Honest Appraisal of Stevens

RealClearPolitics - Good Riddance!

The right to own property is 2nd only to the right to bear arms on the list of critical freedoms. Kelo essentially revoked it. Sowell recognizes with great clarity that our founding fathers knew that it was the government "Leviathan" that the individual needs constitutional protection from. Stevens and the left seek to remove the rights of the individual and transfer them to the government.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the Supreme Court opinion that expanded the Constitution's authorization of seizing private property for "public use" to seizing private property for a "public purpose." And who would define what a "public purpose" is? Basically, those who were doing the seizing. As Justice Stevens put it, the government authorities' assessment of a proper "public purpose" was entitled to "great respect" by the courts.

Let's go back to square one. Just who was this provision of the Constitution supposed to restrict? Answer: government officials. And to whom would Justice Stevens defer: government officials. Why would those who wrote the Constitution waste good ink putting that protection in there, if not to protect citizens from the very government officials to whom Justice Stevens deferred?

The Illinois Spiral

The Illinois spiral: How overgrown government stymies job creation. - chicagotribune.com

Good title. Reality is a stern teacher. This paragraph directly hits the mark, but it is an overall good column.

Employers tend to be harder-headed in deciding where to invest their money than our lawmakers are in spending other people's money. The employers see Illinois pols dithering through a crisis, inviting an even more bleak future with their refusal to reform government spending and reduce what it costs to have a payroll in Illinois:

Obvious, But Still Wisdom

Thomas Sowell : Race and Politics: Part III - Townhall.com

Sowell is one of my intellectual idols, it is a struggle for me to be objective about him. Just read the whole thing (short), but if you are REALLY pressed for time, he starts with the assertion that different races have had radically different outcomes at different times in history and ends with:

Causation and morality are two different things, however much they get
confused today by politicians and the media.

In support of that:

Nothing is easier to find than sins among human beings. But the fatal
misstep is to assume that those sins must be the reason for the
differences we see.

Precisely. What people do with no thought of doing good often results in great good for even those injured, and what people do with the greatest of intent often results in great evil, often for exactly those to be intended to be helped!

Those who see differences among groups as being due to environment,
rather than heredity, too often think of environment as the current
immediate surroundings. But a major part of any group's environment is
the culture that they have inherited from the past.

Our pictures are FAR from big enough -- as are our sense of time / history.

If We Drop Our Pants, So Will They

Charles Krauthammer : Nuclear Posturing, Obama-Style - Townhall.com

Slick Willie walked the halls of power with his pants around his knees, but BO is raising it to a national security posture. "Getting caught with your pants down" used to be something to be avoided, but we now have "Change".

If some small rogue nation unleashes a biologic plague on the US and kills 150 million people, will we nuke them? According to BO, absolutely not! I'm sure that is comforting for any terrorist working on transmissible hemorrhagic fever in some backwater, but somehow, to me, the idea that we want to provide aid and comfort there is insanity. What else is going to come of this new "posture".

 I'd think it might be kind of good for such a person to feel very assured that something really bad, up to and including being nuked, was LIKELY if they were to "succeed" in leaving 10's or even 100's of millions of our loved ones and fellow Americans dying in pools of our own blood, vomit and excrement  with nobody left healthy enough to help. On this particular policy it is hard for me to imagine it really being selected by stupidity -- based on his two books, I'd have to say there is an over 50% chance that BO would find the vision of that bio-threat creator to be something "justly deserved" for the former "colonial power".

Think of all those slaves, think of all those Indians, think of all those poor in the slums -- America being humbled in messy death may be just the "Change" BO would find to be "just".
Let's see, I'm 6'4", 280lbs and have a permit to carry. I suppose that if I have my legs cut off at the knees and carry a sign that says "unarmed", that will make me safer? Seems odd that I've been able to walk into some pretty rough places from time to time over the last 30 years or so and never have a problem.

I've always thought that being big, ugly and looking like you might have a couple howitzers and a machete on you was good way to AVOID problems -- I at least HOPED so, since "blending in" isn't that good an option at my size. There are some folks that like to fight, but most of them would like to think their chances of winning were high and of getting shot were low. I believe that ambiguity as to retaliation is a GOOD thing.

Not so BO! Would he not be safer if he gave up Secret Service protection? or maybe just promised that if no attackers were going to use any guns, then neither would his protection detail? That seems like an obvious way to prove the intelligence of his nuke posture -- at least unless he has some other purpose in mind for what he is doing.

A Bright Future

Op-Ed Columnist - Relax, We’ll Be Fine - NYTimes.com

David Brooks is the "conservative" at the NYT, which means he is a Socialist rather than a Marxist. I like optimism, especially warranted optimism. We finally have some optimism, I'm just afraid we already gutted the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The United States already measures at the top or close to the top of nearly every global measure of economic competitiveness. A comprehensive 2008 Rand Corporation study found that the U.S. leads the world in scientific and technological development. The U.S. now accounts for a third of the world’s research-and-development spending. Partly as a result, the average American worker is nearly 10 times more productive than the average Chinese worker, a gap that will close but not go away in our lifetimes.

A 2008 study? Gee, what policies had the US been operating under since '81, other than during a very short Clinton induced bender in '93-'94 before we were saved by a Republican Congress? I really don't think outlets like the NYT thought that we did so much R&D, top or close to top in every measure, 10x as productive as the Chinese -- but maybe I was asleep in '08. I could have sworn that '08 was the year that "Change" was the only thing that counted ... things were so bad that certainly ANYTHING would be better than Bush!

This produces a lot of dynamism. As Stephen J. Rose points out in his book “Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger From the Financial Crisis,” when income is adjusted for family size, the percentage of prime-age American adults earning between $35,000 and $70,000 declined by 12 points between 1979 and 2007. But that’s largely because the percentage earning more than $105,000 increased by 14 points. Over the last 10 years, 60 percent of Americans made more than $100,000 in at least one of those years, and 40 percent had incomes that high for at least three.

Note ... 2007. I listen to MPR, I can't count how often I was made aware of the "decline in the middle class". Somehow (even though I've been aware of it from "biased conservative sources") they always failed to mention that the largest reason for that is the fact that 14% of folks went UP to earning over $105K. Shocking. How could they miss that statistic???

Well, we are in the 4th year of Democrats in congress and the 2nd year of BO, so the MSM is recognizing good news. That is good to see. It is a bit disconserting to realize how dense they feel that their supporters really are to believe that news from '07 / '08 is likely to help us much now. Nancy, Harry and BO have been very busy with "change" since '07. Added regulations, rewards for failure, penalties for success, kickbacks to their supporters in unions and industry, vast increases in low productivity government workers, etc. Yes, I whole heartedly agree that while we still had huge problems in '08 ( sub-prime mortgages heavily due to FANNIE / FREDDIE, structural deficits do to unaffordable FICA / Medicare, costly regulations like Sarbanes - Oxley, etc) -- we were WAY ahead of where we are now.

So, we were in great shape in '07 and '08 based on long standing policies. The smart thing was to CHANGE those policies to be more like the folks that we were beating back then. If football was like liberal thinking; if your team is running the West Coast offense and winning consecutive Super Bowls, while the teams you are beating are mostly running the Wishbone, the smart thing to do is to start running the Wishbone, start losing, then point back at the years you ran the West Coast and use that as an indication that you have a bright future!

Tipping Over Series of Tubes

I heard from my teen/early 20's sons about the stupidity of the "series of tubes" over and over again. Apparently it was a hot item on John Stewart. If you have the stomach to listen to the long versions of these, I'll let you draw your own conclusions about relative intelligence. Then draw your own conclusions about which one gets the most MSM coverage!

BTW, I'd never listened to the Steven's one before, from listening to the whole thing -- while clearly not an Internet expert, it seems pretty clear that he was using the very standard metaphor that all of us that actually work on technology. Usually "pipes", but not PHYSICAL ... just a way to think of it. 

Positive Ridicule

Obama, in Maine, Needles Republicans Over Calls to Repeal Health Care Overhaul - NYTimes.com

Mr. Obama ridiculed Republicans for apocalyptic predictions about the health care program and needled them about their campaign platform calling for repeal, repeating the “Go for it” challenge he issued in Iowa last week.

Bush of course was called extremely arrogant for saying "bring it on" to terrorists. Democrats reveled in any sign that America's troops were losing in Iraq, pushing that joy right to the limits as their "wisdom" meant declaring our efforts "lost" on a number of occasions, including the spring of '07 after Bush announced the surge. I don't believe he ever ridiculed Democrats.

Cheering for defeat in Iraq was of course "patriotic" from the MSM POV as long as Bush was in office--along with hailing any jobs report that was "below estimates" as a sign of "a jobless recovery", even after the 9-11 attacks. The wars, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, offshore drilling, and a host of other things are now either "no news" or "good" as long as we have BO in the big chair.

My view is that the MSM actually does what I consider to be a decent job when there is a Republican in the oval office. ALL leadership deserves to be 2nd guessed and questioned -- and even ridiculed a little. The late night TV folks do a decent job of that when a Republican is in, but they can't even find it in their liberal souls to make some fun of BO saying company health insurance was going to go DOWN by "3000%".  They do go too far when they cheer for America's defeat at war however. Why can't they find it in their professional responsibility to criticize the elected officials that they agree with? Why have an "adversarial press" when they turn into a lapdog press when their guy is in?

Those of us that have checked into BO's background know that ridicule is #5 on his list of "commandments" from his own personal hero, Saul Alinsky. It is in his own personal code to ridicule the opposition, but the MSM shows their true colors just a bit too much when they revel in his ridicule of Republicans, but considers any opposition to his programs by Republicans to be tantamount to treason.

I've long ago given up on the myth of an "unbiased press". I just wish the rest of the country would recognize it as the dangerous myth it is. The NYT, NPR, CBS, CNN, etc are simply "Fox News on the left". They are every bit as "faux" as Fox, it is simply that the 20% of the left realize that they can't continue to govern the 80% in the middle - right if the opposition viewpoint is openly expressed.

The OTHER Threats

Karl Rove heckled, called 'war criminal' at book event - CNN.com

Last week we heard a lot about "uncivil Republicans" and threats on Democrats. Above you see a link to Karl Rove being heckled Code Pink -- hardly news, Republicans endure heckling, threats and actual attacks all the time.

Last week the MSM was all primed to watch the Tea Party gathering at Searchlight NV to see if there were threats and violence -- there were http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2010/03/harry-reid-supporters-threaten-violence-against-breitbart-at-tea-party-protest/ but it wasn't newsworthy since the perpetrators were Reid supporters.

The Democrats also used the idea of "incivility" in a campaign mailing last week and Axlerod on weekend shout shows talked about how "Republicans bear responsibility for the heated rhetoric". This week, there is an arrest for a death threat against a REPUBLICAN Congressman.

Notice a pattern? Just think for a moment. JFK - shot by a Castro supporter that had been to the USSR, RFK, shot by a Palestinian immigrant, MLK, shot by James Earl Ray, small time criminal -- not many of those are Republicans.

Jerry Ford was shot at twice by Manson followers -- pretty unlikely they were right wing. Reagan was shot by a guy that was trying to get a date with Jody Foster -- doesn't sound very political to me.

Calling Republicans names and claiming that they are "fascists", "taking your rights" and demanding protests and disruption is so standard as to be boring. Anyone say anything bad about a Democrat? Oh, wow, better call out the Gaurd!

Welcome To A Mismanaged Third World Nation

Robert J. Samuelson - With health bill, Obama has sown the seeds of a budget crisis - washingtonpost.com

When historians recount the momentous events of recent weeks, they will note a curious coincidence. On March 15, Moody's Investors Service -- the bond rating agency -- published a paper warning that the exploding U.S. government debt could cause a downgrade of Treasury bonds. Just six days later, the House of Representatives passed President Obama's health-care legislation costing $900 billion or so over a decade and worsening an already-bleak budget outlook.

He covers the accounting sleight of hands that turn the supposed "savings" into added deficit as well. Worth a read.

The Title Is Right

Op-Ed Columnist - Going to Extreme - NYTimes.com

Reasonable people need to be aware of what gets spewed from the left, as painful as it might be.

Paul likes to revel the losses of the other side, but of course a "reasonable other side" would roll over, put their legs up, and let Paul and his buddies kick them in the head. Any form of backbone in opposition is something that must be thoroughly dishonored from the left.

Here is his assertion about Democrats:

All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials.

Let's see if we can find any counter example rhetoric on the net. Here we have BO in Philly in the summer of '08. Sounds nice doesn't it?

That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

Here is Al Gore:

The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'

Why is Krugman still in the NYTs?

Closing Gitmo "Complicated"

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Axelrod: still no date for closing Guantanamo Bay facility « - Blogs from CNN.com

I believe we're going to get there, but it's complicated," David Axelrod told the CNN program "State of the Union," adding that there has been progress toward closing the facility.

I think we will get to fusion energy as well.

So if Gitmo was a "recruiting device for terrorists" under Bush, why isn't it now? Well, because it never was, it was a POLITICAL DEVICE ... it served it's purpose, so no hurry. It is hard, expensive and damaging to security to close it, but if you are BO, those costs are worth the political gain it gave him as a campaign issue, especially since the "adversarial press" is the "lapdog press" for him.

Remember Recess Appointments Being Big News?

Democrats, Republicans spar over Obama's recess appointments - CNN.com

Remember when the news media went berserk over recess appointments? John Bolton is a name that comes to mind.

Expect anything noisy out of this, even though it sounds like one of them is a union lawyer who even Democrats have signed up to filibuster? (if Republican's sign up, that is called "bi-partisanship" ... in case you forget)

Income Gap

The Government Pay Boom - WSJ.com

Now here is an income gap that isn't likely to get a lot of media coverage. For every $1 earned in an equivalent private sector job, a government worker gets $1.45. Sweet ... if you are not receiving vs the paying end, and heck, there are more government workers and less private workers all the time, so what the heck?

What if government workers earned the average of what private workers earn? States and localities would save $339 billion a year from their more than $2.1 trillion budgets. These savings are larger than the combined estimated deficits for 2010 and 2011 of every state in America.

Oh, deficits. Spoil sport. This seems like a story worth VERY little coverage in the MSM. Let's see if they surprise me.

Shoot the Messenger!

Democrats threaten companies hit hard by health care bill | Washington Examiner

Worth reading through. A number companies realize that BOcare is going to cost them a lot of money, so they are reporting it in their financial forward looking statements and taking charges as SOX and other Federal regulations demand. Of course, the emperor does not like being told not only that he has no clothes along with the fact that the view is not flattering.

What is the logical thing to do? Shoot the messenger of course!

Bankrupt

We live in a morally, spiritually, financially and politically bankrupt nation. The passage of BOcare in the corrupt way it happened after the election of Brown in MA shows that the left officially doesn't respect either the Constitution nor the electorate.

Where to from here? Down. Way down. When you are looking forward to roasted rat as "your first good meal in a month", remember, you once lived in a great country where men were free, God was revered, laws and institutions were respected, and everyone had both rights and responsibility.

We failed and fell. Now we suffer the consequences.