Suicide Vest Waiting Period

Appropo of nothing, completely inappropriate, but hard not to laugh at.

Hey, if you are going to have a suicide vest, get out to a range and prove you know how to use it! Something that I actually DO wish they would do more, if a whole bunch of them want to own one, ALL I ask is that they demonstrate that they know how to use it ONE time at the range!



In The Know: New Iraqi Law Requires Waiting Period For Suicide Vest Purchases

Krugman: Hate Springs Eternal

I've started reading the Obama "Audacity of Hope" book and this column by admitted lefty Krugman from the times struck me as following the same general technique as Obama follows:

1). First, identify the REAL source of "hate" (or evil, or whatever) ... "Nixon", "the right", "Republicans".

2). "Be reasonable" point out how it is POSSIBLE that parts of that evil COULD sneak into the goodness of "your side" if you aren't vigilant. (in this article, poor defenseless Hillary and Bill are being tarred with "lies") Maybe this time, a few are from the generally good, although "personality cultish" Obama folks.

3). If we all are willing to just realize how bad the Republicans are, we can soon "all be on the same side", and then there won't be any more "partisanship". Won't that be grand?

Reagan had it right; the left is firm in their defense of your right to agree with them. They don't mind a few Republicans, as long as they are agreeable with the general Democrat outline and willing to roll over when the time comes. Olympia Snow is about as far "right" as they are willing to allow to live.

I guess that once the Dems get through, one will have no freedom to espouse conservative thought in public (fairness doctrine, blog registration, "hate speech"), no economic freedom (high taxes, closed shop unions, trade restrictions, regulation) and likely no freedom to worship since everyone else needs to be free FROM religion. I suppose that married Gay sex is "great good" that makes it all worthwhile.

Hate Springs Eternal - New York Times

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 11, 2008

In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred. And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod. Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.

And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.

I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.

For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact. For one thing, Mrs. Clinton may yet be the nominee — and if Obama supporters care about anything beyond hero worship, they should want to see her win in November.

For another, if history is any guide, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, he will quickly find himself being subjected to Clinton rules. Democrats always do.

But most of all, progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.

One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.

I’d like to see more moments like that, perhaps starting with strong assurances from both Democratic candidates that they respect their opponents and would support them in the general election.

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Bushmaster

Went with a buddy to pick up his Bushmaster "Patrollman" today, but it turned out that it had not arrived at the gun shop yet. Big disappointment. We managed to spend some time punching holes in paper with our array of handguns (mostly his, but who is counting!;-) ) . I got the opportunity to shoot his .44 Mag, formerly "the most powerful handgun in the world". It has been exceeded now, but it is still PLENTY powerful, with a good deal of kick for me. It would take a lot of rounds before I became comfortable with that gun. It is a VERY cool Ruger revolver model, it is just that I'm not man enough to shoot it well yet.

For some odd reason, I also seemed to have developed a "pull to the right flinch" with my 9mm. Oh well, guess I'll just have to practice more. We were shooting an honest 25 yards today, and whatever I said about our first foray out, it was MUCH shorter than we were shooting today. I suspect that we were only shooting 10 yds before, BIG difference.

I also got a chance to shoot his Taurus 1911 frame .45. BIG hole, plenty of recoil, but nothing like the .44 Mag. Very much a style of gun in the running for "sometime" in my collection.

We took a target out to 75yds and got out my Remington 742 30-06 and each shot a 4 shot group. Hadn't fired that gun in over 20 years, but I'd kept it cleaned and oiled over the years and gave it a little TLC last night in prep for today. It shot very accurate, it seemed to want to jam on the final shot in the clip -- I'd guess that I need some new clips, the gun is 32 years old, that could have something to do with it.

Anyway, I couldn't resist picking up a new Bushmaster "shorty". They move their model numbers around quite a bit, but mine is an XM15-E2S, which looks an awful lot like this current model. In fact, it looks identical.

So why "an assault weapon"? The reasons are:

• Mostly because I've wanted to shoot one since I was a little kid and they look extremely "military". I can't afford a Hummer, F-16, or a tank, so this will have to cover my little boy immature army fantasies.
  
• It shoots .223 and NATO 5.56mm rounds. I picked up Wolf .223 at 20/$7 and some off-brand 5.56mm for 20/$10. I have hopes that in bulk I can be running at 20/$6 or less. In contrast, the cheapest I could get 30-06 for was 20/$22.
  
• It has a 30-shot clip. When punching holes in paper, there isn't any advantage in having to switch clips more.
  
• It is very light -- something like 6lbs.
  
• It is SUPPOSED to be very accurate and have very little recoil.
  
• Did I say it "has that look"?
  
• It may be the last chance I have to ever get one. I know, I know, Democrats are HUGE supporters of ALL the rights found in the Constitution-like the right to Abortion, the right to a completely private call a terrorist of your choice, and of course the COMPLETE right to not have any kind of government spying WO a warrant, as in they would NEVER support having your company send a W2 form of your pay unless they could obtain "probable cause" that you were cheating on your taxes! They are SO trustworthy that I'm SURE that they would never try to infringe on a right that is directly listed in the constitution!
  

Now I have another reason to be very anxious for some warmer weather!

Jesus and Yahweh, The Names Divine

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Yahweh-Divine-Harold-Bloom/dp/1573223220

I picked up the subject book by Harold Bloom on the bargain rack for $6, a deal just WAY too good to pass up. Our congregation is reading through the whole bible this year again, and I have also been in a class studying "The Purpose Driven Life" (due to be blogged on soon), and the Bloom book really hit me well at this time.

Bloom is a "higher critic" of literature in the sense that he searches for the meaning of the style, allusions to other literature, creation of characters and even feeling, and tries to gain as much meaning as he can from the text. He is a non-practicing Jew by religious background, and he is awed by the literary power and originality of especially Yahweh in the bible. He is similarly moved and bothered by Mark's Jesus, and by the "impossibility" of the relationship of the trinity. He is unconcerned about "literal truth"--these are religious texts, they are to be MORE than "literally true". They are about a God and an existence beyond the human, beyond the temporal, beyond beyond. He sees trying to to put God in a book is "the literal heresy". Yahweh states "I am that I am" to Moses, leaving the obvious potential for the inverse "I am not,  that I am not not"-Yahweh answers to nobody. He abandons his chosen people, his prophets, and even his Son to a cross of ultimate despair.

When we first meet Yahweh, he is a God beyond human imagination, and fits nearly none of what humans would see as a "good God"- constantly demanding of praise, capricious, playing favorites with his people, and  throwing up his hands and drowning them all. Dealing with the devil to all but destroy his servant Job, in whom he shows a pride that seems "sinful" to mere mortals. Bloom comes very close to what I suspect to be a major truth of the bible: it isn't about US. God is SOVEREIGN, that means that "his ways are not our ways", but one of our gigantic tasks in this life is to accept that sovereignty, in total, but especially over our pitiful little lives. We don't judge God, he judges us, and without the covering blood of Christ, the result of that judgment is Hell.

"J's Yahweh is a very persuasive representation of transcendent otherness. And yet Yahweh is not only "anthropomorphic" in the text,  but presented as just "superhuman", and not at all a pleasant fellow. Why should he be? He is not running for office, questing after fame, or seeking benign treatment in the media. Christianity sometimes calls Jesus Christ "the good news" (Mark 1), certainly true as our saviour, but he does "bring a sword", brutally demonstrated by Christians throughout history. 

Being Jewish, Bloom has a hard time dealing with the idea of Yahweh leaving his chosen people to the Holocaust at the hands of "the Christians". Bloom is essentially an agnostic Jew, so for him, "Christian" is a term without power, yet it is tragic to see how close he comes to the flame of the Word without the power found there being quite able to reach his soul.

In reading Bloom I come closer to seeing how literature is so much more than "words on paper". Not well enough to convey that to another reader for certain, but maybe enough to see it through a lens darkly. 

Break to the Right

The last couple of weeks have been one of those serious learning experiences for me. Regular readers know that I fully expect people of all polticial stripes to be "generally human" with the predictable results of misconceptions, inconsistencies and emotional reasoning. Would it be so that I could say enough prayers, read enough books or get lucky enough to not regularly fall to such problems myself, but I know that is not to be so.

Much like I harbored the illusion before 9-11 that if people were capable of doing something relatively sophisticated (like flying a commercial jet), they would not be the kind of 100% evil it would take to fly that plane into a building. I learned about evil that day, and it is one of those lessons that I will not be forgetting as many Americans have chosen to.

My current "false belief" was that to live a life of conservatism meant that one was forced to pay attention to reality and especially the reality of history, since to a great extent, the understanding that since the idea of conservatism is to live a consistent principled life, the only way to do that was to demand that reality be faced and history not be re-written to fit some "comfort of the moment".

I was wrong. As readers of this Blog know, I'm no great fan of John McCain -- opposition to the Bush tax cuts, McCain Feingold and "the gang of 14" would all be low points where I completely disagree with him. He does however stand very tall on the Iraq issue, and even when a whole bunch of what apparently are "fair weather supporters of liberty" got all weak kneed on Iraq, McCain stood strong with no concern that his position would cost him any chance to gain the nomination. That is the kind of courage that I'd argue that anyone that would seek any claim to being called a conservative MUST admire. They don't have to "support him", but agree or disagree, that is the kind of character that real conservatives admire.

Ronald Reagan once spoke of the "11th commandment", "Never speak ill of a fellow Republican". In those days, anyone to the right of a moderate Democrat was in the "radical right". Conservatives had been totally in the wilderness since '64, and although far more moderate than the current crop of far-righters remember him as, Reagan was seen by the media then as WAY over to the radical right.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter and a host of other supposed "conservative" commentators have come out and said all manner of things about how they will never support McCain and will be staying home or voting for a Democrat. While I've listened to all of these folks at times and I'm sure I will again in the future, I have to admit that I'm shocked with their behavior. Were it just an "emotional reaction", it would be more understandable--I'm sure they see as I do that the odds of any Republican beating Hillary or Obama are long indeed, and that is dissappointing, but one wonders on their motives. Some thoughts that cross my mind:

• Being in the opposition is FUN. You get to throw a lot of stones, ignore anything good, and NEVER have to take any responsibility. You just "blame the other side". With Republicans in both houses of congress and in the white house, I think these folks discovered that being in charge was a lot less fun. Even wars that you support strongly (and these guys did) don't always go smoothly, not ever stock/jobs report is rosy, and there is no doubt that the POLITICIANS that you hired don't live up to all your expectiations. Much has I have found in being on both sides of the leadership fence, it is MUCH more "fun" to throw some grenades at those in charge and just go home with a wonderful sense of self-righteousness. It may be "fun", but it doesn't get the job done, and in even the quite short term it is MUCH less deeply rewarding.
  
• It is a long time since '80, and these folks have forgotten how cold it really is out in the wilderness. Having Osama Obama or Massah Hillary pointing fingers at their "scapegoat dejour" while passing vote buying prizes around like it is Christmas will get old after a few years of double digit declines in the market and increases in taxes. I guess these brilliant folks have already signed up to wallow in a few years of "Bush blame" right along with the Michael Moore's, Harry Reid, Teddy Kennedy, Slick and Hilly, etc, etc. I'm sure all those folks are having justifiable pleasure in watching the supposed rational right get in a complete hissy fit over McCain. Michael Reagan with "John McCain hates me" was one of the most wussy pieces I've ever read. "McCain is arrogant" ... oh, sniffle sniffle, PLEEZ ! I haven't seen him telling us "he didn't inhale", or wagging his finger and saying "I did not have sex ...". Wow, maybe there really are more closet cross dressers on the right than I would have ever imagined -- I suppose with the stress of having things not all go the way they had planned all the time they put on a few pounds, things got a bit too tight --- and suddenly the squeals have gotten high pitched.
  
• A column by Mark Levin finally brought out a phenomenon that I never really thought I'd see from the right. Blatant re-writing of history in the service of trying to tar McCain, and in one of the oddest ways possible -- by claiming that "Reagan only appointed solid conservative judges"! My goodness, Kennedy voted with the majority on Kelo which outlaws private property if the local community decides they want to transfer your property to someone else!! If you can't stand up for private property, there isn't very much that is conservative to stand up for. O'Connor was of course the darling "moderate swing vote" praised by such "solid conservatives" as Biden, Teddy Kennedy and Schumer! Wow, our standards for being a "conservative" have REALLY gotten low, especially when the only purpose in the whole deal is to try to do damage to a fellow Republican.
  

I could go on, but the political season is still young, my opportunities will abound. I only hope that after the "Fairness Doctrine" comes back under the upcoming regime that folks like Limbaugh and Hannity are allowed to be heard anywhere but from a box on a street corner. Of course, that may be a major act of courage with folks looking out for "hate speech". Not pro-gay marriage? Don't think that "the rich" ought to have to pay their "fair share"? Well, that might require fines and jail you know-- the kind of "lies" that haters like that spread have caused a whole lot of "divisiveness" in our country.

Ballistics

Ballistic and price comparisons of some common pistol rounds.

Some conclusions to date:

• 9mm Price/Performance can't be beat for a "real gun".
• The good old .22 is AMAZING on price, velocity and even energy.
• A Glock 32 or Sig Sauer 250 shooting the .357 Sig seems like a "must have"! The current ammo price listed is Cabela's bulk (so I bet I find it cheaper), it is easy to see why CIA, SS, Seals, FBI, etc have almost all gone .357 Sig
• The .38 Special / .357 Mag setup in a revolver is still an excellent option

Caliber	Wt(gr)	Speed(fps)	Energy(ft-lb)	Cost/100
.22Rem	36	1280	131	$2
.32Auto	71	900	128	$38
.38Spc+P	125	945	248	$25
.380Auto	95	955	190	$26
.40	165	1060	412	$22
9mm	115	1190	362	$16
.357Mag	125	1450	583	$56
.357Sig	115	1564	624	$38
.44Mag	180	1610	1036	$58
.45ACP	230	835	356	$58

Billy in South Carolina

The MSM did take a little notice of Slick's desperation in South Carolina, but Krauthammer gets it pretty well here.

Clawing for a legacy

By Charles Krauthammer


Legacy? What legacy?

There was general amazement when (the now-muzzled) Bill Clinton did his red-faced, attack-dog, race-baiting performance in South Carolina. Friends, Democrats and longtime media sycophants were variously perplexed, repulsed, enraged, mystified and shocked that this beloved ex-president would so jeopardize his legacy by stooping so low.

What they don't understand is that for Clinton, there is no legacy. What he was doing on the low road from Iowa to South Carolina was fighting for a legacy — a legacy that he knows history has denied him and that he has but one chance to redeem.

Clinton is a narcissist but also smart and analytic enough to distinguish adulation from achievement. Among Democrats, he is popular for twice giving them the White House, something no Democrat had done since FDR. And the bouquets he receives abroad are simply signs of the respect routinely given ex-presidents, though Clinton earns an extra dollop of fawning, with the accompanying fringe benefits, because he is (a) charming and (b) not George W. Bush.

But Clinton knows this is all written on sand. It is the stuff of celebrity. What gnaws at him is the verdict of history. What clearly enraged him more than anything this primary season was Barack Obama's statement that "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that . . . Bill Clinton did not."

The Clintons tried to use this against Obama by charging him with harboring secret Republican sympathies. It was a stupid charge that elicited only scorn. And not just because Obama is no Reaganite, but because Obama's assessment is so obviously true: Reagan was consequential. Clinton was not.

Reagan changed history. At home, he radically altered both the shape and perception of government. Abroad, he changed the entire structure of the international system by bringing down the Soviet empire, giving birth to a unipolar world of unprecedented American dominance.

By comparison, Clinton was a historical parenthesis. He can console himself — with considerable justification — that he simply drew the short straw in the chronological lottery: His time just happened to be the 1990s, which, through no fault of his own, was the most inconsequential decade of the 20th century. His was the interval between the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, and the return of history with a vengeance on Sept. 11, 2001.

Clinton's decade, that holiday from history, was certainly a time of peace and prosperity — but a soporific Golden Age that made no great demands on leadership. What, after all, was his greatest crisis? A farcical sexual dalliance.

Clinton no doubt wishes he'd been president on Sept. 11. It is nearly impossible for a president to rise to greatness in the absence of a great crisis, preferably war. Theodore Roosevelt is the only clear counterexample, and Bill is no Teddy.

What is the legacy of the Clinton presidency? Consolidator of the Reagan revolution. As Dwight Eisenhower made permanent FDR's New Deal and Tony Blair institutionalized Thatcherism, Clinton consolidated Reaganism. He did so most symbolically with his 1996 State of the Union declaration that "the era of big government is over." And more concretely, with a presidency that only tinkered with such structural Reaganite changes as tax cuts and deregulation, and whose major domestic achievement was the abolition of welfare, Reagan's ultimate social bete noire.

These are serious achievements, but of a second order. Obama did little more than echo that truism. But one can imagine how it made Clinton burn. He is, after all, a relatively young man who has decades to brood over his lost opportunity for greatness and yet is constitutionally barred from doing anything about it.

Except for the spousal loophole. Hence his desperation, especially after Hillary's Iowa debacle, to rescue his only chance for historical vindication — a return to the White House as Hillary's co-president. A chance to serve three, perhaps even four terms, the longest in history, longer even than FDR. The opportunity to have dominated a full quarter-century of American history, relegating the George W. Bush years to a parenthesis within Clinton's legacy.

It was to save this one chance, his last chance, to be historically consequential that Bill Clinton blithely jeopardized principle, friendships, racial harmony in his own party and his own popularity in South Carolina. Why not? Clinton knows that popularity is cheap, easily lost, easily regained. (See Lewinsky scandal.) But historical legacies are forever.

He wants one, desperately. But to get it he must return to the White House. And for that he must elect his wife. At any cost.

Why was he out of control in South Carolina? He wasn't. He was clawing for a second chance.

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How the "Truth" Works

Today one of America's "good guys", John Edwards, dropped out of the race. As he said "the son of a mill-worker" would "survive just fine". I'm thinking that might not be all that hard in his brand new 30K square foot house with 10's of millions of dollars of wealth gained largely via lawsuits against the health care industry. Naturally, whatever Edwards gained, we are assured by the MSM, has no effect on increasing costs. Apparently the "productive benefit" of these lawsuits and his huge gains has no effect, while CEO pay is a GIGANTIC problem. That is "just the way it is". CEOs bad, John Edwards good, that is all the sheep need to know.

I find myself not particularly surprised that even after I heard him on more than one occasion say he was "in it for the duration", or "all the way to Denver", he happened to drop out. Things turn out differently than planned sometimes, and of course if you are a Democrat, that is OK. For a Republican, the MSM would see it as a "lie".

One could potentially look at Hillary differently, who said multiple times she would not campaign in Michigan or Florida, and now is touting her "victories" in both. Apparently she "didn't get around to getting off the ballot in Michigan, and doesn't accept that what she did in Florida was "campaigning" since the events were "closed". Yes, "campaign" is a much bigger word than "is", and definitions have always been hard for the Clinton's.

One can't expect the MSM to take much note of these items, we are talking about Democrats after all. Whatever else might be true, Edwards and Hillary "care deeply"-we know because they say so, and as the MSM has told us, "they can be trusted". It is simply beyond the pale to even consider that such wonderful people could just be "poverty pimps" willing to take advantage of the very people they claim to be trying to help in order to keep them as a permanently enslaved hopeless underclass for their own purposes.

NOPE, absolutely ZERO evidence of that, but it is EASY to believe that Bush and Cheney only went into Iraq because they wanted to scare people and get a lot of money for Haliburton. There is a TON of evidence for that! No matter that everyone was certain of WMD, and Saddam killed 100's of thousands-it is CLEAR that Bush cared nothing about those items, only scaring the public and money for Haliburton.

We have poured Trillions down the "stop poverty by telling people that someone else owes them a living" hole wihout success since Johnson declared "war on poverty" in the 60's. It isn't like there haven't been plenty of lives lost in that battle too; from crime, suicide, drugs, etc. It is just that nobody honored those "soldiers in a truly lost cause". A half a Trillion and 4,000 lives is tiny compared to the poverty war-and at least in '07, there was actually progress in Iraq.

When a multi-millionaire comes running your way telling you that "they are going to solve your problems"-for free, the right response is to run the other way as fast as you can. Once you buy into that dependent-victim world view, you are well on the way to perpetual slavery of thought and condition. The only remaining issue is just how much of the rest of the country may get taken down that road with you.

Tryphorgetin

Endorsements

Teddy the drunken Senator has decided to endorse Obama. He has previously endorsed terrorism and both Saddam and Osama Bin Ladin over Bush, so I guess there is a bit more consistency there than one would typically see from a lefty. So much for Obama being seen as a "moderate". I was thinking that I'd only trust Teddy in picking Scotch and young women, but I think there is a 3rd area that I believe him. He is probably able to pick the most out to lunch lefty in the race pretty well. Maybe by the coke-crazed look in his eyes? Anyone ever remember when the left was trying to make such a big issue out of young W's supposed cocaine use? I suspect that cocaine use will be seen as a "positive thing" with Obama.

The NYT has endorsed McCain! Just when I was trying to get used to thinking that I was going to have to support him as "the best available", THIS !!! Well, I'm sure the NYT knows that their endorsement hurts him with a lot of Republicans and their endorsement of any Republican is sort of like the Pope saying who the least objectionable Demon in Hell would be. It isn't a statement of who their constituency ought to vote for, just the action that they think will screw up the devils on the right the most. Gee, I WONDER which party they will endorse for President? ... being "unbiased" and all.

Therefore, in the interest of consistency, I have to ignore the NYT on the positive as much as I ignore them on the negative.

The Reagan Mythology

It seems that both conservatives and liberals are locked in bitter struggle over the legacy of Reagan. Bill Kristol points out that Reagan was "conservative before he became Republican" which he argued makes him a unique politician in the 20th century, unlike FDR and Kennedy who were just politicians who liberalism adopted.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman, the Democrats and a lot of the MSM are back to trying to re-write history so that the last 25 years were some sort of an economic debacle with the only exception being the Clinton years-oh, and somehow "Internet Bubble" is a term that has strangely been lost in a lot of the lefts "unbiased recent history".

One thing seems to be clear, Reagan is a pivotal figure in recent US history, the ineffectual don't get this much attention 20 years after leaving office. One of the fun things about at least Clinton and Carter as Democrats is that they managed to hand the incoming Republican Presidents econimies that were either "in" or very close to recessions, while Bush Sr handed Clinton a growing economy.

This is a nice little trick, as the sagging economy means lower revenues and almost requires higher deficits, so those numbers come out bad. The downside for the Dems is that if the Republican DOES get the economy turned around, as both Reagan and Bush were able to do, then they might get credit for it. The solution to that, since the MSM is so sypathetic is to just "talk the economy down" during a Republican administration. A Republican recovery is always "jobless", or "just based on debt", or "only benefiting the rich", while a Democrat economy, even if it turns out to just be an internet stock bubble ala Bill Clinton is always "robust", "structural", "broad based", or some other positive term.

Even though the market crashed in March of 2K, and the economy was rapidly slowing, the MSM had nothing bad to say about it until Bush took over and it immediately became "the Bush recession". In '92 however, the "Bush recession" lingered in the minds of the MSM while Bill Clinton was elected, but in fact we were already out of recession before Clinton ever too office. Naturally, the Bush tax increase, which no doubt deepened and lengthened the recession cost Bush votes with conservatives (mine for one), but got him no credit from either the MSM or Democrat voters.

Squandered Wealth of Reality

Certainly nothing ever alarmist about Lou Dobbs, good think he gets headline billing every Thursday on CNN. So things were GREAT 25 years ago huh? Maybe for Lou. 1983, the depth of the hang-over recession that was basically "the 70's". The best years of America were behind us, there was no way we could complete, it was OVER. Golly, that was a GREAT time!

During Lou's "squandering of wealth", the inflation adjusted GDP more than doubled, and the stock market returned over 2000%.

I guess that for most of the sheep, "write it and it is so". How can someone that is as out of touch as this guy is have a weekly column in a country where people could actually just remember or look up how wrong he is? How lazy can people be? VERY I guess.

Dobbs: Our leaders have squandered our wealth - CNN.com

By Lou Dobbs
NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush's assurances that we'll all be "just fine" if he and Congress can work out an economic stimulus package seem a little hollow this morning.

Much like Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's assurances last May that the subprime mortgage meltdown would be contained and not affect the broader economy. And it seems Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has spent most of the past year trying to influence Chinese economic policy rather than setting the direction of U.S. economic policy.

There is no question that Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will quickly come up with an economic stimulus package simply because they can no longer ignore our economic and financial crisis. That economic stimulus plan will amount to about 1 percent of our nation's gross domestic product, an estimated $150 billion.

But all of us should recognize that the stimulus package will be inadequate to drive sustainable growth in our $13 trillion economy. An emergency Fed rate cut and an economic stimulus plan are short-term responses to our complex economic problems, nothing more than bandages for a hemorrhaging economy.

Bush, Pelosi, Reid and the presidential candidates of both parties have an opportunity now, and I believe an obligation, to adjust the public policy mistakes of the past quarter-century that have led to this crisis. And only through courageous policy decisions will we be able to steer this nation's economy away from the brink of outright disaster.

We all have to acknowledge that our problems were in part brought on by the failure of our government to regulate the institutions and markets that are now in crisis. The irresponsible fiscal policies of the past decade have led to a national debt that amounts to $9 trillion. The irresponsible so-called free trade policies of Democratic and Republican administrations over the past three decades have produced a trade debt that now amounts to more than $6 trillion, and that debt is rising faster than our national debt. All of which is contributing to the plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar.

At precisely the point in our history in which this nation has become ever more dependent on foreign producers for everything from clothing to computers to technology to energy, our weakened dollar is making the price of an ever-increasing number of imported goods even more expensive.

All Americans will soon have to face a bitter and now obvious truth: Our national, political and economic leaders have squandered this nation's wealth, and the price of this profligacy is enormous, and the bill has just come due for all of us.

Bernanke endorsed the concept of a short-term economic stimulus package, but he cautioned that the money must be spent correctly: "You'd hope that [consumers] would spend it on things that are domestically produced so that the spending power doesn't go elsewhere."

Just what would you have us spend it on? The truth is that consumers spend most of their money on foreign imports, and any stimulus package probably would be stimulating foreign economies rather than our own. Imports, for example, account for 92 percent of our non-athletic footwear, 92 percent of audio video equipment, 89 percent of our luggage and 73 percent of power tools. In fact, between 1997 and 2006, only five of the 114 industries examined in a U.S. Business and Industry Council report gained market share against import competition.

And let's be honest and straightforward, as I hope our president and the candidates for president will be: This stimulus will not prevent a recession. It may ease the pain for millions of Americans, but a recession we will have. The question is how deep, how prolonged and how painful will it be. Unfortunately, we're about to find out how committed and capable our national leaders are at mitigating that pain and producing realistic policy decisions for this nation that now stands at the brink.

Crazies to the Left, Wimps to the Right

https://www.amazon.com/Crazies-Left-Me-Wimps-Right-ebook/dp/B000PDZG1K

I borrowed the subject Bernard Goldberg book from a buddy since I like the guys sense of humor, but after reading his last two books, I didn't need to own another one. The complete title is "Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How one side lost it's mind and the other lost its nerve". The title is a bit on the long side, the book is an easy read.

The basic thesis is one that I agree with; the MSM and the left in this country has basically come unhinged with "Bush Derangement Syndrome" and a host of other overblown "horrors" from Global Warming to the country supposedly becoming a "theocracy". On the other side, the Republican Congress during the Bush years has certainly not lived up to why they were elected, Bush never was, and certainly hasn't governed as a "hard line conservative"-perscription drug benefit, signing McCain Feingold, immigration. The list could go on. In the supposed interest of "moderation", the Republicans have pandered to all sorts of supposedly "middle of the road" thinking that has cost them votes from the more doctrinaire conservatives, not impressed anybody that just wanted the country to have success, and if anything helped the left to hate them even more.

What IS clear is that unlike liberals who were very willing to vote for (and otherwise support) Clinton during his "triangulation" of tacking to the right in NAFTA, Welfare reform and working with the Republican Congress to slow the rate of growth in government spending, there is no such "allowance" from something like 20% of the Republican party, so Bush has lost close to half the Republican vote. Goldberg would say that is a "good thing" and the those principled people will bring us back to the right path. Maybe-I sure hope so, but I'm afraid that the cost of the "detour" is going to be extremely high.

I like Bernie's view of how odd a supposedly intelligent conservative like him seems to a liberal, since it doesn't fit their model;

"After all they figure, I'm not a racist. I can read and write. I'm not married to my sister and I don't drool on myself. So how in the world can I possibly be a conservative".

He writes of the old Clinton Staffer, Lanny Davis discovering that people on the left can be mean-IN August of 2006, Lanny wrote;

"My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitrol of bloggers on the liberal side of aisle comes from that last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Liberman. This is scary hatred my dad used to tell me only comes from the right wing...".

Wow, impressive Lanny-I guess it was a surprise to you that although you may still believe that all the Republicans were Nazis, that comparison doesn't automatically make folks on the left into angels.

Here were a couple of examples that Bernie quoted to show that it isn't THAT unusual to hear some nasty stuff from the left:

Nina Totenberg of NPR, on air: "If there is retributive justice, Jesse Helms will get AIDs from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it." Ah yes Nina, I'm glad we provide tax dollars for your insightful and non-partisan commentary, it is indeed "all about the children".

How about lefty talking head Julianne Malveaux saying she hoped that Clarence Thomas's wife "feeds him a lot of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease, because he is an absolutely reprehensible person". These people are just plain caring, there is no way around it! No doubt Julianne is the flower of humanity and her judgment of Thomas is completely warranted.

I think he is generally right on the following 4-rule statement of the situation:

Rule 1: You can never outspend Democrats.
Rule 2: You can never out-compassion Democrats. They own the issue.
Rule 3: No matter how much money Republicans throw at the voters in an attempt to make over their image, it will never be enough. They can never shed their mean-spirited, we-don't-give-a-damn-about-the-poor label. The liberal media simply won't let it happen.
Rule 4: Republicans who try to repeal these rules will only succeed in losing an important consituency-fiscal conservatives, and will instantly see the cynical game they are playing and despise them for it.

He then lists a whole bunch of money that the Republican Congress spent on the poor, education, etc, and the fact that it didn't dent the left view of their lack of concern at all, but it of course DID turn off fiscal conservatives. Whole books are written on the fact that by a wide margin people that tend to vote Republican give more and do more than people that vote Democrat (even when you factor out church giving/volunteering), but that doesn't change the view either. Being on the left means that you usually let your emotions rule and "truth" is relative. When that is the case, you view the world the way you like and the facts aren't going to change your mind. In the case of the left, since the MSM is going to tend to be an echo of your views, you get to feel even more smug.

He points out the Senator Teddy the secretary killer's quote;

"Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers opened under new management-US management."

To which Bernie replies: "This is what is known as "moral equivalence", which pretty much comes down to this: They do horrible things. We do horrible things. On it's face, it is an intellectually lame argument, one that stems from nothing more than liberal hatred of George W. Bush. Does any serious person really believe that what went on in Abu Ghirab when Saddam Hussien was in power was the same as what goes on when the American military is in charge? Does any reasonable person really think that "Saddam's torture chambers opened under new management-US management"? Nothing speaks to the failures of modern-day liberalism-and it's moral bankruptcy more than this."

I think he over-estimates a lot of the American people on this. The NYT ran Abu Ghirab on their front page 32 days in a ROW. Most people have a hard time not being influenced by that. I think Bernie gets the points out in his book, but maybe not strongly enough that for even those with significant ability to resist propaganda, the fact that "using dogs on prisoners" runs on the front page for 32 days, while all manner of detail on the torture and KILLING of 100's of thousands of people under Saddam gets next to no mention at all. Virtually none of the kids and families helped, schools built, or thousands of other good things done by the US military get any coverage at all.

Meanwhile, what is it that Senator "Scotch and Water" (a LOT of water) would know about "shame"? Is that a concept that somehow reaches the recesses of that sodden mess in his head? I'm sure he knows a lot about drinking, picking up young women and how to bury the bodies, but I suspect his knowledge of "shame" is in the same league as Billy C, which is to mean that it is something that doesn't exist for them.

It seems that Bernie has a problem with Dan Rather, but I did think he pointed out something obvious that I had never considered. Rather used to sign off with "courage", which most thought was a bit strange. For this supposed "Liberal Texas Cowboy" to let those around him be forced out of CBS without his resigning as well is pretty much the nail in the coffin of any ACTUAL courage of character on the part of Dan.

This is a well-known, but never too often repeated statement on poverty:

"William Galston, a domestic advisor to President Clinton, made the same point. To avoid poverty he said, you have to do three things: finish high school, marry before having children, marry after the age of 20. Only 8% of people that do this end up poor, while 79% of those who do all three end up poor".

I guess the only thing a rational person decides from that is that we need more government programs to prevent poverty? Sadly, even though the facts are well known, the MSM and the Democrats treat the simplicity of what it takes to have a decent life in America as a state secret.

I enjoyed the book, but I suspect that very few of the people that would really gain from reading it will actually do so.

Faulty Design Rather than Insufficient Taxes?

Faulty Design Led to Minnesota Bridge Collapse, Inquiry Finds - New York Times

“This is not a bridge-inspection thing,” said one investigator, “It’s calculating loads and looking at designs.” The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the investigators’ findings before the announcement Tuesday.

Wow, I'm shocked and surprised, the bridge fell due to a design error in 1967 rather than "Government on the cheap" by evil Republicans. I suppose that we can expect apologies from Amy Klobochar who thought it fell because of "Bush and Iraq". Would that be a "lie" in that from a Democrat POV if what you think is the cause doesn't prove true it means you lied? I mean, I don't think that anyone even told her that her insight into Iraq causing the bridge to fall was a "slam dunk".

How about Nick Coleman, he is just a media guy, surely HE will apologize? He thought it fell because of "insufficient taxes" and "wing-nuts in coonskin caps". You see, the thing about liberals is that they are HELPFUL, they say things that point the way to "a better world", they are pretty much immune to doing any "partisan sniping".

We poor scientific and engineering types are forced to deal in measures like gusset plate thickness, shear strength and load factors. Simple boring stuff hardly worth the notice of the kinds of genius of Nick and Amy. We bow in awe of the kind of brilliance that can immediately see the benefits of pointing at "Iraq" or "low taxes" as proximate causes for a bridge falling. I'm sure in some metaphysical sense they are "right" -- on the same plane as the CBS Bush National Guard memos. "Truth" is so much more "fluid" when it crosses a liberals lips.

It is clear our country will really move forward with more insightful leadership like that.

Letters to NYT Editor on Bill Kristol

Power Line: Letters to the public editor

700 to 1 Times readers taking the time to write a letter against having ONE only somewhat conservative voice on the NYT editorial staff? How pure has the left really gotten?

The points here are very well taken. "liberal" in this country of course has meant the OPPOSITE of "liberal" since FDR. It means "fundamentalist anti", where "anti" is pretty much business, religion, family, actual freedom of speech, values, etc. It isn't surprising that readers steeped in hearing only one view and having it labeled "the truth" would find it odd that there actually exists a diversity of ideas.