If Obama wants to be the great man so many people want him to be, he must make unpopular decisions now that make the country stronger in the long run. Invest in people and businesses with a track record of success. Allow bad companies to fail and let new, innovative ones rise from their ashes. Let people who can't afford their homes lose their homes and realize that in a capitalist society, not everybody wins.
It won't make him popular with the left-wing of his party, but it will be the right choice for this country.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Age brings wisdom and an earlier bedtime
By Daniel B. Kline
A wave of shame swept over me as I finished ordering my tall decaf skim iced caramel macchiato at Starbucks the other day. Perhaps the only way to make my order less manly would have been to request it served in a pink glass and humming an Elton John song as the barista made it.
Once a proud drinker of straight coffee with full caffeine and no flavors, whipped cream or other ridiculous alterations, stomach problems, the need to occasionally sleep and generally getting older forced me to start placing this hopelessly wimpy order. At least I was not wearing Crocs while ordering or sporting an outfit that matched my five-year-old's, but it was the type of coffee order I would have teased someone else about.
Never exactly James Dean or even z-grade Dean knockoff, Luke Perry, getting married and becoming a father has made me even less macho. I now go to bed by 10:30 most nights, consider midnight impossibly late and am more likely to know the name of Spongebob's friends than the name of a hip, young band.
In my earlier days I worked at a rock magazine, stayed out late going to concerts, drank coffee by the pot and didn't consider staying up for Conan (in his pre "Tonight Show 12:30 time slot) abnormal. Now, I run a toy store, go to approximately four concerts a year, take Prevacid, drink water by the bottle and am lucky to make it through the 8:30 replay of "The Colbert Report."
While I'm only 35, I find myself no longer able to keep up with the way my young staff members live. They're wearing hip clothes and the latest sneakers and I'm wearing, well, clothes and buying new Dr. Scholl's inserts for my decidedly untrendy sneakers.
Forget learning about new music, I can't learn the names of all the energy drinks available. I'm aware of Monster and Red Bull, but the rest sound like they're from a factory that just pumps out high sugar, high caffeine beverages giving them random, aggressive sounding names.
Drinking a Caffeine Free Diet Coke in front of my younger staff makes me feel like I'm my grandfather keeping a secret stash of Moxie in the basement, except Moxie at least had some gritty street cred. Much like Moxie, Diet Coke tastes terrible, nothing like an actual Coke. It was created for overweight middle-aged women, one of which, I have apparently become.
The most adventurous part of my day today involved a trip to Target where I bought kitty litter and looked at, but did not purchase, a new Crock Pot. I'm window shopping for slow cookers while contemplating the merits of various methods of dealing with cat waste. My younger self would punch me in the mouth and my younger self wasn't that tough to begin with.
While I don't want to go back to being a teenager, I would like to find a little more fun in my everyday routine. Perhaps I will guzzle some Crunk!!! (yes, the three exclamation points are part of the title), down some Amp or maybe even quaff a Hype. It's more likely though, that, I will cave in and buy the Crock Pot.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
A wave of shame swept over me as I finished ordering my tall decaf skim iced caramel macchiato at Starbucks the other day. Perhaps the only way to make my order less manly would have been to request it served in a pink glass and humming an Elton John song as the barista made it.
Once a proud drinker of straight coffee with full caffeine and no flavors, whipped cream or other ridiculous alterations, stomach problems, the need to occasionally sleep and generally getting older forced me to start placing this hopelessly wimpy order. At least I was not wearing Crocs while ordering or sporting an outfit that matched my five-year-old's, but it was the type of coffee order I would have teased someone else about.
Never exactly James Dean or even z-grade Dean knockoff, Luke Perry, getting married and becoming a father has made me even less macho. I now go to bed by 10:30 most nights, consider midnight impossibly late and am more likely to know the name of Spongebob's friends than the name of a hip, young band.
In my earlier days I worked at a rock magazine, stayed out late going to concerts, drank coffee by the pot and didn't consider staying up for Conan (in his pre "Tonight Show 12:30 time slot) abnormal. Now, I run a toy store, go to approximately four concerts a year, take Prevacid, drink water by the bottle and am lucky to make it through the 8:30 replay of "The Colbert Report."
While I'm only 35, I find myself no longer able to keep up with the way my young staff members live. They're wearing hip clothes and the latest sneakers and I'm wearing, well, clothes and buying new Dr. Scholl's inserts for my decidedly untrendy sneakers.
Forget learning about new music, I can't learn the names of all the energy drinks available. I'm aware of Monster and Red Bull, but the rest sound like they're from a factory that just pumps out high sugar, high caffeine beverages giving them random, aggressive sounding names.
Drinking a Caffeine Free Diet Coke in front of my younger staff makes me feel like I'm my grandfather keeping a secret stash of Moxie in the basement, except Moxie at least had some gritty street cred. Much like Moxie, Diet Coke tastes terrible, nothing like an actual Coke. It was created for overweight middle-aged women, one of which, I have apparently become.
The most adventurous part of my day today involved a trip to Target where I bought kitty litter and looked at, but did not purchase, a new Crock Pot. I'm window shopping for slow cookers while contemplating the merits of various methods of dealing with cat waste. My younger self would punch me in the mouth and my younger self wasn't that tough to begin with.
While I don't want to go back to being a teenager, I would like to find a little more fun in my everyday routine. Perhaps I will guzzle some Crunk!!! (yes, the three exclamation points are part of the title), down some Amp or maybe even quaff a Hype. It's more likely though, that, I will cave in and buy the Crock Pot.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Beauty queen, pageant officials fight to see who's a bigger boob
By Daniel B. Kline
While everyone seems shocked that the current Miss California, Carrie Prejean, disapproves of gay marriage and has posed for racy pictures, I'm mostly surprised that she got breast implants after winning the pageant. Even more unbelievable is that not only did pageant officials support her decision to enhance her assets, they actually paid for the procedure.
Basically, this action tells girls and women everywhere that even Miss California isn't quite good looking enough unless she hits a certain cup size. If Miss California needs plastic surgery immediately after winning a beauty pageant then pretty much every woman should immediately drop what she is doing and head for the plastic surgeon's office.
Apparently, this case is not out of the ordinary in the pageant world as Miss California Co-Director Keith Lewis told CBS news that essentially plastic surgery gets offered to all candidates. "It's not something that we endorse, nor is it something that we suggest," Lewis said. "But when we meet with the title-holder, when she's crowned Miss California, we put to her a litany of questions about how she feels about herself, what she feels she needs to work on, what she may need to change, what is good, what is not good. We want to put her in the best possible confidence in order to present herself in the best possible light on a national stage."
Translate that into English and Lewis basically said, sure she's pretty, but we think she can win Miss USA if she had bigger boobs. Also notice that Prejean did not mention working on her personality, her tolerance for others or any of her other obvious flaws, she honed right in on her bust.
It takes quite a lot of confidence in yourself to enter beauty pageants in the first place. Exactly how much extra confidence do larger breasts give you? Are we supposed to believe that Prejean had the confidence to think she was capable of winning a contest to be named the most beautiful woman in California, but not enough to compete in the national competition?
Clearly bigger breasts give some women more confidence. Pamela Anderson did exactly what Prejean did, getting implants after appearing in Playboy (a basic sign that men find you attractive) and she seems fairly confident. Still, it's a little ridiculous to pretend that Prejean had any motivation other than winning the Miss USA title because it's hard to declare you lack confidence in your appearance after you win a beauty contest.
Prejean had a panel of judges declare her beautiful. I know if a panel of judges even declared me decent looking (I'd settle for not scary if I had to) that it would boost my confidence more than say pec implants or a surgery that gave me six pack abs.
While I have no problem with plastic surgery and completely understand how having a larger bust, a smaller waist or less droopy eyes can enhance confidence, it can certainly be overdone. If an entire television show exists just to declare how beautiful you are, you may not actually need plastic surgery to enhance your looks and were probably pretty well off in the first place.
Our society has become so critical of a woman's appearance that even our beauty queens are not beautiful enough. That's an impossible standard for real people to live up to and a dangerous standard for us to be setting.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
While everyone seems shocked that the current Miss California, Carrie Prejean, disapproves of gay marriage and has posed for racy pictures, I'm mostly surprised that she got breast implants after winning the pageant. Even more unbelievable is that not only did pageant officials support her decision to enhance her assets, they actually paid for the procedure.
Basically, this action tells girls and women everywhere that even Miss California isn't quite good looking enough unless she hits a certain cup size. If Miss California needs plastic surgery immediately after winning a beauty pageant then pretty much every woman should immediately drop what she is doing and head for the plastic surgeon's office.
Apparently, this case is not out of the ordinary in the pageant world as Miss California Co-Director Keith Lewis told CBS news that essentially plastic surgery gets offered to all candidates. "It's not something that we endorse, nor is it something that we suggest," Lewis said. "But when we meet with the title-holder, when she's crowned Miss California, we put to her a litany of questions about how she feels about herself, what she feels she needs to work on, what she may need to change, what is good, what is not good. We want to put her in the best possible confidence in order to present herself in the best possible light on a national stage."
Translate that into English and Lewis basically said, sure she's pretty, but we think she can win Miss USA if she had bigger boobs. Also notice that Prejean did not mention working on her personality, her tolerance for others or any of her other obvious flaws, she honed right in on her bust.
It takes quite a lot of confidence in yourself to enter beauty pageants in the first place. Exactly how much extra confidence do larger breasts give you? Are we supposed to believe that Prejean had the confidence to think she was capable of winning a contest to be named the most beautiful woman in California, but not enough to compete in the national competition?
Clearly bigger breasts give some women more confidence. Pamela Anderson did exactly what Prejean did, getting implants after appearing in Playboy (a basic sign that men find you attractive) and she seems fairly confident. Still, it's a little ridiculous to pretend that Prejean had any motivation other than winning the Miss USA title because it's hard to declare you lack confidence in your appearance after you win a beauty contest.
Prejean had a panel of judges declare her beautiful. I know if a panel of judges even declared me decent looking (I'd settle for not scary if I had to) that it would boost my confidence more than say pec implants or a surgery that gave me six pack abs.
While I have no problem with plastic surgery and completely understand how having a larger bust, a smaller waist or less droopy eyes can enhance confidence, it can certainly be overdone. If an entire television show exists just to declare how beautiful you are, you may not actually need plastic surgery to enhance your looks and were probably pretty well off in the first place.
Our society has become so critical of a woman's appearance that even our beauty queens are not beautiful enough. That's an impossible standard for real people to live up to and a dangerous standard for us to be setting.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
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