Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Not Dealing with Reality

I am not optimistic that it can change, but I am still very discouraged that our country (the United States) is not dealing with its overspending problems. No one should be surprised that the Debt Commission failed in its effort to find an acceptable compromise to fix our problems. I just read an editorial by my own Congressman and while he noted his disappointment that no deal was made, he credited Democrats with trying to do what they could. Balderdash. No one is trying to deal with this. The only one I have seen admit that we need massive spending cuts is Ron Paul and he faces a huge uphill climb, even if he somehow managed to win the presidential election. Too many people benefit from government's redistributing money. The problem is that no one has enough money to keep the game up, so it will crash in one way or another. I tend to agree with those who believe we will inflate our way out of this, which will make everyone who has savings much, much poorer, as their money is worth far less. Some say we just have to make "the rich pay their fair share," yet few can answer what that "fair share" is. We would still have a huge deficit even if we took 100% of the earnings of "the rich." How can people be so ignorant of that? Ultimately, the middle class will pay the price and may even end up not existing in the same way in a few years. We are in for quite a wild ride.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Why is "Her" OK, but "His" Isn't?

I notice a lot of hypocrisy in writing today. I regularly read blog posts and online articles that use "her" for the generic human pronoun, eschewing the more traditional "his" in attempt to not imply that all the targets of the topic are male. The root challenge is that English does not have a generic pronoun for this. "Its" might be accurate, but doesn't work well. "His" was the traditional word for centuries, but the modern politically correct movement has proclaimed that it is no longer acceptable. You would likely get outcries of complaints if you used "his" that you will not get if you use "her." How stupid can we be?