1) I find the trend of women and men choosing to produce and raise children without a partner to be disturbing. It’s tough on everybody. It impoverishes families and makes parents less upwardly mobile in the workforce because they are deflected by the enormous burdens of child rearing. I know that many men abdicate parenting and I find that appalling, but the apparent planning by many women to be the primary parent is an upsetting trend in America.
2) Doubling down on the single parent trend, I find the huge percentage of American children being raised by grandmothers to be quite sad. The absence of parents will ensure an impoverished angry underclass in America.
3) Unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks is bad for this country. Same for food stamps. Two years of unemployment compensation means a huge budget drain, rusty skills, and a work disincentive. Food stamps were supposed to be a temporary bridge, not a crutch for 50 million people.
4) The military budget is enormously bloated, full of tanks and planes even the Pentagon does not want. It should be cut by 10% per year for the next five years.
5) Drone warfare is the scariest technology to come along since nuclear weapons. When real blood and gore are a video game for a 22-year-old controller sitting in Maryland, we are all in trouble. When local police have their own drone toys to hunt bad guys, the nonconformist malcontents will be in jeopardy.
6) Public education with unionized teachers and protected administrators is dumbing down the country. Give people vouchers — or whatever you want to call them — to buy education. If folks choose Web courses like the audacious Khan Academy over crappy local schools, so be it.
7) American immigration laws are ridiculous. Allow in 5 million immigrants per year using a lottery. Let in every brainy person or rich person who wants to invest a significant sum of money, and then boot them out if they get themselves arrested too often.
8) LeBron is the greatest basketball player, ever.
9) The unholy alliance of the oil cartel, environmentalists, and Government whores keeps oil prices high. We should be paying $1.75 for gasoline or compressed natural gas at the pump.
10) Additive technology, “printing parts,” will kill the CNC lathe and machining center business in 10 years.
11) People who bet on inflation will continue to lose. Gold will plummet to $300 per ounce. Water will rise in value until we get cheap desalinization in 15 years.
12) I’ve never had a pet and do not plan to change my policy.
Question 1: Are you offended?
Question 2: Does it bother you that I don’t like dogs?
22 Comments
LeBron *gag*
Wow. Now that’s a stacked pile of dry kindling if I ever saw one.
Nice trolling, Lloyd. Should start a toasty flamewar in here.
I didn’t read into #12 that you didn’t like dogs. I thought it meant you felt you were not worthy to have a pet 🙂
You forgot #13 – Get off my lawn!
Thanks Lloyd,
What about the possibility that the way we feel is a result of our trained neurons, not about what we see, hear or feel. Perhaps it is about the way we interpret what we see, hear and feel. I suggest there is no such thing as political incorrectness!
Do you feel better now Lloyd? gotta let off steam sometimes.
Your right on 1 through 9.
Not to sure about 10, I see heat being a leading factor against 3D printing metal parts.
11 I think your wrong about 300.
Hard to believe number 12, but the dogs are probably better off.
Your still batting 225 which is pretty dam good.
Lloyd,
You were on a big roll there until the thing about “additive technology”. Even when this technology develops enough to add proper mechanical properties to “printed” parts, the process is far slower than machining if the part at hand is lacking enormous complexity. I agree that complex parts, and maybe even hydraulic valve blocks with lots of ports, etc. will be feasable to “print”.However, I surmise that high volume turning and milling are here to stay for quite a while. Notwithstanding the above, I think you make some very good and importanat points here. Kudos!
Whether or not I agree with you, I always find your writing interesting and thought provoking. The empathy you show in your articles has led me to believe you would be a perfect dog owner or adopter. That’s the closest you’ll ever come to unconditional love.
Good thing that you did not attack candlepin bowling, or Scott from GenSwiss would have been response #1! Like it or not, and I do like it, Politically Incorrect = Free Speech. As always, bravo!
Lloyd, great comments, very conservative in your thinking. The welfare state only exists when the gov’t continues to enslave the welfare recipient. It’s what they want, a class of un-educated breeders living off the public dole to continue to vote for a utopia that can’t ever exist. “I gots a free obama fone!!!!” If you can’t feed em’, don’t breed em’. p.s. when LeBron wins 6 championships like Jordan, then he will EARN the greatest title.
Lloyd,
@Tim Matthews conveyed my thoughts. Among the thoughts provoked; if so many of us agree with your points, how come our once great nation has voted in the polar opposite TWICE in the last 2 “presidential” elections? We’re in serious trouble. You don’t know what your missing in a dog. Most folks I’ve talked to who don’t have a dog, choose not to because of the heartbreak when the pooch passes away. I say it’s worth it. My fiance works nights, so when I come home to 1,2,3 wagging tails, it’s absolutely the high point of my day.
Wow, this coming from a business man who admitted voting for Obama! How do you like your choice for POTUS now America??? He’s a Chicago thug, and if the liberal media weren’t so in love with him, he would have already been hung out to dry. The SOB needs to be impeached!
1) and 2) Get used to it because I don’t think things are going to change much. Us guys are genetically wired to spread our seed far and wide and it takes forceful societal pressure to get us to do our duty. Yes, there are exceptions although fewer then the vociferousness of the protests implies and yes, I think things have gone too far in the direction of irresponsibility which means there’ll be a return to a new mean. But historic norms in terms of the percentage of nuclear families is gone and, being somewhat suspicious by nature, I have to wonder how accurate the beliefs/statistics are of the percentage of nuclear families in the past.
3) Yeah.
4) Uh, the Department of Defense is part of the government. Reducing waste and bloat in the DOD means more tax money to increase waste and bloat somewhere else in government. All things considered I rather have a waste and bloat at the DOD then just about any other area of government. The world is still a dangerous place.
5) Contain your fear. You’ll have to do so anyway since drone technology is just barely getting started.
6) No it isn’t. Unionized teachers and protected administrators are the result of the way the public education system’s structured. That mis-named “local control” that the unions and administrators do so love is what’s at fault.
School districts that butt up against each other can be wildly different in quality since they don’t compete with each other. Bad school districts can be bad forever since school board elections draw so little voter interest. That sparse attendence favors special interest groups which thus have a disproportionate influence on the politics of public education.
So you’re right. Vouchers will do it. So will charter schools and so will education tax credits. Anything that puts mommies and daddies in charge.
If the use of Khan Academy puts a smile on the faces of those mommies and daddies then schools will use it. If the use of a hickory switch does the trick then that’ll be the pedagogical wonder of the age. But whatever the educational soveriegn remedy might be with mommies and daddies in charge schools will be, at least, safe and increasingly effective.
7) A lottery? Go soak your head. America’s still the best place in the world to which to emigrate so we ought to capitalize on that fact. Got skills? The welcome matt’s rolled out. Don’t? Take a spot in line. We’ve got a full measure of grown-in-the-U.S.A. mutts who think the world owes them something. We don’t need you to swell the number.
8) Yeah. OK.
9) “Yes” to the last two.
“No” to the first. OPEC’s never really recovered from the throat-cutting cheating they engaged in during the Oil Embargo of the 1980’s and the international price of oil’s largely a function of all those brand, new Chinese and Indian car-owners. Blame them. As for gas prices, that’s much more a function of greenie-weenies and the politicians who love nothing more then an excuse to expand their power.
10) Giving odds?
11) Probably. Many of the factors that led to the collapse of the price of gold the last time around look to operating again these days. But picking a specific price bottom is as well done with tea leaves as any other way. In the U.S. the price of water’s largely a matter of politics. The technology has an impact on prices but the single biggest determinant of the price of water is who has the political power to screw who.
12) I alert the media.
Answer 1: No.
Answer 2: No.
no I am not offended. I do not believe LeBron is the greatest, unless you mean flopper.
No not offended –
It is a free country – you can choose whether you like dogs or not and I should care less – just respect your wishes.
Why would someone of your intellect concern himself with people who play with balls for a living?
Start a new political party Lloyd. I’ll join you.
1. I was raised by a pack of wolves. Multiple parents
2.See #1
3. In colonial times there was no unemployment.
4.Military budget? We should all fight with hand-held weapons. That’ll renew our perspective on the reality of warfare
5. The scariest and most effective development in weapons was the repeating rifle. With out it we could not have wiped out millions of indigenous people. Bows and arrows were more effective than muskets.
6.I’d argue that European education systems should be something we take a look at. We have one of the highest illiteracy rates among industrialized nations. Sad.
7. People have been criticizing immigration since Columbus.
8. LeBron who?
9. Do a search for “corporatocracy”. The idea we live in a democracy is a fallacy in 2013. Corporations have been influencing social, business, national and international policy for many decades now.
10. If additive mfg DID kill the machine tool business… so what? We’d adapt. I have not seen cassetts or VHS tapes in a few years.
11. Inflation? Gold has no intrinsic value other than a few industrial uses. Water is pretty valuable. When was the last time you could drink from a local stream?
12. Dogs probably don’t like you either.
* It’s pretty difficult to offend me – I am pretty offensive, myself.
Lloyd, your “political incorrectness” is provincial and out of date. The greatest generation produced two major accomplishments: They defeated the Axis and so preserved the freedom we dearly love; they returned from combat to rebuild a country, that was beyond the capability of an exhausted populace who served as the arsenal of democracy. What this vigorous and talented generation missed were the roots of the future America. The depression era generation, too young to go to war and not yet ready for work were parentless for four or five years and further ignored as we addressed the greatest prosperity in our history. This lost generation, experimented in life styles and a new social moral. The outcasts of the greatest generation, COs and Gays, did not miss the opportunity to infiltrate this aimless generation. The communes and their leaders took advantage of these young people and started the new norm.
Political Incorrectness is the product of this failure and is used as the justification standard in what we believe is correct. We will never return to the standards we grew up with; murder, killing and rape are the common denominator in the equation we call life.To discuss the national mores further is a waste of time. But there is a new twist in the national lifestyle that is popular today. Polls and inquiries of the newer generation profess that FAME is the most important factor in their life. Without fame they don’t exist. I wonder where that concept in the rule of law will be justification for murder.
#5 is particularly disturbing in light of Bush’s repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act allowing the use of Federal Troops on US soil against US citizens. His was a bone-head choice that can easily be abused by any administration with the amazingly effective drone technology.
Your dislike of dogs doesn’t offend me, but it does puzzle. I don’t like all dogs, but the ones we choose to line in our home are a joy and a great security system. That said, I can totally respect your choice, pets are not for everyone.
Your the moron that voted for Obama, thus spreading the welfare state. You hyprocite.