An Ungrateful Heart

It both saddens and perplexes your favorite Peasant
when someone in our wonderful country makes it big,
makes a fortune at what he enjoys doing, gets
lots of encouragement along the way, yet finds
it necessary to demean our country as somehow
being unfair, oppressive, or prejudiced. The latest
such story centers on San Francisco 49ers
quarterback Colin Kaepernik, who has, beginning
with the first pre-season exhibition football game
he and his teammates played a few weeks ago,
begun a protest of sorts by remaining seated during
the playing of the National Anthem before each game.
His reason? He stated "I am not going to stand up
to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses
black people and people of color, ... To me, this is
bigger than football and it would be selfish to
look the other way... "

Now Kaepernik, who is black, was adopted and
raised by a well-to-do white family. They gave
him a life of plentitude, including a college education
which enabled him to develop his football skills to
the point of being drafted by an NFL team. And the
scouts that discovered him, and got him signed to
a pro contract, were white. He makes more money
than most people dare dream of making. Can Kaepernik
please explain how he has been "oppressed" for any
reason, particularly in regard to the color of
his skin?

Does Kaepernik know how well (or, more likely, not)
black people in other countries are faring? There
are many in various African countries that are living
in what can only be charitable called abject poverty.
Many of them are fortunate to be earning two dollars
a day at whatever work they can get. And some of these
countries have black dictators who oppress them to a
shocking degree, far beyond what most people can imagine.
Many flee, or at least attempt to, and many do not make
it out alive. they don't live in huge, fancy homes; they
have, with any luck, tiny huts of mud and grass. Cars?
hardly. Clothes? Not on the order of what an American
professional football player can afford. You, my wonderful
readers, get the picture, while Kaepernik needs to get a clue.

And Kaepernik has not been arrested and jailed for his
public display of misguided outrage and accompanying
peurile behavior. In the aforementioned parts of the world
he would have faced this along with torture and maybe execution.
But these facts apparently have escaped this spoiled dolt.
Perhaps he has been knocked on his head too many times
by hard-charging 300-pound-plus defensive ends?

This jock's ignorance has fed his ungrateful heart, and has
led him to play the fool. What he should do in his off-season
free time is to travel to the African continent to visit these
countries and see just how his black counterparts are faring
in their homelands. Maybe Kaeprenik needs a big jolt of
reality to change his heart and his attitude.

Finally, Colin Kaepernik, while not violating any law in not
standing for the playing of our nation's anthem (as a matter
of fact the Constitution allows for him to so express himself),
it must be noted that there are countries which severely punish
its citizens for not standing for their national anthems,
not saluting their flags and related infractions, and that is
shameful. Our country, where we cherish our freedom,
does not and never shall impose any such display of allegiance,
because we are, after all, a free country which zealously
protects our liberty and our many freedoms, which include
the freedom of expression --- and that includes choosing
not to stand for our National Anthem. Even the 49ers do
not require its personnel to stand for the anthem, but
rather encourages doing so. But in remaining seated for
the anthem, and for the reason which the 49ers' quarter-brained
quarterback has given, reveals great ignorance and ingratitude,
and should be recognized as such and called out. Your faithful
Peasant is doing just that here on this blog.


MEM

Regarding the Republican and Democrat Nominees

Now that the two major American political parties
have held their conventions and selected their
presidential candidates, your observant Peasant
has two things to say about it all: one, there were
no surprises, not really. Anyone paying attention to
the primaries and caucuses leading up to the
conventions knew which candidates would run away
with their parties' laurels; two, the big two picked the
absolute worst candidates that they possibly could.
Yes, Sen. Bernie Sanders is plenty atrocious in his
own right, but he does not have Hillary Clinton's
baggage -- all those scandals, you see.

A bumper sticker that I saw here in Milwaukee recently
summed it all up: "WHERE ARE THE REAL
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES?" That's what I'd like
to know!

Republican nominee Donald Trump is a true newcomer
to the party, and to conservatism. Until recently, the New
York real estate investor had been heavily involved in
the Democrat Party, having given mountains of money
to the party and to their candidates in many elections,
including their presidential candidates. Trump even hosted
a fundraising party for Hillary Clinton herself (!) when she
ran for the United States Senate just a few years back.
There is a widely viewed photograph of Trump mugging
for the camera with Hillary and her ex-president husband
Bill, appearing to all as jolly ol' chums for life. Now,
Trump and Hillary are trading barbs about each others'
character (or lack thereof), their politics, and their plans
for the country if elected. It has only been very recently
that Trump has given any specifics as to his plans but
has yet to share how he would implement said plans.
Hillary, for her part, has been quite forthcoming on her
plans and their implementation; it's just that what she has
in mind is merely an extention of the present policies of
the soon to be leaving President Obama. She is, after all,
the Dems' Heir Apparent, their Phase II of their plan to
turn our country into a statist hell. What she would not
continue as is from Obama she would build upon to
further regulate, manipulate, and dominate us with the
help of all-too-happy-to-help allies in Congress and
in the federal bureaucracy.

Trump only became the GOP presidential nominee
because the party has, over the years since President
Ronald Reagan, ceased to stand for anything; it even
went on a spending spree during the second President
Bush years that rivaled anything that past Democrat
administrations had engaged in! Moreover, the 'Pubs
also racked up what was then a record amount of debt
along with what was then record budget deficits; they
were spending money faster than they could get it through
borrowing and taxing. The very things that they had long
accused the Democrats of doing! Add to that the growing
number of illegal immigrants coming into our country
and the Bush II administration doing little more than
beginning to build a fence on our southern border
(it is STILL not complete, although one must note that
Obama has no interest whatsoever in finishing its
construction, as he seems more interested in allowing
still more such immigration). Many people, fed up with
the Republicans turning their backs on their heretofore
core values along with their party platform, got behind
Donald Trump when he strode into the political vacuum
created by the GOP to declare himself a candidate for
their presidential nomination. Just as it is with nature,
politics will not tolerate a vacuum; something must fill
the space, even if it is an opportunistic candidate for the
highest elected office in the land who had never run for
any office and has no discernible ties to the party whose
nomination he is seeking. And the flip-flopping; oh, God,
the flip-flopping! If you don't like Trump's view on a par-
ticular issue, just wait a couple minutes. He's bound to have
one you might care for. And what a thin skin! Say anything
that casts even a speck of doubt on the man and his ideas
and he'll turn on you with a barrage of low-hitting insults
(remember his remarks about Fox TV's Megyn Kelly
after she had vigorously questioned him in one of the early
GOP candidate debates? I'm not going to repeat then here,
but you night be able to find them on YouTube if you want
to hear them badly enough).

As for Hillary, she's more crooked than a spine with scoliosis.
She and her hubby founded and run The Best Little Charitable
Trust Fund in Washington, the Clinton Foundation, which
receives money from some of the scummiest dictators and
potentates in the world as well as from various representatives
from other countries, all whose governments are willing to
"pay to play" with Washington should Hillary become president.
The Clintons, in the meantime, use some of that money for,
among other things, their considerable living expenses (hey,
they have a fancy mansion in Chappaqua, New York, as well
as homes elsewhere to keep up, give 'em a little sympathy,
these words oozing sarcasm). And let's not forget Benghazi,
much as the lamestream media would dearly love us to.
For there is where Hillary left four Americans to a deadly fate
after one of them, Ambassador Christopher Stevens,
repeatedly requested extra security for backup and was
ignored by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And what
did she do after the fact? She lied about what instigated the
attack on our compound, even repeating the lie to the family
members of the dead RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FLAG-
DRAPED CASKETS! She claimed that a video which was
derogatory to the Moslem prophet Mohammad stirred up
the violence that took place, a video that does not and never
did exist.

It's clear that neither of these turds are worthy of being our
president, but they are the nominees of the two major political
parties, and one of them will sadly be elected to that office
in November. But while Donald Trump, with his sudden
glomming onto various stands on various issues and flip-
flopping when thinking it expedient, is a wild card, Hillary
Clinton is the Queen of Corruption with her lies, her greed,
her double-standards and double-talk. Trump may now and
then do the right thing, while Clinton can always be counted
on to do the wrong thing. We likely could get Trump to listen
to us, while Clinton would give us a deaf ear and the middle
finger.

I am not making any endorsement here. I am saying, though,
that our choice as conservatives is clear.


MEM

A Bitter Lesson Learned

Private health insurers jumped at the chance to
enter a dubious bargain with the Democrats
six years ago: support passage of the Affordable
Care Act in exchange for being able to grow
their businesses with federally subsidized customers
who were required, under the ACA's Individual
Mandate, to purchase insurance. What could
go wrong?

Plenty, as it turned out. These insurers are losing
money on what they thought was a can't-miss
deal. Aetna was the most recent insurer to admit
as much in its quarterly earning report. Although
Aetna managed to reduce its losses accrued from
being conned by the Obama regime, the firm
remained unprofitable in 2015. "We continue to
have serious concerns about the sustainability of
the public exchanges," CEO Mark Bertolini
confessed in a call with investment analysts.
Aetna is very worried about the stability of the
risk pool, including enforcement of standards.
To hike enrollment the Department of Health
and Human Services eased the way for customers
to wait until they were sick to purchase insurance,
offering coverage of "pre-existing conditions",
something akin to buying auto insurance after
wrecking one's car. This loads the risk pool with
sicker people and disrupts normal insurance
actuarial calculations.

Aetna is quite lucky, however, compared to some
of their competitors; UnitedHealth reported that
it may lose $1 billion (!) over 2015-2016 on its
involvement with ObamaCare. And Blue Cross and
Blue Shield of North Carolina says it expects to lose
$400 million on snapping up the bait. Many critics of
the ACA a/k/a ObamaCare claim that it is designed
to work precisely this way, to drive out private
health insurers and thus pave the way for government-
run health coverage, a' la Canadian "Single Payer"
insurance or Britain's monsterous, red tape-entangled
plan, and they may be proven right in due course.

Some health insurance CEOs flocked to sign
up people for the ACA plans not out of eagerness for
easy and plentiful profits, but because they would have
been dragooned into participation by Washington if
they didn't freely throw in. Now, they have to worry that
the government may simply throw them out, like
yesterday's garbage.

It's time to throw out the ACA, like the garbage that it is!

MEM

Making Time for Family (and Other Things)

My friends, your faithful Peasant is going to
take a break to get together with family and
friends out of town. And upon return, I shall
be busying myself with enjoying the Milwaukee
Irish Fest; it will, in fact, be two consecutive Irish
festivals which I shall be attending, as I shall be
going to the Minnesota Irish Fair in Saint Paul
the week before with my cousin and her husband,
along with a friend or two. So I shall not be posting
for the first two weeks in August (with the exception
of today), but shall return to you, my loyal and
wonderful readers, in the latter half of the month.

When I return, however, I shall share my thoughts
with you, my wonderful readers, regarding the recently
concluded Republican and Democrat national
conventions and what transpired at each.

Meanwhile, do enjoy this conservative online pub-
lication:

www.nationalreview.com National Review Online

Thank you for your ongoing support of this blog!
Your grateful Peasant treasures you, my grand readers,
more than I can say with words!

See you soon!


MEM

More Fun With Fannie & Freddie

After the housing bubble fiasco near the end of
the last decade, one would think that Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac would have been sufficiently
chastised and taken to the woodshed, so to speak.
That little episode begat the biggest recession in
many a year in these United States; it knocked your
beloved Peasant to the curb along with many other
Americans.

But Washington has found a way to help these two
mischief makers continue to dominate the mortgage
market for a long time to come. First, a little back-
ground information:

Before the aforementioned financial crisis, the Bevis
and Butthead of mortgage finance owned or guaranteed
over $5 trillion (!) in mortgage debt. When the housing
boom popped with the housing bubble, a $188 billion
bailout was forced upon the taxpayers. Then, the
Federal Housing and Finance Agency that supervises
these troublesome twins has decided to become the
preserver, and enabler, of their market share. What
this means is that the FHFA has been encouraging
the use of further complex financial instruments to
keep Fannie and Freddie in a prominent position
within this huge market.

The dubious duo then began using collateralized debt
obligations (CDOs) to dump much of the mortgage risk
that they are holding. The CDOs are a means of purchasing
insurance to protect against the risk that more than a few
mortgagees default on their mortgages. It seems that it
never occurred to them that they should not hold these
risks to begin with, so as to negate the need for taxpayers
to have insurance. Fannie and Freddie are selling the CDOS
to investors in the private sector, who in turn receive
generous yields for their assuming much of the default risk
in the bundle of mortgages held by the Fs (Gee, what a handy
and fitting way to refer to these wayward organizations!).

As the two companies are backed by Uncle Sam and can
therefore borrow money at incredibly low rates, there is only
political motivation to create this instrument --- but that
seems to be reason enough in Washington. It certainly is a
means of thwarting reform-minded members of Congress
to either overhaul Fannie and Freddie, or shut them down.
Private investors find the deals most tempting, and a
guarantee to taxpayers is included in the blend, that being
having the taxpayers made to pay for the redemption of these
instruments if anything were to go wrong, custom-made for the
juiciness of it all to investors. Fannie Mae executives swore
up and down that this would not happen, but guess what?
It happened!

That is another item for the next Republican president and
for Congress to write on their to-do list, should a GOP candidate
be elected this November and Congress kept in that party's
hands as well. Either seriously reform this gruesome twosome,
or close them for good! No more "too big to fail" scam jobs
to ensnare the taxpayers with!


MEM

Justice Scalia, Ye Left Us Much Too Soon

A recent Supreme Court ruling illustrated just how much
the recently departed Justice Antonin Scalia's absence is
being felt, and how it has affected and will continue to affect
SCOTUS rulings until Scalia's seat is filled by a conserva-
tive appointee, provided that we succeed in electing a
conservative presidential candidate in November.

The eight justices remaining on the Court split evenly on
a closely watched First Amendment case whose upshot is
that public employee unions can continue to force public
employees to pay "agency fees" even if they choose not to
join a union. What this ruling means is that public employees
will still be made to pay something similar to union dues to
the union who represents their co-workers who have chosen to
join the union, because the union claims to represent and bargain
for all of the employees in said workplace. It matters not that
the non-union member workers may not be happy with the
compensation packages or any other features in the contract
bargained for by the union, that they believe they could
obtain something with points more to their satisfaction
without the union speaking for them; they are all, in a
manner of speaking, "locked in" to the workplace status quo.
The justices stated in a one-sentence opinion: "The judgement
is affirmed by an equally divided Court", a 4-4 tie which
lets a lower court decision stand, also leaving in place
the Court's 1977 precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education,
which allowed the deduction of fees even if the employees
object to how the money they paid is spent. The recent ruling
pertaining to the California public school teachers and their
battle with their union creates no precedent, so the First
Amendment issues at this case's core will be around for
rehearing in a future case. But oh, if only the justices had
reversed Abood! Justice Samuel Alito was quite willing,
but the brakes were applied by Chief Justice John Roberts,
the same justice who let Obamacare stand by inexplicably and
illogically calling it a "tax"(!). It appears that Chief Justice
Roberts wanted to move "incrementally" --- even in overturning
bad Supreme Court errors that resulted in questionable rulings.
The incrementalism could work, provided that the Court retains
a center-right majority, which it had while Justice Scalia lived.
But unless a conservative Republican is elected president in
the fall, a Democrat president will appoint a liberal justice,
giving the Court a center-left majority whose influence will
be felt, uninterrupted, for many years to come. This is
precisely why Republicans want to hold off on picking a
replacement for Justice Scalia until after the election, so that
the voters can have a say as to who the next president will be
and will therefore get to nominate a candidate for that seat.
The people would thus be, in effect, choosing both our next
president and our next Supreme Court Justice. Although
this idea gets the Democrats' undies in a twist, your aware
Peasant thinks it only fair, as the people can decide upon
which ideology should be the guiding factor in the kind
of government we are to have from this year's election
forward. If they choose liberal governance by electing a
Democrat for president, then the Dems can rest easy; they
will have gotten what they want via the expressed will of
the people and that will be that. If the electorate chooses
conservative governance by placing a Republican in the
White House, then the Democrats will have to wait for
their next opportunity to put a liberal on the Court ---
and likely will have to wait for quite a while.

So this is what is at stake with the passing of Justice
Antonin Scalia, a conservative jurist and First Amendment
champion, and the timing of his death coinciding with a
presidential election year. All the more reason for we
conservatives to turn out to vote, in as large a force as we
can muster.


MEM

Tom Marr, R.I.P.

In the realm of talk radio this man was truly a star;
so many people in the field, as well as in the media
as a whole are proclaimed as such, to the point of
the term almost ceasing to mean anything from the
inflationary assignation of it to every Tom, Dick,
Harry and Jane that pops into the limelight. But this
Tom -- Tom Marr -- was the real McCoy.

Marr, who had been the play-by-play voice of the
Baltimore Orioles for eight seasons, and who had been
either a sportscaster or a conservative talk show host
in his hometown of Baltimore, and a superb guest host
for national conservative radio talk show host Mark
Levin, passed away on July 7 after complications
following back surgery, resulting in a massive stroke
which he could not recover from. The 73-year-old
Marr hosted a radio sports talk show while in high
school, followed by a stint in the Marines. Afterward,
Marr worked for several radio stations on the East Coast
before becoming an anchor and news director for WBFR
of Baltimore in 1967. he also was a panelist on the award-
winning radio show Conference Call.  After WBFR
changed its format from news and talk radio to
pop music, Marr worked at other stations in the region
before landing a talk show position at WCBM radio
in Baltimore, where he had been for many years up until
his death. Marr was also ranked among the top 100 most
influential radio talk show hosts by Talkers Magazine.

A friend of Mark Levin and fellow conservative, Marr
was invited to be one of Levin's guest hosts for Levin's
show and had done beautifully. Your favorite Peasant
enjoyed Tom Marr's commentary on those occasions,
and considered Marr my favorite Levin guest host
(although the others are quite wonderful too!). Marr
was an eloquent, unflinching, vigorous advocate for
the conservative cause, and presented his arguments
with humor as well as sweet reason and flawless logic.
He was a happy warrior for his politics and his
country.

Thomas Aquinas Marr, Irish Catholic, Marine, radio
talker expounding on sports and politics, and proud,
unabashed American. We have precious few like Marr
in our media today, and now we are missing one more.
Hard to surpass, harder to replace. Rest in Peace.


MEM