Perfect definition of Nate humor.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Letter to Ron Paul
I wrote this letter to Ron Paul (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/). What I would like is some:
1) Feedback as to the validity and logic of my arguments
2) Any grammatical and/or spelling issues
3) Your overall opinion
I am going to send this letter before too long, I just want to let everyone proof read it (mainly my mom :) ) so that I don't sound like a moron.
Thanks.
PS Yes I am still very influenced in my thinking by Ayn Rand.
Dr. Paul,
I am a Christian and grew up in a church pastored by my father. I always looked up to him as an intelligent man of faith. During the years George H.W. Bush was President I remember many people in the congregation having difficulties making ends meet as the tax cuts for the upper class did not trickle down to the lower classes. I remember vividly the election of 1992 and waiting up with my dad as the results were tallied. I was 9 years old in 1992 and had no idea what was happening only that a “good guy” was winning and the “bad guy” was losing. I was overjoyed when, in my mind, the GI Joes beat Cobra.
In 1996 the same thing occurred, the only difference being that I was 13 and understood the process by which Presidents were elected and some of the politics that went alongside the election, making one person “better” than the other. The only issue in my mind, however, was to choose the same guy my dad did because I could never defeat him in an argument and he always picked the “right” guy.
A funny thing happened between 1996 and 2000. Not only did I stop believing that my dad was always right, but I began to date a girl whose father was the most conservative Republican I had ever met. These two people profoundly influenced my thoughts and decisions right through the election in 2000. I became a Republican the first time I had a serious talk with my girlfriend’s dad about politics. For him, the only issues were faith based. George Bush was a Christian, a Baptist no less, and Al Gore was, in his words “The Antichrist.”
Needless to say, I was not going to side with the Antichrist so I staunchly defended Bush in front of my parents and siblings even though my parents were the only ones in the house old enough to vote. I was 17 in 2000 and had finally become a Republican.
I consider myself an intelligent individual and as such I decided that Gore was not the Antichrist, since the Antichrist would have won the election, attempted to brand all of us with the Mark of the Beast, and martyred me as a supporter of the God and the Republicans. I was not, however, willing to admit defeat to my four younger sisters and my two highly educated parents let alone start that argument with my fire and brimstone "in-laws".
Thankfully, while I was dealing with these issues, my girlfriend and I parted ways and I was free to think about considering myself a Democrat without immediately being thrown into the fiery pits of Hades.
Another relationship soon started and this girl was also a Republican and a Christian, as were her parents, but they were Reagan Republicans believing that the Republicans had saved the country during the years of 1980-1992 and that Clinton had merely reaped the benefits of Reagan’s amazing ideas. Laissez-faire economics, the trickledown theory, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and many other nuggets of Republican theory and propoganda were pumped into my brain.
Fortunately, having dealt with crazy Republicans in the past, I knew better than to adapt their ideas for my own and decided to do my own research. What I found was a morass of political speak with little to no actual politics. What I realized was that most people were affiliated with one party or another based on one or two personal experiences.
This realization led me to seek out the foundation of both the Republican and the Democratic Party and why they believe what they believe. What I realized was that the difference goes all the way back to, and was the cause of, the Civil War. The South believed in the right of states to govern themselves, to make decisions that were best for their state. The North believed that a strong and central national government was the only way for a true nation to function. I apologize for this brief history lesson, but most people think that the war was about slavery, which it never was, and the struggles of the Blacks after the Civil War show just how little it had to do with civil liberties.
Currently, Republicans are the south and the Democrats are the north, at least theoretically. While I cannot comment on the politics of the first Bush, Reagan, or Clinton since I had no vested interest in their presidencies; I can, however, comment on Bush the second.
He is not a Republican. No true Republican would ever usurp the power of Congress in order to declare a war on a foreign nation. No true Republican would ever increase the power of the national government to a point where state, let alone individual, rights and privileges are not taken into consideration in foreign, fiscal, or educational policy. I am a Republican because I believe that the more levels of abstraction you have between an individual and the person making decisions on their behalf, the less those decisions take into consideration the feelings of the people and the more muddied the waters become with lobbyists. I also strongly support laissez-faire almost everything. Centralized power is an anathema to every true Republican. George W. Bush is not a Republican.
I am writing this letter because you are the first person that I have ever seen who kind of says what the Republican Party believes and this makes me proud. You do not, however, follow a true laissez-faire Republican government, which is the other reason for this letter.
I do not agree with your treatment of immigrants since a true laissez-faire Republican economy would allow any immigrant to enter the country and make a living and live out the American Dream, much like all of our ancestors did at one time or another. Social services for immigrants should be available to all. The poor of the world are just as poor, if not more so, than the poor of the United States and we should not discriminate based on their parentage.
I also vehemently disagree with your treatment of Social Security. I believe that the demise of the family and the poor quality of life for senior citizens is because of Social Security not because the system is broken. Senior citizens deserve to be taken care of and should be taken care of by first themselves, then their families, and finally the government. The demise of the family structure in America today is because we take our elderly, warehouse them, and wait for them to die. The policy that I believe is the most just is to discontinue Social Security all together and to envelop the poor elderly into the exact same bracket as the poor single mother. After all, the only difference is age. Too many Americans think that Social Security is their retirement; the phasing out of Social Security in favor of a private retirement plan should be the priority of any true Republican.
I also believe that the public school funding needs to be phased out in favor of vouchers for every student. Bad public schools would not have any students because no students would choose to attend the school. Privatization of every school would increase the quality of life for every student since schools would be competing for the vouchers of students in the area. Non-state funded colleges and universities continue to be the best institutions of higher learning in the world. Remove funding for state schools so that their mediocrity would not be allowed to continue freeing up that money for scholarships to the most promising students to any university. That way promising poor students could attend Harvard for the same price as their nearest state school. The state schools would then be forced to increase the quality of education or decrease prices in order to offer an alternative.
Competition breeds excellence. That is why America is the strongest nation in the world. Unless Republicans continue to foster an environment of competition like they are supposed to do, America will continue to fall further and further behind other nations in terms of quality.
It is my belief, as a Christian, that everyone is worthwhile and everyone has immeasurable abilities. What we need to do as a nation is to foster those abilities. The people in the US who are lazy, in a just system, would reap the rewards of laziness and the people who work, no matter how intelligent they are, will reap the rewards of work.
There is another person, who is my hero, who said those exact words about reaping and sowing and also about laziness and work: Jesus Christ. It is time that Republicans began acting like Republicans and stop name dropping Christianity since Republicans and Christians are doing a disservice to each other by allowing lazy politics to take the place of actual thought.
Sincerely,
Nathaniel Noonen
1) Feedback as to the validity and logic of my arguments
2) Any grammatical and/or spelling issues
3) Your overall opinion
I am going to send this letter before too long, I just want to let everyone proof read it (mainly my mom :) ) so that I don't sound like a moron.
Thanks.
PS Yes I am still very influenced in my thinking by Ayn Rand.
Dr. Paul,
I am a Christian and grew up in a church pastored by my father. I always looked up to him as an intelligent man of faith. During the years George H.W. Bush was President I remember many people in the congregation having difficulties making ends meet as the tax cuts for the upper class did not trickle down to the lower classes. I remember vividly the election of 1992 and waiting up with my dad as the results were tallied. I was 9 years old in 1992 and had no idea what was happening only that a “good guy” was winning and the “bad guy” was losing. I was overjoyed when, in my mind, the GI Joes beat Cobra.
In 1996 the same thing occurred, the only difference being that I was 13 and understood the process by which Presidents were elected and some of the politics that went alongside the election, making one person “better” than the other. The only issue in my mind, however, was to choose the same guy my dad did because I could never defeat him in an argument and he always picked the “right” guy.
A funny thing happened between 1996 and 2000. Not only did I stop believing that my dad was always right, but I began to date a girl whose father was the most conservative Republican I had ever met. These two people profoundly influenced my thoughts and decisions right through the election in 2000. I became a Republican the first time I had a serious talk with my girlfriend’s dad about politics. For him, the only issues were faith based. George Bush was a Christian, a Baptist no less, and Al Gore was, in his words “The Antichrist.”
Needless to say, I was not going to side with the Antichrist so I staunchly defended Bush in front of my parents and siblings even though my parents were the only ones in the house old enough to vote. I was 17 in 2000 and had finally become a Republican.
I consider myself an intelligent individual and as such I decided that Gore was not the Antichrist, since the Antichrist would have won the election, attempted to brand all of us with the Mark of the Beast, and martyred me as a supporter of the God and the Republicans. I was not, however, willing to admit defeat to my four younger sisters and my two highly educated parents let alone start that argument with my fire and brimstone "in-laws".
Thankfully, while I was dealing with these issues, my girlfriend and I parted ways and I was free to think about considering myself a Democrat without immediately being thrown into the fiery pits of Hades.
Another relationship soon started and this girl was also a Republican and a Christian, as were her parents, but they were Reagan Republicans believing that the Republicans had saved the country during the years of 1980-1992 and that Clinton had merely reaped the benefits of Reagan’s amazing ideas. Laissez-faire economics, the trickledown theory, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and many other nuggets of Republican theory and propoganda were pumped into my brain.
Fortunately, having dealt with crazy Republicans in the past, I knew better than to adapt their ideas for my own and decided to do my own research. What I found was a morass of political speak with little to no actual politics. What I realized was that most people were affiliated with one party or another based on one or two personal experiences.
This realization led me to seek out the foundation of both the Republican and the Democratic Party and why they believe what they believe. What I realized was that the difference goes all the way back to, and was the cause of, the Civil War. The South believed in the right of states to govern themselves, to make decisions that were best for their state. The North believed that a strong and central national government was the only way for a true nation to function. I apologize for this brief history lesson, but most people think that the war was about slavery, which it never was, and the struggles of the Blacks after the Civil War show just how little it had to do with civil liberties.
Currently, Republicans are the south and the Democrats are the north, at least theoretically. While I cannot comment on the politics of the first Bush, Reagan, or Clinton since I had no vested interest in their presidencies; I can, however, comment on Bush the second.
He is not a Republican. No true Republican would ever usurp the power of Congress in order to declare a war on a foreign nation. No true Republican would ever increase the power of the national government to a point where state, let alone individual, rights and privileges are not taken into consideration in foreign, fiscal, or educational policy. I am a Republican because I believe that the more levels of abstraction you have between an individual and the person making decisions on their behalf, the less those decisions take into consideration the feelings of the people and the more muddied the waters become with lobbyists. I also strongly support laissez-faire almost everything. Centralized power is an anathema to every true Republican. George W. Bush is not a Republican.
I am writing this letter because you are the first person that I have ever seen who kind of says what the Republican Party believes and this makes me proud. You do not, however, follow a true laissez-faire Republican government, which is the other reason for this letter.
I do not agree with your treatment of immigrants since a true laissez-faire Republican economy would allow any immigrant to enter the country and make a living and live out the American Dream, much like all of our ancestors did at one time or another. Social services for immigrants should be available to all. The poor of the world are just as poor, if not more so, than the poor of the United States and we should not discriminate based on their parentage.
I also vehemently disagree with your treatment of Social Security. I believe that the demise of the family and the poor quality of life for senior citizens is because of Social Security not because the system is broken. Senior citizens deserve to be taken care of and should be taken care of by first themselves, then their families, and finally the government. The demise of the family structure in America today is because we take our elderly, warehouse them, and wait for them to die. The policy that I believe is the most just is to discontinue Social Security all together and to envelop the poor elderly into the exact same bracket as the poor single mother. After all, the only difference is age. Too many Americans think that Social Security is their retirement; the phasing out of Social Security in favor of a private retirement plan should be the priority of any true Republican.
I also believe that the public school funding needs to be phased out in favor of vouchers for every student. Bad public schools would not have any students because no students would choose to attend the school. Privatization of every school would increase the quality of life for every student since schools would be competing for the vouchers of students in the area. Non-state funded colleges and universities continue to be the best institutions of higher learning in the world. Remove funding for state schools so that their mediocrity would not be allowed to continue freeing up that money for scholarships to the most promising students to any university. That way promising poor students could attend Harvard for the same price as their nearest state school. The state schools would then be forced to increase the quality of education or decrease prices in order to offer an alternative.
Competition breeds excellence. That is why America is the strongest nation in the world. Unless Republicans continue to foster an environment of competition like they are supposed to do, America will continue to fall further and further behind other nations in terms of quality.
It is my belief, as a Christian, that everyone is worthwhile and everyone has immeasurable abilities. What we need to do as a nation is to foster those abilities. The people in the US who are lazy, in a just system, would reap the rewards of laziness and the people who work, no matter how intelligent they are, will reap the rewards of work.
There is another person, who is my hero, who said those exact words about reaping and sowing and also about laziness and work: Jesus Christ. It is time that Republicans began acting like Republicans and stop name dropping Christianity since Republicans and Christians are doing a disservice to each other by allowing lazy politics to take the place of actual thought.
Sincerely,
Nathaniel Noonen
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Winter Meetings
For those of you who do not know, the baseball winter meetings are going on right now. Pretty much what that means is that teams who spend tons of money buy great players and teams that develop great players do nothing while their fans cry.
Today the Tigers traded 6 players for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. Now, the Indians could have made a move like that, but they would have gotten rid of great prospects and I understand not putting all of your eggs in one basket. If Dontrelle tears a tendon in his middle finger playing Guitar Hero, there goes that great trade.
The flip side is that teams like the Tigers, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, and Cubs continue to purchase the big ticket players while the Indians develop in house. Just once I would like to get a quality established big league player in a deal or via free agent signing. Granted most of the current roster came from trades where the Tribe shipped off guys like Bartolo Colon for a few prospects (Grady Sizemore, Clifford Lee, and some other guys) and I do NOT want to sacrifice the future for a current player. Gone are the rebuilding years.
What I would like to see is a high profile free agent signing. Alex Rodriguez is out of the question, not only do I not like him, but he's too expensive, not worth it, a tool, and a bad man. I would, however, love to see this:
Indians acquire FA Andruw Jones for $16 million/year. With bonuses, the salary could reach $18 million.
Here is my argument:
1) The Tribe needs a right handed power hitter with plate discipline.
2) The Tribe needs a mentor and a quality individual to teach the younger guys how to behave and deal with the major leagues (one of the many reasons A-Rod would not be a good pickup)
3) The Tribe needs an established right OR left fielder.
4) If he gets hurt, they have guys waiting in the wings.
5) He's getting older and would have just as many highlight reel catches in left or right without the grind of center.
6) He is playoff tested, consistent, deals very well with slumps, is intelligent, a family man, and a great guy.
7) This would free up a trade for a good 3B while shipping out some of the outfield depth. Possibly a deal with the Angels for Chone Figgins. As much as I love Casey Blake, he is a utility player not an every day third baseman and Chone would fit nicely into the mix of guys who are willing to do anything to win and who can play multiple positions. The Angels can either have Ben Francisco or Franklin Guttierez and a pitcher (Cliff Lee, Sowers, or Miller).
So here is my prospective depth chart:
1. Sizemore CF
2. Figgins 3B
3. Jones LF
4. Hafner DH
5. Martinez C
6. Garko 1B
7. Peralta SS
8. Cabrera 2B
9. Guttierez (or Francisco) RF
Then for subs you have Jones who can play CF and give Grady a day off putting Blake in LF, you can put Figgins in the OF and give Barfield a start at second and move Cabrera to SS and Peralta gets a day off. Or you can move Cabrera to 2B, Peralta to 3B, Barfield to 2B and give Chone the day off. Or you can just do a swap, Blake for Jones, Blake for Chone, Barfield for Cabrera, etc.
Now, the likelyhood that this will actually happen is almost 0%; however, this takes care of the Tribe's needs perfectly. If the Tribe doesn't deal anyone, I hope and pray that Andy Marte and Josh Barfield decide not to suck this year and that someone (Guttierez, Francisco, or Michaels) emerges as a right handed power hitter.
The problem that the Tribe has is that 1-9 they are just a hair above average. 1-25 they are amazing and 1-40 they are probably the best team in baseball. The problem is that in the playoffs, you only need the 1-9 guys to be amazing. The Yankees lost to the Indians because their pitching sucked. Against a team with a quality pitching staff (Red Sox) they just couldn't stack up 1-9 against the Sox. That's the bottom line and until they decide to upgrade one of their 1-9 guys, they will be amazing 1-25 and above average in the playoffs.
Today the Tigers traded 6 players for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. Now, the Indians could have made a move like that, but they would have gotten rid of great prospects and I understand not putting all of your eggs in one basket. If Dontrelle tears a tendon in his middle finger playing Guitar Hero, there goes that great trade.
The flip side is that teams like the Tigers, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, and Cubs continue to purchase the big ticket players while the Indians develop in house. Just once I would like to get a quality established big league player in a deal or via free agent signing. Granted most of the current roster came from trades where the Tribe shipped off guys like Bartolo Colon for a few prospects (Grady Sizemore, Clifford Lee, and some other guys) and I do NOT want to sacrifice the future for a current player. Gone are the rebuilding years.
What I would like to see is a high profile free agent signing. Alex Rodriguez is out of the question, not only do I not like him, but he's too expensive, not worth it, a tool, and a bad man. I would, however, love to see this:
Indians acquire FA Andruw Jones for $16 million/year. With bonuses, the salary could reach $18 million.
Here is my argument:
1) The Tribe needs a right handed power hitter with plate discipline.
2) The Tribe needs a mentor and a quality individual to teach the younger guys how to behave and deal with the major leagues (one of the many reasons A-Rod would not be a good pickup)
3) The Tribe needs an established right OR left fielder.
4) If he gets hurt, they have guys waiting in the wings.
5) He's getting older and would have just as many highlight reel catches in left or right without the grind of center.
6) He is playoff tested, consistent, deals very well with slumps, is intelligent, a family man, and a great guy.
7) This would free up a trade for a good 3B while shipping out some of the outfield depth. Possibly a deal with the Angels for Chone Figgins. As much as I love Casey Blake, he is a utility player not an every day third baseman and Chone would fit nicely into the mix of guys who are willing to do anything to win and who can play multiple positions. The Angels can either have Ben Francisco or Franklin Guttierez and a pitcher (Cliff Lee, Sowers, or Miller).
So here is my prospective depth chart:
1. Sizemore CF
2. Figgins 3B
3. Jones LF
4. Hafner DH
5. Martinez C
6. Garko 1B
7. Peralta SS
8. Cabrera 2B
9. Guttierez (or Francisco) RF
Then for subs you have Jones who can play CF and give Grady a day off putting Blake in LF, you can put Figgins in the OF and give Barfield a start at second and move Cabrera to SS and Peralta gets a day off. Or you can move Cabrera to 2B, Peralta to 3B, Barfield to 2B and give Chone the day off. Or you can just do a swap, Blake for Jones, Blake for Chone, Barfield for Cabrera, etc.
Now, the likelyhood that this will actually happen is almost 0%; however, this takes care of the Tribe's needs perfectly. If the Tribe doesn't deal anyone, I hope and pray that Andy Marte and Josh Barfield decide not to suck this year and that someone (Guttierez, Francisco, or Michaels) emerges as a right handed power hitter.
The problem that the Tribe has is that 1-9 they are just a hair above average. 1-25 they are amazing and 1-40 they are probably the best team in baseball. The problem is that in the playoffs, you only need the 1-9 guys to be amazing. The Yankees lost to the Indians because their pitching sucked. Against a team with a quality pitching staff (Red Sox) they just couldn't stack up 1-9 against the Sox. That's the bottom line and until they decide to upgrade one of their 1-9 guys, they will be amazing 1-25 and above average in the playoffs.
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