Are Tough Questions Out of the Question?

I once found myself at the crossroads of rational decision-making. Oh, it wasn’t some insane moment where life and death were being decided (well, perhaps my life and death). It wasn’t some moment where a major earth shattering event was unfolding. Nope…. I was in a bar. It just so happened that it was a biker bar. I used to frequent those when I was younger and thought myself a whole lot tougher than I am in my forties. There were buckets of testosterone on each table. Boxes of manhood and muscle were stacked behind the bar. The lighting was dim, the place was filthy, and the steady pounding of hard rock music was only broken every now and then by a selection from one of the superbands of the 70s. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of value placed on intelligence in that bar. They dealt in respect and feats of strength. It was the kind of place you didn’t walk into unless you were part of the regular scene or you really did believe that you were a pretty tough hombre. I sat at a table with a group from a well known national biker gang, and the discussion turned to racism, and it weren’t good (bad grammar intentional!).

Johann Hari and the Dying Wails of a Small Minded Mission

We begin another week with another look into the fascinating world of the global warming alarmists who, at this point, are merely incapable of using reason or logic to think things through. I have to admit that I admire the tenacity that these folks have. Despite massive amounts of counter-arguments, they still manage to move forward with the warning calls, completely ignoring all the things that simply render their argument moot. I think the thing that fascinates me the most about these carnival barkers is that they continually lambast opponents for using faulty logic or ill-conceived arguments, and then they go right ahead and do exactly what it is they just railed about. It boggles the mind. Global warming is something that I simply cannot ignore. The consequences of allowing the progressive movement to move forward with their plans are simply too devastating. At this point, I see the really loud voices in the debate as nearly as crack-pottish as Cesca is about racism. Therefore, I will continue to hammer them until the world shouts them down as the fruitballs that they are.

Answering Some Inquiries About SUFA Readership

I am postponing the guest commentary for tonight. I will post it tomorrow night, but wanted to discuss something else for this evening’s topic. I noticed in the comments on the Tuesday Night Open Mic that some folks (specifically Cyndi) were asking about where people went who used to post here regularly. Black Flag, always my champion for the site, noted that he believed that readership at SUFA was as high as ever, but that I could perhaps offer some stats. So I figured I would offer what is actually happening at SUFA and ask for everyone’s thoughts on why that might be or what I could do differently. Sadly, Black Flag’s optimism around the readership at SUFA was incorrect. I have been bleeding traffic for a couple of months at this point. Readership of this blog during the month of August looks as though it will be the lowest that it has been since March of 2009. I have some thoughts on why this might be occurring but I am open to what everyone else thinks as well. Once I lay everything out below, I will open it up for all of you to offer your thoughts and suggestions. Perhaps together we can build SUFA back up to where it once was and even go beyond that to the readership that I hope to have.

Just a “Heads Up”

I will be playing with my site today for a bit. I am looking at new themes to work with. I feel I have gotten a bit tired with the orange look that I have had for almost two years. So I am going to be changing it multiple times today in an effort to see what I like. I may go back to what we have now, who knows. But I have to actually change them to play with them. The “previews” of new themes give you an idea of how they might look but not what you can customize. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 24, 2010

Tuesday night comes again. This week we are on the heels of my proposal to eliminate the FDA. I was a little disappointed with the first day’s responses, but I felt the second day was better. I especially liked Mathius’ alternative plan offering. While I am a little skeptical of it, I love having alternatives offered and the real ideas discussed without the silly games of simply attempting to discredit the original idea with nonsense. If people would like me to, we can sit on the FDA thing for a week or so and repost some of the stuff later for more discussion after people have time to think it through. Let me know if you want to do that. For the open mic we have three topics from me, including Hillary continuing to beat the climate change thing down people’s throats, California cities looking at punishing accident victims by charging them taxes for emergency services and then charging them fees when they use them, and my personal frustration with the conflicting information spewing from all sides of government these days. Additionally, we have a topic carried over from Peter in Indy and the possibility of Snopes being exposed from Cyndi. I look forward to the conversations.

Eliminating the FDA is a Must

As promised this evening, I have brought forth a topic that I am a little excited to have some of you folks, who are so entrenched in your beliefs about regulation and government’s necessity in the realm of business, sink your teeth into and debate here at SUFA. I will allow the topic to rest on its own for two days until Tuesday night’s open mic (simply meaning I won’t be posting a new article on Monday night). I have spent the last couple of years debating with folks here and elsewhere that I believe that the market could take care of things better than the government. I don’t actually feel that there is any question as to the validity of that statement. The government hasn’t met a regulation that has worked. Sure some of them make small improvements in some areas, but the problem is that the unintended consequences seem to always negate any good that comes from regulation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world controlled by the Food and Drug Administration. Not only is regulation completely ineffective in that realm, but the unintended consequences are devastating to a society that has the potential to be much farther down the path of better health than the FDA has allowed.

Guest Commentary – The Fake Dichotomy

Thursday night really snuck up on me this week! My first week back at work after being out of the store for a while is always a challenge. In this case, getting caught back up on all the paperwork, training of new employees, and issues that came up while I was gone for two weeks is a quite daunting task. It is made even more daunting by an upcoming product launch that will be revolutionary in the industry and will also require a ton of my time for the next 8 weeks (work time not blog time!). I am pretty excited about some of my upcoming topics as well. I have some good discussion topics coming up, starting with Sunday night’s article in a few days. Tonight’s guest commentary comes to us from a tried and true contributor. I have a couple to choose from but I really wanted to run another one from Jon Smith. I always enjoy his topics because they are pretty thought out and well written. Jon has a knack for using that grey matter inside his skull to flesh out good discussions. Tonight’s contribution will be no different.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 17, 2010

I have to tell you, the more I do the open mic nights, the more I begin to enjoy them. There are several reasons that this is so. First, the open mic articles are easier to write. They don’t take nearly as much research and thought as some of the other articles that I write. More important for me is that the open mic format allows me to tackle much smaller items that I wouldn’t normally be able to support with a whole article. They are the quick shots of the political blogging world. There are so many times I used to see topics and think that they would be great topics but far too short. I have committed myself to doing some shorter stand alone articles, but the open mic allows me to hit other ones. For tonight’s topics I have a bit of a theme around the use of words to form opinion and either attack or help someone. The first three stories tonight focus on language and campaign strategy and the ways we see it play out in our politically correct and over-analyzing society. The 4th article is unrelated to that stuff and the 5th article is a submission from Common Man for discussion.

Why The Mosque Doesn’t Bother Me

I have arrive back home and can now commence a fairly regular writing schedule again. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. I can only say that I am happy to be spending time with Canine Weapon again (I had only gotten to see him for one day during the last two weeks) and I am even happier to be back in my own bed (Tempurpedic, which I also only saw for one night in the last two weeks). Traveling is fine and vacation was absolutely wonderful. I always cherish the time I get to spend with family, and last week with Mrs. Weapon’s family was awesome. But I am happy to be home and returning to some sort of normalcy. Finally having a good internet connection has led me to see a lot of coverage around the mosque that is planned for a site two blocks from where the WTC buildings were located. It seems that the Republicans are attempting to hammer this subject home as a campaign issue while the Democrats tend to, for the most part, simply blow it off. Personally, I am a little annoyed at the coverage and a little baffled by the outrage.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 10, 2010

Greetings from the beaches of an undisclosed location. I have put palm trees up to block off my section of the beach. This evening I had dinner with a man who claimed he was the King of Spain. He was in shorts and a t-shirt, so I am not sure. He also had no personal security, which was odd. But I can say without reservation that my vacation has not cost the taxpayers a single dime. Although it is costing Mrs. Weapon a ton! It is relaxing, however, and much needed. I apologize again for my limited participation during the vacation, but I am benefitting from the relaxation. Tonight we have a few interesting topics. We have the Department of Justice stalling on the MOVE Act, the Department of Defense admitting that government run health care is failing, home schooling on the rise, and the climate change fear monger crowd refusing to let a dead horse alone.

Tim Geithner Gives Us More Lies…

The article that I was working on for tonight still is not finished. Vacation is more taxing than one might think, what with all the beach sitting, ocean swimming, and food eating. But I absolutely did not want to go another night without an article to discuss so I figured that I would find something interesting out there on the blogosphere and offer it up for consumption here. I went to my trusty standby for articles that would garner interest, The Huffington Post. They, of course, did not disappoint. I had my choice of several different interesting articles over there to think about. What I decided on was the article below that discussed the Secretary of the Treasury’s much maligned Op-Ed from last week. I have to admit that I was a bit stunned when I read the article when it was originally run over at the New York Times. After all, it was thoughts from Timothy Geithner under the title of “Welcome to the Recovery.” I don’t want to sound jaded, but I had to wonder whether Mr. Geithner had actually smoked some crack before offering up such a ludicrous statement. First the article from HuffPo and then my quick thoughts to get the discussion going…

UPDATED – Apologies

Just a quick note to everyone. The week of travel was far more time consuming than I had intended. I was on business and business lasted roughly from 6:00 am until 10:00 pm every day. I apologize for not being able to post any articles this week. I will be back at it during the next week as I am on vacation so I should have some time to write and post! Hope you all are having a great week. Myself, I am just happy to be back sleeping in my own bed and snuggling up with Canine Weapon.

I have arrived at vacation destination (kept top secret so that I am not mobbed by paparazzi… I have blocked off a couple hundred meters of beach for myself like Michelle Obama). I had hoped to be writing an article tonight. However, a engagement party for for my cousin and his beautiful bride to be got in the way. I was able to write half an article tonight, which was an accomplishment after two straight days of 14 hours in the car driving. The other half will go tomorrow night and I have already started on the open mic topics for the week as well. I will be checking in throughout the day Monday and posting the article Monday night. I hope all is well with everyone out there!

Cities Searching for New Ways to Take Your Money

I thought I would take a night and talk about the local level decisions and their impact on the members of their society. We often focus on the bigger picture here at SUFA, with discussions on National and State level politics. This certainly makes sense as discussing local politics really only matters to those who are, well, local. The readers here obviously come from all over the country, and in some cases even outside the country! But I felt like a discussion around local politics was warranted as the disease of deficit spending has spread to many local municipalities and towns. In the end, SUFA faithful, all politics are local. And the only place that most of us are able to make a difference are in our local spectrums. Unfortunately, while many of us follow the political scene, there are very few who are involved at a local level. That must change if we are going to start to find ways to survive the inevitable crash that we are racing towards. When things get bad, it is the local level of politics that are going to matter to you. The federal and state governments are going to be limited in the ways that they can help. Simply put, the higher you go, the more partisan bullshit gets in the way of helping. Likewise the bigger the city, the more difficult it is to have a serious impact. But we must try.