Trick or Treat?

The L4K Lemonade Stand Chronicles:

Trick or Treat?

“Trick or treat, trick or treat,” Little Timmy was yelling as he skipped down the sidewalk. (Yes, Little Timmy skipped. Surprised?)

“Will you shut up!” demanded Barry.

Barry and Timmy were making plans for Halloween. It was always a day the boys looked forward to. They had closed the lemonade stand a month earlier so they now had more time for other activities. And nothing was more fun than pretending to be someone else and getting free candy.

But who would they be this year? And who would give the best candy and who would get their windows soaped or their trees TPed?

Timmy always liked pretending to be an economist. He had dressed up like an old English economist named John Maynard Keynes for the past three years. He also liked John Kenneth Galbraith. Barry always made fun of him for dressing like two “free market” economists. He had suggested a few more "progressive" economists to Timmy but Timmy’s dad wouldn’t allow him to dress like those guys. He had said something about no one would know Larry, Moe, and Curly these days. Barry hadn’t decided who he would be this year. He was toying with dressing up like Two Face, The Riddler, or pretending to be professional basketball player.

As the boys ran to meet up with the gang, Timmy suddenly took a detour around the old theater. Barry yelled at him to stop, but it took a block before he did.

“What is wrong?” Barry asked.

"I don’t like walking by the theater with that poster out front," Timmy confided.

“What poster? Oh, you mean the poster of that old horror movie It’s Alive!” said Barry.

“Yes,” Timmy said, “it gives me the creeps . . . what with that claw sticking out from the baby carriage.”

“It is just a movie, you chicken,” said Barry, “I have an idea. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself . . . or something like that. Let’s sneak in to the movie. You won’t be afraid when you see how cheesy it is.”

“I don’t know, Barry, the last time I saw a really scary movie I wet my pants,” admitted Timmy. But he trusted Barry so he went along.

They mistakenly sneaked into theater number two where a public announcement was being shown live. As they set down a very scary woman came on to make an announcement. She announced that the government would be making all the decisions now. She said with delight, “When health care is controlled by us, we will have the justification to do WHATEVER we want because health is an even bigger ace card than that stupid commerce clause we have been relying upon for years as justification for ignoring the Constitutional limits on governmental power. Food, manufacturing, pre-natal testing, end of life, it all will fall under our control."

She laughed as zombies stood behind her nodding in agreement as if they were under some mind control. Timmy became scared and, well, let’s just say he ran home to change.

Barry got excited too. So excited and so hopeful that he too had to run home too. As he ran home he kept yelling, “It’s alive, it’s alive!”

Post Script

I hope no children got too scared reading this story. It is after all just a story. Isn’t it?

Fox News is Biased

There has been a lot of blog chatter about President Obama’s “attack” on Fox News. Is this the first battle in a long war against news outlets not supportive of the direction he wants to take the county? I don’t know. He may have just simply been blowing off steam as some Fox commentators, such as Glenn Beck, have been especially aggressive and effective in exposing the hard-left agenda of his administration. Or he may be playing to his base of Fox-hating, Kos-loving fringe to draw attention away from his failure to get us out of Bush’s wars and to push though nationalized health care. For the record, I am suspicious of Fox because many of these same commentators were cheerleaders when the Bush Administration was expanding government and getting us involved in a misguided war.

But what is being missed in all this is the undisputed fact that all news outlets (newspapers, TV, magazines, radio, blogs) are biased. Even those news outlets that attempt to be unbiased in their reporting are nevertheless biased in their selection of stories and selection of experts. How could it be otherwise? The decision of what to cover is made by individuals. News stories are written by individuals. These individuals have biases. What these individuals consider important necessarily biases which stories get reported on, which experts get quoted, and which data are accepted. Reporters are rarely experts in anything other than maybe writing.

So yes, Fox is biased. But so too is CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, and well, you get the point.

Is Health Care a Right? Ron Paul vs Michael Moore

"You have a right to live and the right to liberty . . . but you don't have a right to someone else's services."

One-letter Proof that the Science is NOT Settled on Global Warming

"It has been often said that the "science is settled" on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false." Professor Howard Hayden

Read the one-letter proof from physicist Howard Hayden here.

Simpsons Fountainhead

Sometimes we parents preach one thing but teach something else by our example. This video teaches a very important lesson to parents. Stay tuned until the end.



And here is Roark's speech from the movie:

Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford (SNL Video)

This is one of the all time great Saturday Night Live skits.

Liberalism Used to Mean Freedom

"We now know that people do propel themselves along the road to serfdom by majority vote, and we see that those who have voted themselves into slavery are just as much slaves as those who have been put in bondage by a conqueror. Power is power, whether sanctioned by divine right or authorized by the popular will. Power is not liberty; liberty operates in another dimension and has other requirements. As soon as a significant number of people become aware of these requirements, Liberalism will again mean freedom." Edmund Opitz in The Freeman, December 1975

HT: LCC

Frederick Douglass on Slavery & the US Constitution

To follow up the seven part Sobran article on the Constitution and to those who continue to dismiss the genius of The Founders because they did not outlaw slavery, here is what Fredrick Douglass had to say:

“Let me tell you something. Do you know that you have been deceived and cheated? You have been told that this government was intended from the beginning for white men, and for white men exclusively; that the men who formed the Union and framed the Constitution designed the permanent exclusion of the colored people from the benefits of those institutions. Davis, Taney and Yancey, traitors at the south, have propagated this statement, while their copperhead echoes at the north have repeated the same. There never was a bolder or more wicked perversion of the truth of history. So far from this purpose was the mind and heart of your fathers, that they desired and expected the abolition of slavery. They framed the Constitution plainly with a view to the speedy downfall of slavery. They carefully excluded from the Constitution any and every word which could lead to the belief that they meant it for persons of only one complexion.

"The Constitution, in its language and in its spirit, welcomes the black man to all the rights which it was intended to guarantee to any class of the American people. Its preamble tells us for whom and for what it was made.”

Frederick Douglass (June 1863)

HT: DP