Jail-order Brides

Jail-order Brides - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online

No question Bush is evil, and we all know how "chilling" the US "Christian Right" is with all their hypocrisy and "peeking into bedrooms". No reason that the US should have anything bad to say about Muslim nations.

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

I'm thinking that if BO just sits down and has a chat with these people they will be quick to see things our way -- unlike those evil Christians and Republicans which have a tendency to be intransigent.

Captured Soldier Afraid?

U.S. soldier captured by Taliban: 'I'm afraid' - CNN.com

The US media needs to get to this guy right away. Doesn't he know we have closed Gitmo? Doesn't he know we have sworn off any interrogation techniques more stringent than saying "pretty please"? Most of all, doesn't he know that we now have the worlds most competent and respected leader in charge of the US forces, the incomparable his holiness BO, potentate of the masses?

Most of all, his captors know that if anything untoward was to happen to him, BO would be VERY UNHAPPY! Nobody wants to make BO unhappy, he may look stern and say bad things about you in a speech. That would be too much for anyone in Al Quaeda to bear, so I'm certain they will treat this guy fairly and humanely.

What else would we expect from them? They aren't like "Republicans" or anything evil!

Apollo, Murray and Cox

I had to read a nice thick detailed Apollo book in the past week as my way of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landing tomorrow. Excellent book, it ought to be on the top of the list for anyone interested in the engineering, planning, procedures and management that were responsible for one of the milestones of human history. Vietnam, Kennedy, MLK and much more will be forgotten, but "Man Walks on Moon" is one of those milestones for humanity that will be remembered as long as humans exist.

The book is loaded with detail and anecdotes about the people that dedicated a decade or more of their lives to the quest for the moon. The challenges of getting the F1 engines in the mammoth Saturn V to be stable ... 2 tons of LOX and a ton of kerosene into each of the 5 F1s in each second producing 1.5 million lbs of thrust each.

A lot of details on some folks that had a lot of responsibility but were far from household names -- Joe Shea being one. He took a lot of personal responsibility for the building of the Command Module, and strangely, would have been in the capsule below the astronauts feet if they could have gotten a com plug for him the night that Apollo 1 burned. He was devastated by the loss of the crew and always felt personally responsible, but he lived on with the pain and had a pretty successful life.

There is a lot of focus on the decision to do "Lunar Orbit Rendezvous", which was originally seen as "off the wall risky", but eventually came to be seen as the only reasonable way to do it.

Most of all, I'm struck by the fact that we haven't been back to the moon since '72. I liked this quote:

A new all-purpose political truism entered the language: "If this nation can put a man on the moon, then it should be able to ..." Cure cancer, stop crime, end poverty. All it would take, many seemed to think at the time, was the same kind of money and commitment that the US had lavished on Apollo.

First of all, we are no longer "this nation". The nation that put men on the moon had values, courage, faith and a spirit that is WAY different from the nation that we have become today. Could THIS nation put a man on the moon? I'm not so sure.

Of course, even if we could, going to the moon is primarily an ENGINEERING PROBLEM, and while it is a difficult problem, it can be done with known technology. It isn't primarily a "science problem", or a "social problem". Curing cancer requires massive invention, and there is a non-zero chance it is "impossible" (to do it and have a living patient with a reasonable quality of life).

The hubris of "if we can send a man to the moon ..." is unbelievable. Stop crime or end poverty? What would that mean? We don't even know what it would mean to do those things, let alone have any starting point as to how they might actually be achieved. It is very likely that the "cure" might end up being worse than the problem.

The moon was hanging in space for all of human history. We ALWAYS "knew what it meant" to go there. Once we had put unmanned landers on it, it was certainly "possible" to send a man there -- THEN, the issue was one of "merely" time, money, commitment, and the willingness to risk (and lose) human lives in the pursuit of the goal.

It is most often those who have accomplished the least that have the most to say about "if we can send a man to the moon ...", or "it seems to me it OUGHT to be done thus and so ...". Sadly, we now have a president that has accomplished nothing in his life save a couple good speeches and yet has huge confidence in his ability to do nearly anything. Knowing your limits as well as your abilities engenders "confidence". Being supremely confident you have no limits is hubris.

We once were a nation with the confidence to go to the moon, today we are a nation with the hu bris to believe that "we" (well, maybe the rich, the smart, the dedicated) could "do anything" -- if they would just get down to it.

We Came We Saw, We Lost Interest (Moon, Shuttle)

RealClearPolitics - The Moon We Left Behind

Just read it all. I'm half through "Apollo" by Murry and Cox that I'll Blog on later, but the lament of 40 lost years of the American and human spirit of exploration and conquest is a sad tale. In remembering and reading the histories of that era, we get some sense of the focus and passion that we lost.

The shuttle is now too dangerous, too fragile and too expensive. Seven more flights and then it is retired, going -- like the Spruce Goose and the Concorde -- into the museum of Things Too Beautiful And Complicated To Survive. 

America's manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We'll be totally grounded. We'll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.

The Secret Victory

RealClearPolitics - An American Victory

As the MSM misdirects us with attempts to call a slower declining economy in the face of trillions of bailout debt being spent "success", and the BO administration works hard to burden us with a dark future of high energy costs and Post Office Healthcare, it is important to note that the MSM and BO were 100% wrong about the Surge in Iraq.

As the US troops very quietly withdraw from the cities in victory, something that 2 years ago was hammered home by the US media and the political left including BO as "impossible", it is worth noting that BO is far from infallible, and consider where the economy is likely to be 2 years hence!

I'd Rather Have Shame

Op-Ed Columnist - White Man’s Last Stand - NYTimes.com

But the barbed adjectives didn’t match the muted performance on display before the Judiciary Committee. Like the president who picked her, Sotomayor has been a model of professorial rationality. Besides, it’s delicious watching Republicans go after Democrats for being too emotional and irrational given the G.O.P. shame spiral. 

W. and Dick Cheney made all their bad decisions about Iraq, W.M.D.’s, domestic surveillance, torture, rendition and secret hit squads from the gut, based on false intuitions, fear, paranoia and revenge. 

Sarah Palin is the definition of irrational, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music. Her Republican fans defend her lack of application and intellect, happy to settle for her emotional electricity. 

Senator Graham said Sotomayor would be confirmed unless she had “a meltdown” — a word applied mostly to women and toddlers until Mark Sanford proudly took ownership of it when he was judged about the wisdom of his Latina woman. 

And then there’s the Supreme Court, of course, which gave up its claim to rational neutrality when the justices appointed by Republican presidents — including Bush Sr. — ignored what was fair to make a sentimental choice and throw the 2000 election to W.
Faced with that warped case of supreme empathy, no wonder Sotomayor is so eager to follow the law.

Oh those horrid Republicans. Have they trotted out some staffer willing to claim that Sonia sexually harassed them? Have they elected any bomb throwers as bad as Ann Coulter to give them 60 votes in the Senate (Franken)? How about racist titles? "Black Man's Last Stand"??

One doesn't have to go out to the fever swamps of the Kos kids or MoveOn. Even with everything coming up roses for the lefties, the hatred springs eternal. I guess hate is one of those itches that just never gets fully scratched.

While killing the unborn is "settled law", the Supreme Court lacks the capacity to decide on an election -- at least if it goes against the left. We well know that they would be completely fine if they had ruled for Gore.

Inequality Made Simple

Thomas Sowell : A Personal Inequity - Townhall.com

Very fun to read use of basketball as an analogy for inequality. With some excellent points, one of the first being that "equalize" means "everyone move toward the lowest".

The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward. If the government were to spend some of its stimulus money trying to raise my basketball ability level to that of Michael Jordan, it would be an even bigger waste of money than most of the other things that Washington does.

While it is certainly true that if there is any economic freedom at all, we can't all be at the top, it is also unfortunately true that the vast majority of us CAN end up at the BOTTOM in a failing totalitarian system. When we make the grossly unnatural condition of "equality" an objective, rather than the broad set of naturally selected objectives -- falling in love, raising a family, having a nice dinner with a good beverage, gaining knowledge, earning what we individually think is a "decent income" -- given each of our radically different ideas of what sorts of gratification delays, time/effort trade offs, etc go into that, it is highly likely that our "equality optimized system" ends up being radically less productive than the one that was "individually optimized".

Most activities do not exist for the sake of equality. They exist to serve their own purposes-- and those purposes are undermined, sometimes fatally, when equality becomes the goal.

Change I Expected

RealClearPolitics - The Consequences of Big Government

For the past half-century, federal spending has averaged about 20 percent of GDP, federal taxes about 18 percent of GDP, and the budget deficit 2 percent of GDP. The CBO's projection for 2020 -- which assumes the economy has returned to "full employment" -- puts spending at 26 percent of GDP, taxes at a bit less than 19 percent of GDP, and a deficit above 7 percent of GDP. Future spending and deficit figures continue to grow.

When dealing with Democrats, the "belief factor" is always interesting. Bush Sr said "no new taxes" and broke his promise so I voted for that crazy Perot and got Slick Willie. The odd thing with Democrats is that even their consituency assumes that they are lying -- BO says he is not in favor of Gay marriage, yet most of his constituents say "he really is, he is just saying that he isn't to get elected". He now claims to NOT be in favor of single payer, but he said he was in the past, and his supporters say he is -- he is just acting like he isn't to fool the conservative rubes into supporting BOcare which will lead to single payer.

Once one has slipped the surley bonds of even having any thought of veracity, a whole new level of chicanery is almost assured. BO talked about how bad the "Bush deficits" were -- even though the worst of them happened with Democrats firmly in control of both houses of congress. Now the BO deficits are so much worse that it is frightening to compare.

Cost, Price, Value

RealClearPolitics - Alice in Medical Care

Sowell does a good job of reminding us of the obvious we seem to have forgotten relative to health care.
It is short, easy, and instructive to read -- worth following the link, but here is the take away at the end:

Politicians may talk about "bringing down the cost of medical care," but they seldom even attempt to bring down the costs. What they bring down is the price-- which is to say, they refuse to pay the costs.

Anybody can refuse to pay any cost. But don't be surprised if you get less when you pay less. None of this is rocket science. But it does require us to stop and think before jumping on a bandwagon.

The great haste with which the latest government expansion into medical care is being rushed through Congress suggests that the politicians don't want us to stop and think. That makes sense, from their point of view, but not from ours.

One point that Sowell doesn't go into is what I call the issue of "Learjet health". Why do we fly my 70 something aunt from N Wisconsin to Mayo TWICE on a helicopter? I can't afford it, she can't afford it -- why do we nationally think we can afford it? Is it "nice" that we ALL are getting the absolute "top flight healthcare"? I guess -- but then complaining about cost doesn't really seem to be very rational.

What would we say if everyone that wanted "the best" had to have "$50K in an account" (lor $100 or whatever) that would be used for "care beyond that normall avaiable"? If I wanted to be sure that my family could "get the chopper", then I'd be required to come up with those assets and have them sitting in an account -- otherwise, it's the ambulence.

Cruel? Heartless? Well, we KNOW that Teddy Kennedy, famous athletes, corporate CEOs, etc **WILL** be taking the chopper -- no matter what BO and company decide. If we can't afford "all" (and I think it is pretty clear that we can't), then we are going to ration. If we don't find a way to have something approaching a rational discussion on cost, price, value, then we are going to do what all the other countries do, which is have a MUCH worse system for 98% of the population and the upper 2% have the best there is.

The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson

The subtitle of this work is "A Financial History of the World". GREAT book, one of those gems that one feels lucky to have tripped over and will likely be reading a couple more times in the next few years.

Niall is Scottish, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, PHD, and an EXCELLENT writer. A real find. Here are his "main summary points" from the introduction:

1. Poverty is not the result of rapacious financiers exploiting the poor. It has much more to do with the LACK of financial institutions, with the abscence of banks, not their presence.
   
2. If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong.
   
3. Few things are harder to predict accurately than the timing and magnitude of financial crises.

He does a great job of supporting these, but I'd argue that they are close to self-evident. When one lacks credit, a safe place to put assets and the ability to exchange value with others (1), it is pretty likely that poverty will be rampant. Finance is just one more "technology". All ANY technology does is "magnify what we are" -- it is completely unsurprising that finance would do the same. Lastly, in the words of Yogi Berra, "predictions are hard to make, especially about the future".

The interaction of "money" and "value" back through history -- gold of course, bonds, "fiat money", etc are all covered with nice stories to help make them memorable. The Medici family, the Rothschild family, and the nexus between Jews, banking, and why. Mainly, interest was called "usury", and the church prevented Christians from charging it -- therefore, the Jews got the role. The use of commodity backed bonds is well covered using the Confederacy and cotton as examples.

Probably the biggest surprise to me was the level of involvement of Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago in the Pinochet administration in Chile and the results. Here is a paragraph from one of the Chilean government officials of the era that might be of slight interest to someone in the US today that is not in the complete thrall of BO:

What had begun as a system of large-scale insurance had simply become a system of taxation, with today's contributions being used to pay today's benefits, rather than to accumulate a fund for future use. This "pay-as-you-go" approach had replaced the principle of thrift with the practice of entitlement ... but this approach is rooted in a false conception of how human beings behave. It destroys at the individual level, the link between contributions and benefits. In other words, between effort and reward. Whenever that happens on a massive scale and for a long period of time, the final result is disaster.

Imagine that!! A welfare system that breaks the connection between effort and reward doesn't work for humans!!! What a concept! He covers it for Japan, Europe (especially Britian) and some for the US, but I'd argue that effectively, we all really understand this. "There is no free lunch" -- everyone would LOVE it for "someone else to pay", but the bottom line is that they aren't going to. You can demand that they do and force them into concentration camps and even kill them in the final analysis, but just like China, the USSR, N Korea, N Vietnam, etc, you find that unless you allow the "profit motive" to have a solid effect, you end up with a disaster where everyone is poorer with the exception of a few folks in the central government.

He covered hedge funds and especially George Soros quite a bit. I'm always amazed at how someone that one would assume that the left would see as "the worst of the worst" -- making money on international currency flows with no concern as to what country, what jobs, or whatever is injured. In 2007, Soros made $2.9 B himself, yet because he gives entirely to left wing causes (ACORN, MoveOn.org, and the Daily Kos) his making of $2.9 billion is just fine, while some other exec that makes a "mere" $50 million or so for running a real company and making real things is considered to be a "robber baron".

The reason is simple -- the majority see the government as "providing" for them rather than the people that produce the wealth. The producers are bad -- they don't pay enough, they need to work harder. Long live the re-distributors!

The book is an excellent read -- derivatives, credit default swaps, sub-prime loans and a host of other things are covered in a relatively easy to understand and narritive manner. The bottom line is what one might expect. "Value" is based on what people are willing to pay, and "risk" is changeable and not computeable. Not only is there " no free lunch", there is also no "safe haven". There ARE principles that would seem to work well in even the medium term, and nearly certainly in the long term, but in the short term, "markets fluctuate" -- sometimes violently.

In the big picture, that is GOOD, but ONLY if the governments let the process of "creative destruction" take place -- if unions are no longer competitive, then they lose. If cars need to change, then the companies that build the new kinds of cars fast enough survive and those that don't die.

Esentially we have turned to the socialist direction that has failed miserably across the globe over and over because it is human nature to want to remove risk and to get a lot more for a lot less effort. Both are very good impulses if being pursued by creativity, hard work and lots of mental effort in a competitive environment. Both are huge disasters if being pursued by government officials trying to force the markets to be calm and business to be stable by fiat.

This knowledge isn't new ... Shakesphere had it down pretty well:

Glendower:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

Glendower:
Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
The devil

Hotspur:
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil—
By telling the truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.

BO seems to be doing a lot of calling.

BO May Be Human

http://www.pdnpulse.com/2009/07/obama-steals-a-glance-in-reuters-photograph.html

One of the occupational hazards of being male and being photographed all the time. Since Jesus is fully God and fully man, my take would be that the "glance of admiration" would be automatic enough that his humanity would take notice of an interesting female form as well.

Of maybe his worshipfulness BO is just "acting human" ... I'll give him high marks for doing a good job of it!

Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum

I've never read much about Hitler, but the adoring masses screaming for BO have me wondering. Fortunately, my mind can be at ease -- the big issue with Hitler may have been either the reality or just the potential of Jewish blood due to the illegitimate birth of his paternal grandfather and rumors that is 42 year old great grandmother was impregnated by a Jew. Thank God that BO is pure black!!! Well, he at least THINKS of himself as pure black -- he only brought up the Malcom X idea of "filtering out the white blood" in passing in his "Dreams" book! We white folks are safe!

The book is excellent as a coverage of all the different theories as to "what went wrong" with Hitler. While the author touches on "Stalin", he completely misses Mao, Pol Pot and who knows -- would we even really know if Kim Jong was killing millions? I think we kind of expect that he effectively is by at least starvation, so he could be on the list as well.

So why is Hitler so hard to understand? Well, because he singled out JEWS ... as opposed to say anyone that didn't worship Mao, buy into the communist manifesto (Stalin), wasn't illiterate (Pol Pot) ... or I guess was "just in the wrong Korea at the wrong time" ... Kim. We have a nice thick book here going into a whole bunch of theories about the mixed blood, Hitler having one testicle, maybe getting VD from a Jewish prostitute, maybe somehow being scared out of his wits by a Jew in some sort of odd religious dress in Vieanna as a boy -- and on and on.

Certainly the Holecaust is a horrible thing -- but why are 6 million Jews of greater concern than 40+ million in the USSR, at least that many in China under Mao, 6 million or so under Pol Pot?? Is starving in a larger region where you have been sent to die somehow better than dying in a gas chamber? I'm not sure.

The book leaves me believing that more mass deaths are always possible as long as humans choose to put faith in individual leaders rather than tried and true systems which are designed to transcend any specific leader -- the Church, the Constitutional US System being primary example.

Will BO kill people? I have no idea. I only know that many folks and the media in this country are giving him the kind of power to enable it. While the MSM and Democrats loved to make comparisons between Bush and Hitler, Bush clearly lacked the level of popular support and ability to emotionally inflame the masses the way that Hitler and BO did and do.

It isn't really "Hitler" that needs to be understood. ANY leader that manages to acquire total contol has the potential for mass killing. If they are the kinds of speakers that can get those cheering mobs standing and screaming, then the potential is even greater. Then, all they need is a scapegoat -- Jews, Christians, The Wealthy, Big Business -- maybe even Republicans. It doesn't really matter -- they just have to be blamed and the idea that they are "responsible" -- the masses aren't, and "we will all be better" if "they" are somehow removed.

It is really just a simple thing. It is human nature to be taken in by a charismatic leader, and it is human nature to desire to blame others for our problems. Killing them is pretty nasty, but taxing those we hate is on the same road -- or giving someone else preference over them for a job, or calling out their beliefs as "hate speech", or preventing them from following their religion in public, teaching their children what they believe, etc. All are on the "path to the holocaust, and all the listed elements other than the killing are currently targeted at wealthier white Christians.

Hitler is really no harder to explain than a whole bunch of folks once one realizes that ALL centralized and totalitarian power is LEFT. The only reason that Hitler is "odd" is the idea that somehow he is the lone "deviant" on the "right". Remove that false distinction and suddenly he falls right in with all the despots of history.

Settled Economics

Op-Ed Columnist - The Stimulus Trap - NYTimes.com

As soon as the Obama administration-in-waiting announced its stimulus
plan — this was before Inauguration Day — some of us worried that the
plan would prove inadequate. And we also worried that it might be hard,
as a political matter, to come back for another round.

Much like global warming being "settled science", the "fact" that all is required for jobs and economic growth is for the government to spend massive amounts of money is now "settled economics" on the left. I mean, they always thought it was good and now BO has done a bunch of it, so there is no way it won't work -- one just just needs more of it, or NOTHING would have worked.

It is like blood letting used to be. Patient shows up sick, take some blood, if he gets better, proof that bloodletting works. If he doesn't get better, take some more blood until he gets better -- if he dies, then clearly nothing would have worked. He was either just too sick, or the bloodletting was started too late or too conservatively. Exactly as "foolproof" a position as Krugman's.

But there’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and
being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr.
Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy,
declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There
was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint
that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s
inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama
nor the country can afford.

See, look how far we have advanced since the evil Bush.

Paul is an "Economist" -- what he is doing is "science", so he himself has no issues with the "Bush infallibility complex" -- I mean it isn't as if he doesn't KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that massive government spending is all that it takes to have a growing economy. (remember the success of the USSR? "we have seen the future and it works"!! The lefties knew it was nirvana all along)

Thankfully, there is no way that Krugman (nor BO if he follows Paul's perfect wisdom) would EVER have to admit any mistakes if they keep spending, because they BY DEFINITION can't be wrong!! If Trillions more in spending just result in more debt, misallocation of economic resources and a sliding economy for a long time to come as they did in the 30's and 70's, then clearly "nothing would have worked". No matter how bad it gets, it "would have been worse" had we not spent the Trillions we have spent already ... and now the Trillions more that Paul would like.

How thankful we should all be to be free from that horrible "unscientific arrogance" of the evil Bush years!!

How Deeply Do They Hate Thee

Op-Ed Columnist - Sarah’s Secret Diary - NYTimes.com

I loved Palin's acceptance speech, given the time we have got to know her better, most of that information has made her less desirable to me as a Presidential candidate than I had hoped she would be. OTOH, neither Bush was every very desirable, and Clinton was a known womanizer, serial liar and complete blowhard with whacked out conspiracy theorist of a wife before he won -- twice!

What we see here clearly is the absence of any  "sisterhood" among the supposedly disenfranchised and downtrodden females. One might guess that since we are talking about a female governor of Alaska and ex-VP candidate and a regular columnist for the NYT makes the idea of "discrimination" seem like it would be laughed off the stage, but since "gender issues" are part of the liberal elite's view of the world, such is not the case. Abortion is the sacrament of feminism, and for Palin to be against it, and WORSE to choose to carry a Downs baby to term is "beyond the pale" ... the priestesses of the "real women" like Mareen can't allow that to go unpunished.

So we get parody as commentary. I especially liked this:

It’s just like when Obama, the One Who Must Be Obeyed, said his family
was off-limits so everyone left them alone. But they never left mine
alone. Thank goodness for that though because we hate being out of the
limelight! It was a blast to see Bristol with my grandbaby Tripp on the
cover of People as the ambassadress of abstinence!

Notice anything strange there? As nearly as I can see, Michelle and the girls have very much enjoyed being gushed over in People and a whole bunch of fashion magazines, AND, it IS true that the media have ONLY given the kids positive coverage! I remember during the Clinton years, Limbaugh made some comment about how "plain" Chelsea looked, and he was lambasted -- and rightfully so. Has there been ANY interest in treating the Palin family with ANY respect at all? NONE -- we aren't talking about "plain" here ... we are talking about jokes about a 14 year old getting "knocked up" during a major league baseball game.

It is clear that Maureen's hatred of Sarah knows no bounds -- the column is self proving as an MSM hit piece.

Fund On Palin Exit

Why Palin Quit - WSJ.com

I'd guess this is pretty much right on.