The Race to One Party

The GOP Ain't Dead Yet - WSJ.com

The left is still having problems with not everyone joining the Democrat party. One party rule is a strong tradition of the left, and the idea that anyone would not think the same as their brilliance has directed us puts them in some degree of high dungeon.

Naturally, all problems are a direct result of Republicans and Republican policies -- while it may need saying (again and again and again), it needs no supporting evidence -- it is a plain fact.

Unfortunately, they have been able to come up with only one way: Impostor theory. The movement's instinct, developed during better times, is to dismiss all failings as authenticity problems. The true faith wasn't discredited, they say, Dubya simply failed to live up to it. We didn't change Washington, they moan, Washington changed us. 

Sorry, chaps. Conservatives did change government, and their long experiment with that institution discredited central elements of their faith. That is obvious today, even if it remains a forbidden thought for the movement itself.

There we have it -- massive pork, federal meddling in education and a huge new drug program were ALWAYS part of the core Republican policy, and the idea that "conservatives" caused all current problems (they were always such huge fans of sub-prime loans for instance) simply needs no support. It is the obvious -- like the earth being round.

I'm one of the few folks to the right of Marx that had the strong stomach to slog through Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas". I'll save you the trouble -- it says OVER and OVER that the only values worth thinking about are economic, and OBVIOUSLY, Democrats can "give" (rob from the "rich" and give to the "poor") far more than Republicans will, so only an idiot would vote Republican! From Franks and (BO's) POV, that golden goose will just keep laying eggs just as fast after they cut it open and take a few extra!

So Frank's believes he has completely discredited the idea of "populist Republicans" in the following paragraph. There simply is no "elite", just as there is no "left wing media" -- it doesn't exist at all. However, no matter how few Republicans are left, as long as they draw breath there is a threat of a return to "the religious right" or worse. Potentially death camps for Christians would be a good move??

One way back is the populist one, expanding on conservatism's understanding of itself as a rebellion against "elites." I have spent no small amount of ink criticizing the emptiness of this rhetoric -- conservatism is pretty much responsible for our massive economic inequality, after all -- but I will acknowledge that hollow populism beats none at all.

Ah, the threat of having a two party system -- we need to recognize the danger (how ever small it may be) and work to stamp out the last vestiges of those evil Republicans!

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Dunning-Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Darwin put it, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge". The Dunning-Kruger (DK) study seems to prove it and shows the following:

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

We **ALL** fall prey to this, since we are OFTEN incompetent!  In fact, for ALL of us, our areas of incompetence VASTLY exceed those areas we are competent, and the worst problem tends to be those areas where we are "unconsciously incompetent". We are too stupid to know that we don't know!

I believe the greater the intelligence of a person and lower their formal training, the worse the DK problem is likely to be. Why? Because formal training is going to teach some level of humility, no matter how intelligent you are. In formal training you WILL find out there are things that you thought you knew but didn't. Some things will be counterintuitive and downright HARD for you even though you are normally bright. These discoveries will tend to teach at least a little humility, so it will be more possible to realize the dangers of "unconscious incompetence" and avoid some DK effects.

If you are more intelligent than the average person, you can commonly "make something up" that will sound plausible to all but the more intelligent or the better trained in some area that you happen to drift into. Even worse, if you couple high intelligence with argumentative ability, you are likely to intimidate even those who really DO know from pointing it out since you will STILL be hard to argue with / convince. (If you are REALLY bad, you will just call them "racist" if they point out where you are wrong!)

A near certain sign of a vast level of ignorance and high level of the DK  effect is the belief  that "Someone that was "smart" could explain this to me SIMPLY (meaning "simple" to the person that wants the explanation)". Often this comes with the corollary that "If it can't be explained (to the person) "simply", NOBODY  understands it very well and all views (certainly MINE!) are pretty much "equal"".  (the simple answer to this is Quantum Physics -- even guys like Feynman said that if you weren't confused, you REALLY didn't understand it!)

The core of this idea is viewing ones self as the center of the universe to an extraordinary degree -- why is it that all phenomena ought to be easily explainable to YOU (if indeed to ANYONE)? It is a piece of unfounded faith that shows extreme ignorance coupled with hubris, but remember, it is very possible to couple extreme ignorance with high intelligence. Narcissists are often exactly this case -- convinced they are the only one that really matters, and their special knowledge, opinion and perspective is really the only one that counts! (Obama may be the greatest example of this in history!)

High Dunning-Kruger and great communication skills is especially dangerous. "See Obama". Note, Reagan had great communications skills, but very low DK -- he clearly knew what he didn't know and acted accordingly. Bush had poor communications skills, and I'd argue a low DK problem as well -- he also was willing to bring in expertise that he knew exceeded his and support them. BO has no clue about economics, mideast history, running car companies, what it takes to win against terrorists, or apparently even Constitutional Law, which was SUPPOSED to be his specialty!  -- but no matter. He is absolutely convinced he can do all of them because he has a law degree from Harvard and worked as a Community Organizer for awhile!

Very much thought about this and the term "chilling" doesn't really do it justice!

Unintended Effects

Perils of pop philosophy

In general, I agree very much with this author -- I too find that the more I read about various things, the less confidence that I have that I "really get it" -- and that odd word "epistemology" (the study of meaning/knowing) pops into my head more and more often. Sadly, the problem discussed here is MUCH worse when the "dominant cultural vision" is in power. When Bush was President, the MSM was quick to point out how "overly simplistic" or "wrong headed", or just plain WRONG most all his thoughts and polices were. Thus, BO.

But wait, just because trying to rocket skyward at 10K MPH forever may not be a "perfect solution", doesn't making trying to plunge earthward at 100K MPH a perfect solution either. There is a HIGH potential that MANY alternatives are at least equally, if not much worse. The set of wrong answers is always infinity, and the set of "good / correct" answers is always much much smaller, often even coming close to ONE. (as in 2+2=4).

Those are real enough, but there’s also the problem that the general
glut of information and opinion makes it disconcertingly easy to kid
yourself about how well you understand a particular topic. (My friend
Michael Moynihan refers sarcastically to “Google pundits”
who affect deep understanding after plucking a few talking points from
a search—a sin I’m sure I’ve committed myself on occasion.)  It’s
something of a cliché, but the older I get, the more I find that
learning more about an area where I once held a strong opinion will
often mean realizing just how limited my own understanding is. No doubt
if you look back to the earliest days of this blog, you’ll find me
ranging across a much broader array of topics with much more
confidence. There is, as Yeats

reminded us, a certain perversity here: People who actually know
something are more likely to be fairly tentative and circumspect, while
people ill-informed enough to think everything is quite simple will be
confident they know all they need to.
I find that paragraph particularly scary as I think of BO. In my life to date, I've never seen anyone with the combination of as much arrogant certainty across a broad set of topics and as much general credulousness from the broad swath of Americans. This is a very dangerous combination.

Anarchy and Disney

Since I've never read any serious books on anarchy, I decided to pick one up. It is titled "Anarchism A Collection of Revolutionary Writings" by Peter Kropotkin. He died in 1921 and was considered a hero in the USSR at the time this set of writings was pulled together in 1970. Both Kropotkin and Roger Baldwin (the guy that pulled this book together) found the move to at least socialism if not communism and anarchy to be "inevitable". Death is inevitable, otherwise, the future of man is pretty much a closed book. The lesson ought be learned many times by now, but for some reason it never is.

Here is a good little quote from the book to give you a flavor for this guy:

Primitive man may have thought it very right -- that is, useful to the race-- to eat his aged parents when they became a charge upon the community--a very heavy charge in the main. He may have also thought it useful to the community to kill his new-born children, and only to keep two or three in each family, so that the mother could suckle them until they were three years old and lavish more of her tenderness upon them."

Touching. You see Kropotkin is an "atheist, scientist and evolutionary moralist". ALL forms of control MUST be removed before the flower of human nature can truly blossom. Only the foolish or the "oppressors" believe in God, the state, or laws of any sort. All man needs for a perfect society is "the quest for pleasure". It is the only natural motivation that there is, and if we simply return to it, we will have a "just", "fair", and "equal" society -- oh yes, and of course all private property has to be abolished.

We can prove with a wealth of examples how in the animal and human worlds the law of mutual aid is the law of progress, and how mutual aid with the courage and individual initiative which follow from it secures victory to the species most capable of practicing it.

Well, I guess that is "proven" then. It is so odd that the "inevitable" and ONLY way for a species to survive (anarchy / mutual aid) hasn't caught on more. Thinking of the bees -- I could swear that they had defined roles like worker, queen, drone, etc and that each did what they were required to do or the other bees stung them to death. But I must be wrong. Ever see a pack of housecats hunting? It is a thing to behold -- it is hard to beat cats for hands down mutal aid of each other -- and why not? No question that their species would not have made it if not for that ever present feline mutual aid!

The socialists and communists have a lot of support for guys like this. I'd expect that BO would find many of his arguments about capitalism, private property, classes, oppression, etc to be very convincing. Of course BO kind of likes power, so I think the "abolish the state" would be a bridge too far. If there isn't any government, you don't have a big plane to scare the folks in Manhatten with, nor the money to go up for the big date with the missus!

Reading a book like this while on a business trip to a convention being held at the Disney Dolphin hotel is strange. I grew up listening to folks in my family bray about "the big shots" and how there was "no hope for the little guy". Now I have to admit that BO is hard at work making sure that middle class folks fall to poverty and the bottom of the "wealthy" fall to lower middle, but for the last 30 years, opportunity has been great.

I went out for a nice walk tonight around an area called The Boardwalk and over to the gates of Epcot Center. As a young man, my family never made it to Disney, an ocean, a mountain, or anywhere outside the upper midwest. I remember my aunt, a nurse telling about seeing the Magic Kingdom on CA, Alaska, or Yellowstone. My uncle in Rockford worked and a screw plant, and they were "rich" as well -- they went on vacations to places like Disney, mountains, etc.

For thousands of years, families would take many generations to make any movement at all on the economic ladder, then all of a sudden, along came America and the opportunity was there. So now I've been to Disney multiple times with my kids, on cruises and on trips all over the US as have millions of others. That opportunity was provided because failure WAS an option -- those that failed to invest in education, markets, property or just plain failed to take the risks of moving to where a decent job was or zillion other things would OFTEN fail!

The beautiful resorts, accessible by a huge majority of Americans, were built on the idea that "not everyone makes it" -- int0 the NBA, on to the stage at Carneigie Hall, or not even to Disney. The fact that failure WAS an option enabled so many more to gain so much, and to raise the standard of living and the potential for all. Is that over now??

I hope not, but I fear that it hangs by a weaker thread than it did in the late 70's. Class warfare has been ignited, but I suspect very few of the folks walking around at these resorts realize that it is them on whom that war has been declared.

Oh, and unless you just want to get mad at "oppression" or just have no brain, this book is way to painful to read to recommend to anyone.

Behold the Power and Danger of the MSM

New poll results are devastating for Obama's Gitmo plan | Washington Examiner

York doesn't state the obvious here. Marketing works!! The MSM was all over Gitmo as one of the big Bush sins, so folks hated it. Of course they knew nothing about it, and no matter how many times Bush or Cheney told them how important it was, they couldn't be believed. They were LIARS!!!

Nobody would drink soda if it wasn't for marketing -- it is expensive, doesn't taste that good and isn't any good for you. But we are all marketed to all the time on it and it is readily available at every corner, so we drink it. We are all sheep, the only issue is if we are able to REALIZE that we are sheep and at least apply SOME critical thinking.

As soon as BO was in power and said he was going to close Gitmo, the MSM was happy. HOW it is supposed to be closed isn't their concern, that is for LEADERSHIP -- of which BO knows nothing. So far he shifts with the polls and has no trouble stating one thing and doing the opposite (campaign finance, wiretaps, military tribunals, gays in the military, releasing torture photos, the importance of deficits, putting lobbyests in the cabinet ... oh well, I'm tired of typing). Will he change his mind on Gitmo? It wouldn't surprise me any at all.

Racism Under New Management

RealClearPolitics - 'Out of Context'

Sotomayor has indicated that her "latino woman better than white man" statement was "taken out of context" ... to which Sowell replies:

What could such statements possibly mean-- in any context-- other than the new and fashionable racism of our time, rather than the old-fashioned racism of earlier times? Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.

Sowell goes on to make the following unarguable point:

The very idea that a judge's "life experiences" should influence judicial decisions is as absurd as it is dangerous.

It is dangerous because citizens are supposed to obey the law, which means they must know what the law is in advance-- and nobody can know in advance what the "life experiences" of whatever judge they might appear before will happen to be.

Whey bother to have a written Constitution? laws? Bible? anything? If new versions can be made up out of whole cloth at any moment because of somebodies "life experience", "compassion", or just plain "whim". The "standard" that is being foisted on us at every turn now from car companies to the Supreme Court is "no standard at all". The rule of law is dead -- all hail the power of BO!

Helpful Hoplophobe'sTravel Guide

Guns in Parks: The Hoplophobes’ Travel Guide to the United States | The New Ledger

Huge public service done here to help those that are phobic of the horror of a concealed permit person carrying a gun might gun them down. Who says gun folks aren't sensitive!!

Helpful hints on areas that are especially safe are provided (based on the difficulty of getting carry permits). NYC is incredibly safe  (from being shot with a legal concealed gun) -- impossible that anyone will be carrying a legal gun. Same for Newark NJ and Washington DC.

South side of Chicago is incredibly secure from legal gun owners -- great spot for those hoplophobes to visit, along with South Central LA. Good spot to be REALLY relaxed about the potential for seeing a legally carried concealed gun!!

Good foreign travel insights as well. North Korea is notoriously free of any guns for citizens at all, so that ought to be a SUPER safe destination. 

Great job, and no doubt an immense help to those concerned about the terror of someone with a legally concealed gun being in their vicinity!!

Is Life Worth Death?

Schumpeter's Moment - WSJ.com

Great little column, it has nothing to do with my title other than that is what it made me think of. Capitalism is the only thing that creates growth and individual freedom, BUT, it also creates differential wealth (rich and poor) and it isn't perfect -- crashes come with it, no matter how much we want to avoid them. It relates to our "ultimate dilemma" as humans -- one we don't really get to play in except as parents for children, and in the case of a decision to take our own life -- which certainly doesn't "work" in that death is hastened rather than avoided.

Where that becomes troublesome, however, is the moment when
government comes to be seen as the sole source of security. What we,
the public, need to understand is that the best guarantor of security
is not government. It's economic growth. While we want to believe
otherwise, the cold fact is that government can't guarantee economic
permanency. Nobody, and nothing, can.

Pragmatically speaking, we must figure out how to increase people's
sense of security without making government itself bigger or more
powerful

The bottom line is that we have to find ways to ENCOURAGE risk -- in going to school, investing money, starting a business, inventing something or a host of other "risky behaviors". Cases where effort or capital or both is put to some use where "the outcome is uncertain". In the real world, that is true in **ALL** cases. BO and the MSM will tell you "Social Security is certain" -- but if North Korea puts an ICBM into DC at the wrong time, or some nasty strain of influenza hits -- or more likely, they just muck up the economy enough, it ISN'T "certain". Humans don't deal in positive certainty -- only negative. See death.

So what about the ultimate Schumpeterian challenge: Can capitalism be
saved? France's President Nicolas Sarkozy in October 2008 proposed a
brilliant formulation. He said: "The financial crisis is not the crisis
of capitalism. It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself
from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the
spirit of capitalism."

Well put, and BO is taking us away from the spirit of capitalism at warp speed!

Costs Of Supporting Republicans

Dealergate: Stats demonstrate that Chrysler Dealers likely shuttered on a partisan basis

What happens when there is extreme one party rule with no media oversight? They run amok. They ALWAYS run amok. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

If one needs to close some dealerships, I'm sure a politician can't think of a much better method than to correlate the dealership owners list with Republican donors, and "shazaam!". Now a businessman might use some stupid correlation like cars sold, money taken in, profitability, customer satisfaction, etc, but that is where the businessman is stupid.

Hey baby, this is ALL about BO style politics! Corruption? What the hell is corruption? He hasn't even thrown any Christians to the lions yet -- he is being a pretty long suffering guy. If folks "get it" without a lot of violence, he may let a lot of really bad Republicans live with just a minium of retraining and relocation. Talk about a wonderful guy!

Heil BO!

Warming Your Heart

Momma Voted for Obama

We all know the horrors of the right wing family. Two parents, usually in a home, nearly always attending church, working, saving, teaching morality -- the kind of depravity that often creates Republican voters. Such things have often been despised as "indoctrination" in the media.

Nice little site showing how the Democrat side of the fence is all open-minded and trying to keep nasty things like politics out of the little donkey's young life!

How about, "All Democrat children are special, over half of them never get by the abortion clinic!"

The Essensce of Unconstrained

The 'Empathy' Nominee - WSJ.com

The heart of the unconstrained vision is that current thinking, feeling, practices and opinion are superior to any strictures of the past, including a written constitution. Thus we have:

In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

I'd argue that is very much a racist statement. The criteria I like to use is what the attitude would be if the statement was reversed. Second, I would hope that a wise white man with
the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a
better conclusion than a minority woman who hasn't lived that life.

My wordview is that if the second formulation is seen as racist, then the first must be as well, else the term "racism" has no meaning.

Naturally, the idea of ideas and words "having no meaning" is what her first formulation means. There can NEVER be a universal definition of wise. Translation, all points of view are relative, and it is perfectly reasonable for mine (or BO's) to be the one taken as correct -- and NOBODY (least of all, say "God") can EVER declare that there is some "universal truth" ... of which a better understanding would be "wise".

So, BO has appointed a relativist, racist that no doubt will see fit to re-write whatever law she sees fit as often as possible to the court and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

New Deal or Raw Deal

I finished this book today by Burton Folsum Jr out on the deck enjoying the great weather and the day off from work. I'd say that our current American predicament is based off couple key myths that tend to work together to keep us heading toward a continued loss of freedom and economic decline:

1. "Liberal" = "left". Left is ALWAYS larger government, more centralized government control, less individual freedom and the risk of dictatorship. Communist, socialist, fascist, monarchist ... ALL are on the left! The idea that Fascism is "right" is lunacy -- for one thing, "Nazis" were "National Socialsts", and fascism isn't exactly "libertarian". The "right" is about "LIBERTY" ... meaning "libertarian", LESS government, more indiviual freedom -- going too far to the right means one is an ANARCHIST, not a fascist!
2. "The New Deal was a great success. It certainly wasn't an economic success -- it was a POLITICAL success for the forces of the left which the elite and MSM in this nation find to be a wonderful thing. This book covers #2 very well.
   

The following quote from Henry Morgenthau Jr, one of FDRs closest associates and his Secretary of the Treasury at the time he made this statement before his fellow Democrats in Congress in May of 1939:

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong...somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises...I say after 8 years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...And an enormous debt to boot.

Sound familiar? Here is a good quote from Henry Hazlitt on the subject of government spending:

The government spenders have the better of the argument with all those who cannot see beyond the immediate range of their physical eyes. They can see the bridge. But if they had taught themselves to look for indirect as well as direct consequences they can once more see in the eye of imagination the possibilities that have never been allowed to come into existence. They can see the unbuilt homes, the unmade cars and washing machines, the unmade dresses and coats, perhaps the unmade or unsold foodstuffs. These homes, cars and washing machines were unbuilt of course, because taxpayers sent their money to Washington for the WPA rather than buying their families a new car or a new coat. We can think of these nonexistent objects once perhaps, but we cannot keep them in our minds as we can the bridge that we pass every working day.

The problem is of course greater than that, because both the MSM and the Democrats are going to brag up the benefits of their spending, while not saying anything about the costs.

The book goes through a good amount of detail of the corruption of the patronage created by the New Deal. The spending for the WPA was increased in swing states in election years, and the WPA workers were used as extensions of the Democrat party. Naturally as today, the unions, farmers, and other groups were provided kick-backs that all but made them wards of the one-party Democrat state.

The end of the book provides a lot of great detail on how going into the depression, the US was leading the world -- by the end of the 30's, we had no recovery and had slipped to being one of the worst of the industrialized economies. The New Deal successfully elected a lot of Democrats, created a lot of government dependency, and set the nation firmly on a path to ruin with the advent of the Social Security entitlement that sold the obviously false claim that "we can all get out more than we put in".

The New Deal was an economic disaster that started us on a path to future disasteres, one of which we are experiencing now. Politically, it laid the foundation for dictatorship or worse, LBJ framed it up, and now BO seems to be doing the roof and paint on the fascist edifice.

Raw deal indeed!

Totalitarian Means One Party

Op-Ed Columnist - State of Paralysis - NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman is an unabashed statist. Our founding fathers created a nation where "left" meant more gigantic government of every stripe -- socialist, communist, fascist, monarchy, ... it didn't matter. "Right" was little to no government -- libertarian, anarchist. Even "stranger", "right" was LIBERAL -- as in you did what you wanted, "libertarian". "Conservative" was more to the LEFT -- controlled, following tradition ... the Federalists, like Washington, Adams and Hamiliton wanted something "more like a monarchy" -- thus, the Senate, which was intended to be our "House of Lords".

No matter, today Krugman's Democrats are in charge across the board, so why in the world do we still have problems, and in fact they seem to be getting WORSE??

Easy, "it's the Republicans stupid" ... they just seem unwilling to give everyone, states and federal the last shreds of taxing authority! That's the prolem! These idiots STILL have 40 Senators, and that is WAY too many! California had the audacity to elect a RINO Governor that has been unable to do anything relative to holding the line on spending, but no matter, "What's the Matter with California"??? REPUBLICANS!!! Even though they have had nothing for political power there in well over a decade, and a less strident idealogue than Krugman might just have a moments pause over what the results have been. Not Paul though -- get rid of ALL the Republicans, and no doubt shortly after any Democrat that is so foolish to be "moderate", and THEN we will have success -- tax rates approaching 100% and completely unbridled spending (whatever THAT might be -- if this isn't it, I'm not certain that I can even imagine it!).

To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. The few remaining moderates have been defeated, have fled, or are being driven out. What’s left is a party whose national committee has just passed a resolution solemnly declaring that Democrats are “dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals,” and released a video comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore. And that party still has 40 senators.

There you go. I have to agree though, the Republicans are at least imprecise about "socialist ideals" -- it is "national socialism" Nazi/fascist when you maintain the veneer of private ownership while strong arming the businesses to do your bidding lest you purge the leaders and cut off their funding. So he is right, they are at least "mad" enough to not speak the truth. What I wonder is what Paul would call buying up banks and auto companies with public debt, bypassing Sr bondholders for union cronies, and funneling huge amounts of public money into thinly disguised Democrat organizations like ACORN? Probably "good government".

I suppose that when one believes they have all the answers, one party rule seems like such a good idea, it is just shameful to try to name it anything at all. As one wag said -- "when fascism comes to America it will be called Americanism". I think it is here, and it is called "Obamanomics".

BO, First US Nuke Detonation President?

Obama: North Korean nuclear test 'a grave threat' - CNN.com

BO and guys like Jerimiah Wright have often pointed out that the US is the "only nation to have used nukes against another" -- and always without the caveat that many hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions (many of those US) were saved by that decision. They don't like it, it somehow damages their vision of a "perfectly moral nation" (by their standards).

So now we have North Korea flexing it's muscles with BOTH ICBMs that could reach the US and nukes, Iran openly preparing to destroy Israel, and chaos in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, a nuclear nation with weapons spread out and not under central authority.

BO seems to not like it -- one would have thought that he could wave his hand and such threats would simply cease, but one gets the distinct impression that global threats are rapidly building, even as our economic  ship founders ever more.

Will BO be that "historic President" that presides over that "spread the nukes around" strategy that allows one or more American cities to be reduced to rubble with "the chicken's coming home to roost"? Guys like BO have always been very uncomfortable with "American exceptionalism" and love to ask supposedly rhetorical questions that essentially come down to "why do we think we are so special"??

Sadly, what used to make us special was individual freedom AND RESPONSIBILITY, a belief that we WERE a "special nation blessed by God", and a sense of a special past and future destiny that was worth effort and sacrifice. We have elected our first pagan president whose most important life experience (still?) was his return to his "tribal roots" in Africa as a "Luo". He is "a citizen of the world" -- first? Where does citizen of the US lie on his list of "blessings" (or I guess in his case, "pieces of random luck")?

I'd fully expected that the Bush security work would give us something better than a year before we suffered a major attack against the US, but it is starting to look like that could be too optimistic!

How many nukes would it take to make us "nothing special" ... the kind of nation that BO could approve of? SF, NYC and DC? Is that enough, or does one need to take out Chicago and LA ... ?? as well. I would have formerly thought that 3 would change things in a way that would "never be forgotten", but 9-11 makes me wonder. The power of the left and the MSM to expand on any grievance or supposed grievance by America (Abu Grab, Gitmo, Katrina, pollution ...) and to utterly bury her woundings (eg. 9-11) is amazing. Would whatever was left 10 years after losing NY, SF, and DC only remember the incident with the now already quite hazy and even conflicted view that Americans have of 9-11? I really wonder.

Understanding BO's 100 Million

http://wimp.com/budgetcuts/

It really really is worth taking the time to go over to that site and get some help in visualizing how much 100 million is next to 3.6 Trillion. They use pennies on a table and it is VERY effective. Basically it is half a table full of pennies stacked 5 deep, and 100 Million is a 1/2 of ONE PENNEY ... but it sinks in better when you see someone slice up a penny and see it visually.

One of the sad things of the liberal press is that were BUSH to have come out and said that he was going to take "90 days and find 100 million to save", he would have been laughed about for weeks as being a 100% stupid rube without enough intelligence to do anything without his staff putting it up on a teleprompter. Since BO said it, it gets reported as "the great and powerful BO is working hard to do important things, why are the evil conservative loonies complaining".