Rove On Transition

Karl Rove: Welcome to the White House, Barack Obama - WSJ.com

Karl does a good job of covering some of the issues to date in the "perfect BO transition". He mentions David Axlerod, the BO equivalent of Rove, and also an advisor to IL Governor Blagojevich. One might notice a SLIGHT difference in the way that the MSM treats Axlerod as compared to Rove -- guess we will just have to watch.

Anyway, BO gets to "make it happen" now. Ought to be really easy for such a great man.

Minnesotans For Global Warming

Since the high here today is due to be -7, all the schools are closed and the papers are talking about the coldest temps we have seen in 10 years, it seemed like a good day to say something about Global Warming. I think we can all agree that temperatures are either warming, cooling, or staying the same. It doesn't appear to be an ice age (although in MN today, we might not ALL agree with that), so other than Young Earth Creationists, that would mean that we are in an inter-glacial period -- they tend to run 10-20K years, and we have been in one for over 10K years, so at some point here, cooling is likely (like in the next few thousand years).

The last time we slipped into an ice age (20K+ years ago), the scientists were not gathering as much data, so we are a little imprecise on exactly how that happens. Does it warm first, then cool? Does it slowly cool? (like over a few thousand years), does it drop like a rock to the deep freeze? I'd say the scientific answer to that one is "we don't know". Now will humans cause the planet to warm "artificially" (interestingly, many scientists would consider us a product and PART of nature) ? If we do, we may head off 5K thick sheets of ice covering this part of the US, and I know Al Gore would find that to be a tragedy.

Might the planet be warming? Sure. Might it be caused by humans? Sure. How about caused by the Sun? I bet it could be that too. Some other sort of cycle that we don't understand (natural carbon release, water vapor ratios, methane, dust, etc) ? It seems impossible to believe that our scientists have ruled out "all other options" -- although it is never hard to believe that some group of politicians and the MSM may have done so.

I personally suspect that much like the stock market, there are lots of jumps and jags in larger scale trends that can really give folks a "head fake" if data from decades or even centuries is focused on rather than the longer term trends of millennea. Much as the market may go up for a few weeks, months, or even year in the midst of a decade long bear market, the temperatures can go up and down in shorter periods and the long term trend is hard to discern.

World Not Loving BO?

Power Line - The Honeymoon: Still Over!

How surprising! It seems that many of our enemies have switched seamlessly from defacing pictures of Bush to defacing pictures of BO. I thought the media story was "people just hate Bush, not the US"? Guess they must have been mistaken -- how surprising!

Left Getting Worried About BO

Obama Should Act Like He Won - WSJ.com

The lefties expect BO to DELIVER -- not be trying to get along with anyone else. They knew BOs history, which the MSM tried to hide from everyone, and when he said things that sounded centrist like "I'm not in favor of gay marriage", or "I'm a strong supporter of the 2nd ammendment", etc, they (as did I) assumed that he was lying. Now they are starting to wonder.

I think a major part of the current uncertainly is just that. Who IS the real BO? We elected a buy with minimal history, but all of it that was avaialable would indicate that he would be the furthest left President ever -- anyone willing to listen assumed that the REAL BO, based on his books, positions held, former positions, etc really felt that red-staters were "bitterly clinging to guns and religion", and that he was going to "spread the wealth around" ... at least, and maybe then some.

It seems way too early to tell to me -- I still really suspect that HE wants to look "moderate", but he is willing to let Harry and Nancy drive the far left agenda so he can be re-elected by a wide margin no matter what happens. If some parts of the agenda are a disaster, he can smoothly blame congress, and all the parts that work will have been his all along.

It is interesting how Franks completely fails to realize that Bush was every bit as much a "tri-angulator" as Clinton -- Perscription Drug Benefit, Sarbannes Oxley, McCain-Finegold Campaing Finance (Republican unilateral disarmament) and attempted immigration reform -- all very centrist to left items, all of which he paid a huge political price with his base for.

As I've often argued, for someone of the LEFT, such triangulation is extremely workable -- other than a few really true loonies like Franks, most Democtrats won't even complain because they realize that POWER is what they really want, and if it has to cost them something in "purism", so be it. Republicans on the other hand are suspicious of government power in the first place, so they have a very hard time with any sort of triangulation -- they have generally been in the wilderness since the '30s, so when they get just a whiff of being "in charge" they expect there to be all sorts of movement to their side -- lower taxes, less programs, more freedom, etc right away -- and worse, since they tend to have a lot of principles, if they see any wavering they are immediately ready to "teach their own guys a lesson" as they did in '06.

Things Difficult for the Great BO?

Obama to order Guantanamo Bay prison closed - CNN.com

What is up? Why would something like this be difficult for the great BO? We have been assured that the Bush Administration was the worst, most incompetent administration in history, and it is being followed by an administration that is at least as good as FDR or Lincoln, and likely better than both. But now we see:

"It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done, but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication," Obama said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday when asked whether he would close the prison in his first 100 days.

I thought the Bush Administration had just put innocent decent folks in Gitmo and tortured them, and now we could turn them loose and have them maybe bunk in at the White House, or potentially with our new Secretary of State. Now we find that "many of them may be very dangerous"? Wow, what a concept! I wonder if that is why they are locked up?

The following sounds more than reasonable -- follow the rule of law but don't release the guilty. I'm hoping he does that as well as stimulates the economy without growing the deficit, increases all our government benefits without costing more money, and lets us all have chocolate cake every day without gaining any weight. He is clearly on that track:

Obama also said he was trying to develop a process that "adheres to rule of law" but "doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."

What intellect! The idea of "not releasing people intent on blowing us up"is the kind of sophisticated insight that one would have never seen in the Bush administration. One might think that our insightful MSM in an article HEADLINED "Obama to order Guantanimo Bay Prison Closed" would ask a couple slightly direct questions like say:

1. When?
   
2. Where will the dangerous prisoners go?

Seems that nobody in the MSM has thought of those points yet even though BO had once said that he would close Gitmo via an executive order on day one. Now it sounds like he is going to give speeches and go to dances like all the Presidents before him. One has to love this comment as being "completely different" than "politics as usual":

I think it's going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak, to help design exactly what we need to do," Obama said. "But I don't want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution," he said.

No follow up to that one! No ambiguity there! Gotta love that BO.

Obama also said he was trying to develop a process that "adheres to
rule of law" but "doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on
blowing us up."

Gee, there are "very dangerous" people in Gitmo? I'm shocked! I thought that was just a Bush/Cheney spot where they tortured a lot of poor innocent people! Great to see that he doesn't really want to release a bunch of people intent on "blowing us up" -- wonder if shooting, maiming, gassing, sickening or other objectives are equally "inappropriate"?

So even though the HEADLINE says "He is ordering it closed", the article says "not in the the first 100 days" -- and without reading very hard it sounds like he has no clue how they will get it closed and "not release folks that want to blow us up". So I wonder if any report

Hillbilly SoS

Official: Clinton to push U.S. leadership renewal - CNN.com

I wonder if they will ask her about the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" (VRWC)? She talked about this horrible and powerful organization on the Today Show on National TV. I assume that she MUST have been correct rather than foolish, since Dan Quayle misspelling "potato" at a grade school spelling bee became national news that stuck with him forever and proved that he was a fool.

So since we KNOW that the "VRWC" must be an intelligent fact rather than some foolish paranoid fantasy, since a person prone to to foolish paranoid fantasies would be even less qualified for national office than a person who adds an 'e' to the end of "potato" -- and we know that we are a fair and rational nation.

So, was the conspiracy destroyed somehow? Maybe hunted down and killed or something since "the vote" doesn't usually affect a conspiracy very much. Maybe they are still in operation and pulling a bunch of strings? Maybe they defeated poor Hilly in the Democrat primaries "somehow" and have cleverly installed BO as their minion -- that would explain the horror of inviting Rick Warren to pray at the inauguration and potential tax cuts. BO is maybe a clever plant by the VRWC.

In any case, it seems like a good question to ask our shiny new SoS, and I'm certain our ever vigilant press and elected officials will be getting right on it!

See, Democrat Scandals Don't Matter

Why the Democratic Scandals Don't Matter (Yet) - The Plank

See, the Democrats are WAY too under the radar to have their scandals mean anything! It really doesn't matter how many you stack up, these folks are Democrats and since they never promised to have any values in the first place, the fact that they have a lot of scandals should just not count at all!

Good thing the MSM is getting THAT all straightened out -- otherwise the sheep could get confused. As Billy C proved, you can do whatever you want as a Democrat and STILL be a good guy -- or even if you have to get thrown under the bus, at least none of your fellow Democrats will get anything nasty on them as long as the MSM is busy doing the firewalls!

BO Supporters Empty Lives

Hey, it is off limits to make fun of BO himself, but it looks like his supporters are fair game. I wonder if somebody will come along with a statement more vacuous than "Yes We Can" and give them something to live for?



Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Macbook Wheel

I'll buy anything that is shiny and made by Apple ! ;-)

The intuitive type-ahead is pretty good ... "The Aaardvark admitted he was wrong ..." I know that is a sentence that I have typed a good many times in my life!


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Death and Sunrise

Parents share heartbreak over death of child - CNN.com

Driving into work this AM I noticed that it was one of those days that the clouds were "just right" to reflect a beautiful golden-orange glow with the coming of the new day. As I did the daily news scan for the day, I noticed this article. My thought of the sunrise, along with the emotional response of "beauty" was: Why should we think it beautiful if we are randomly evolved creatures? What is "adaptive" about finding beauty in a sunrise? Now, I've read enough hard line evolution folks to know that there are ALWAYS "explanations". Maybe guys that found sunrises beautiful had more luck with the ladies (or vice versa). Maybe such artificial "feel good" made people that like sunrises more able to lead, gather food or just not get depressed so they slow down and get eaten by a saber-tooth. God is never going to make one admit that it seems a "gift from above" to be wired such that we can stand in awe of a "simple" sunrise. It is always possible (and even easy) to talk ones self out of faith, love, charity, hope and even beauty. To those so intent, maybe there is some solace in the fact that hate, anger, unbelief, hopelessness, despair and ugliness seem to be much easier states to maintain with little or no effort. In fact, life can make us think that those are the only emotions that are "reasonable".

How easy it is to understand the grief of losing a child from both the view of an ordered creation and a pure random genesis -- "right" and "adaptive" fit just perfectly. There is every reason for an extreme level of bonding with our kids, and every reason for the emotional part of that bond to be strongest and most urgent at the time when they are in the process of leaving the nest. Establishing a solid new identity separate from parents, figuring out how to relate to the opposite sex, figuring out what to do with your life and a host of other emotional, intellectual and physical changes make adolescents hard to get along with, but also very precious. They are no longer irresistibly cute like little kids, but the parental investment of a major portion of our lives and love in them make them dear enough to weather the difficulties of those tasks of separation. We are wired to want them to succeed on their own even while we also dread the day that they are no longer at home with us.

That day is supposed to come with us knowing where they are -- school, job, apartment, married, serving, living. The devastation of it coming with them gone to eternity and leaving us here is too great to really contemplate, and for those who have to bear it, a burden that doesn't leave. Much like the sunrise, the article ends with a hopeful thought of the grief maybe shifting to more a remembrance of the life lived rather than just the death and loss. The article is also completely secular, those with faith can still look forward and live for a better world in which they will be together with those they have lost. None of which is going to "solve" the loss of a child or many other less horrible pains.

Fortunately, that really isn't our task. Our task is to turn from the darkness to the light and meet each new day the best that we can given the lives that we have been dealt with faith that God has a purpose for our life.

Maybe that is why we find sunrise beautiful, it beckons us to look to the light.

Good Summary of MN Election Theft

Funny Business in Minnesota - WSJ.com

The local media in MN seems pretty happy with the prospects of Senator Clown -- the WSJ is of course "biased" (unlike the other media) so their opinion ought be discounted. I thought they did a pretty good summary of how every decision went Al's way -- except they missed the BIG early slight of hand that brought Norm's lead down from 700+ votes to 215. That part was really the major coup!

I regularly listen to MPR, and up until today, one of the issues was the "improperly rejected absentee ballots". Today, the rhetoric had changed, and now Coleman wants to count "rejected absentee ballots". Interesting how much difference one word can make, especially if one hears it over and over. Prior to the votes going to Franken, we needed to be told that rejection was "improper" -- now they are just "rejected".

All hail Senator Clown!

War and Decision, Doug Feith

This 528 page tome, chocked full of quotes, references and end notes is the book that the left and the MSM would prefer to ban. It ought not be hard to achieve that goal, it is a HARD read, it is detailed, dry, and generally devoid of passion. It is the kind of book that a lifetime bureaucrat would write, and indeed, that is what Feith is.

After 30 years in a major US corporation, my guess is that this book is far more "truth" than anything else written about the War On Terror (WOT) and especially the decision to go to war in Iraq. Why do I think that? Well other than the fact that this one includes copious references and quotes that can be verified, it sounds exactly like big organizations run. Personalities, egos, infighting, CYA (cover your ass), spin, avoidance of responsibility, taking credit where no credit is due, and assigning blame to others. It very much sounds like how a big honkin beauracracy operates.

The core messages are very clear:

• There was an explicit decision made that the only way to avoid futher attacks on the US without turning the country into an armed camp was to go on offense and fight the terrorists around the world on foreign soil.
  
• The downside risk of something coming out of Iraq and killing some number of US citizens was simply too high to ignore. EVERYONE -- for over a decade, Democrat or Republican had identified Saddam has a huge threat -- to oil, to Israel and to the US using WMD or passing it to terrorists. Allowing Saddam to stay in power post 9-11 was simply too big a risk. If that was done and something DID happen, nobody would ever forgive the Bush administration -- and they would be right. It was unconscionable that Saddam would be allowed to stay given the post-9-11 world.
  
• CIA and State could never get on the same page with Defense and generally Bush, BUT, rather than either "win the position", or resign if it was decided that the position taken was something they could not support, both Powel and Tenent were classic "play it all ways" beauracrats and kept fighting -- in the press, by ignoring policy and other ways that caused huge problems in the Iraq effort.
  
• Richard Armitage (who was the "leak" of Plames name) at state and Scooter Libby (who ended up charged for perjury because he got some dates wrong) were constantly at war about Iraq policy -- very interesting, considering that Armitage kicked off the whole affair, but was (and mostly still is) one of the darlings of the MSM because he was good for quotes from State on how bad the Bush admin was doing. Of course, he was PART of that administration. Bush absolutely needed to fire more people, he was WAY too "loyal" (or maybe just disliked conflict?)
  
• The biggest actual issue of the war may have been the use of Iraqi exiles vs Iraqis that had stayed in country post '91. Defense wanted the exiles including Chalibi to be installed in an interim government IMMEDIATELY, and they wanted trained exile military folks on the ground immediately.
  
  State and CIA were way against Chalibi and the exiles -- which is the opposite of what we did in Afghanistan. A huge amount of the book is about making the case that State and the CIA were wrong and that was proven by the eventual government voted in, and the conflict over the exiles was what resulted in the disasterous long occupation. A good case is made, I'm not close enough to it and don't know enough of the other side view to make a final determination, but I find it to be a very interesting line of inquiry.

I could go on, but I think those are the big points -- oh, and he was pretty hard on Bremer relative to the long occupation, going too slow on giving control to Iraqis. This is the kind of thing from which historians need to sift rather than the "Bush lied, people died" sort of "deep analysis". Unfortunately, we will likely get to find out if "going on offense" is what has worked to keep us safe.

Senator Clown Slithers In

Power Line - Minnesota Senate Recount, Update XV

The Democrats have learned how to win the close ones, at least if they aren't Presidential. QUIETLY! Coleman started out 700 votes ahead, but the hand selected Democrat Secretary of state and Democrats in key districts slowly chipped away with all adjustments going in one direction, and none of them so gigantic that the bulk of the sheep would get suspicious, as long as the lefty press kept the story pretty quiet.

The initial loss of 500 votes of the Coleman lead was probably the most clear vote manipulation, but it happened so rapidly and with the constant assurance that "this was normal", coupled with the fact that Coleman was still ahead, that most people hardly took notice. It was anything BUT normal -- in an extremely close election, the ONLY totals that were significantly modified were Franken's, and they were modified in only one direction in numbers that were far higher than typical "adjustments".

During the rest of the recount, the biggest trick was to decide in Dinkytown, where the election judges were relatively certain that a set of ballots had been run through more than once, that the election night numbers were to be used rather than the recount numbers since there were "missing ballots" (or ballots run through twice, but that was quickly discounted when the direction of the problem was made clear). There isn't any use to have recounts if one isn't going to trust that number more, but almost all those votes were for Franken, so the BIG RULE that "things in Franken's favor get used" won out, and the count from election night was used.

Now we have the "invalidly rejected ballots" -- apparently it seems odd to nobody that a huge percentage of these votes are for Franken. Apparently they got voter lists and called up people and asked them who they voted for and then pushed for those that were for them to be added back in? We find out that is legal, but it seems sort of on the path away from the secret ballot to me. In any case, it seems that it is a fact that by far the majority of the "improperly rejected ballots" are for Franken.

Election theft by Democrats is of course not to be treated as election theft -- else Kennedy would have been an unelected President. It is wrong to say things like that, but of course it was right for all sorts of articles an folks to say that Bush was unelected in 2000, even though EVERY post election study, even by some very partisan left wing researchers showed that he did indeed win that election with no evidence of "shenanigans".

We are even deeper into the "era of change" now -- secret ballots, and even the concept of "fair elections" may well become distant past memories. The nice thing is that the majority of Americans won't even have any thought that anything is wrong, since the MSM will make it seem like things are just fine.

Warren Buffett, "The Snowball"

This rather massive book by Alice Schroeder covers the entire life of the current richest man in the world, the super businessman often called the "oracle of Omaha", Warren Buffett from birth to '08 with a huge amount of detail. I've historically not been that much of a biography reader, but maybe age is changing me, I enjoyed the book.

There are 838 pages of text and a bunch of endnotes, so I'm not going to do a lot of quoting and discussion. The biggest things that hit me:

• Simplicity / Models. Relative to business and investing, while clearly a genious, Buffett used a huge focus and passion for business over a LONG time with relatively simply models of price/earnings, only buying businesses that he understood the business model of, and ALWAYS making sure that he had a "margin of safety" built in. Sticking with a few quite simple basic models with a whole lot of intelligence, patience and courgage to "ignore the herd". Allowed the "snowball" of his great wealth to slowly unfold over time.
  
• While unquestionably having simple tastes in diet and lifestyle, Buffett is a complex man in his dealings with people. He is insecure, hates conflict, loves to push things that he doesn't like off on others (but is generally brilliant at selecting folks that can handle it well and motivating them well). In many ways, it is his "weaknesses" that make him a great business executive--he delegates what he isn't good at well, and focuses like an effective laser on what he is definitely the best in the world at -- selecting the best available businesses and weaving them together into a money making machine.
  
• The "sweep of history" relative to business is discussed in a very "inside business" way that is enlightening. The constant of different sets of people "certain" of some trend or another -- expensive money, cheap money, stocks never going up, stocks always going up, fuel prices always going to be low -- or high, "new models" that would "never change" -- the "Nifty Fifty", Junk Bonds, Techs, Derivatives, etc. The ditches are littered with all sorts of "new paradigms" that fall on hard times wiping out billions and trillions of dollars in their wake. Meanwhile -- people still eat candy, buy furniture, jewelry, insurance, food, mobile homes, Dairy Queen, Coke, etc -- those are Warren's businesses, the ones that are "always going to be around", the ones that are "boring", unless you want to amass a fortune of billions of dollars from a start of a 100K over a period of 50 years.
  

Warren and his family seem to be 100% atheist or agnostic and in general quite liberal. He is pretty much 100% a supporter of Democrats, the farther left the better. He essentially ended up with "two wives" -- Susan, the mother of his children, took great care of him for 25 years or so, but he was pretty much the 100% traditional guy that spent 95% of his time on business and 5% on his family. When the kids left home, Susan wanted to travel, do artsy stuff and help others. She ended up traveling around with some of her old tennis teachers and moved to San Francisco and took care of a lot of gay guys. When she moved, she never really called it leaving, and left a friend of hers named Astrid Menks who ended up moving in and being Warren's female companionship for years. He essentially had "two wives", in public outside Omaha and legally, Susie stayed his wife. He saw her for a few weeks each year. Otherwise, Astrid was his usual companion.

Warren is a huge public propoenent of higher taxes for the wealthy -- but interestingly, he takes a lot of actions to avoid the paying of taxes himself. He has spoken out often and been quoted a lot of being strongly in favor of inheritance taxes, but again, he has transferred many millions to his children using foundations and other mechanisms already and plans to make it a "mere 10%" in the end, constituting a "mere 6 Billion". Apparently, consistency isn't an issue for a liberal no matter how rich you are. I found it especially interesting that he is transferring the remainder of his 60 Billion to the Gates foundation to be spent "as efficiently and well as possible". So why not the US Government? Warren has been outspoken on the need for higher taxes for "the wealthy" -- I assume he MUST believe that those taxes would be well and efficiently spent? Apparently when it comes to taxation the rhetoric and the actions just don't match up even for as succesful, intelligent, and generally admirable a liberal as Buffett. "Do as I say, not as I do".

Buffett is a great study in how captialism allows brilliant people to allocate resources in ways that government would NEVER think of that result in more jobs, stronger business, more money, and while those folks doing there jobs, better allocation of capital for ALL. While guys like Warren and Bill Gates are exceedingly wealthy it is extremely easy to see how they have created far more wealth than they have consumed, and as they allocate that wealth back into the good of all as they get to the end of their lives, they will do even more good. It is a shame that they can't understand that the same principles that have worked so well for them can and do work on a smaller scale for people of far lower wealth, so they continue to espouse political solutions that are likely to kill that golden genie of economic growth that allowed them to amass their great fortunes.

Let's Worry About the President Again!

The Associated Press: Blagojevich questioning takes up Obama's time

Hey, imagine this, the President's time is precious! What a concept! The last time I recall this it was when Slick Willie was defending the Presidential right to oral sex by the underling of his choice in the oval office! The press was mighty concerned then as well!! What a shame to be taking up the mans time when it might be better spent with an adoring big haired intern of his choice providing "personal office service".

Now we have the good Saint BO from the political fever swamp of IL, and horror of horrors, somebody thinks that just because your political career was spawned in a swamp, you may have gotten just a wee bit of muck on you. How could they think such a thing! The very concept--why has the MSM says here, BO has SAID that "he and his folks are clean"! Why, what more could one possibly want?

Now somehow I don't recall exactly the same sort of concern for Bush's time. Let's see -- Valerie Plame affair, which never even came close to the oval office? I don't recall much concern over that consuming Presidential time with meaningless questions? Why, I'm sure that Bush even said that he wasn't involved -- now the press was pretty quick to get worried about his time being taken up once he said that, right?

Nice to see the press all concerned that the poor President elect can "keep focus"--would be nicer if there was just a tiny bit of such concern for the POSITION rather than just for "the president of the MSM's choice".