BO Death Panel of Liberty

Charles Krauthammer - Government by regulation. Shhh.: "Sign"

Having the MSM on your side remains remarkably helpful -- BO will now feign a move toward centrism to secure re-election in 2102, meanwhile the liberty and economy killing lurch of unpredictable regulation by fiat will grind inexorably onward in the depths of the massive federal bureaucracy to the very quiet cheers of the MSM.

"Net Neutralization" ought to be added to to this sorry litany.

Good outing by Charles.

Freezing Due to Warming

Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - NYTimes.com

I'd long predicted it, but in case you were not a believer, here it is. To a Global Warming (GW) true believer, you can be out freezing in record cold and snows -- and the problem is STILL GW! Not just for a year mind you -- for the better part of a decade.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

Got that? Not just THIS years really cold and snowy weather, but 7 of the previous nine winters! Do you suspect at all that if 7 of the last 9 winters had been very WARM that the MSM would be showing similar restraint and being careful to point out that "7 of 9" is insufficient for climate change?

What we heard for a number of years -- "it's one of the warmest years ever". Which is no doubt true via some data and some assumptions on measurement. We also hear that "weather is not climate". Yes, again, very very true -- neither is a few decades of temperature, or arguably close to 1000 years. The "Little Ice Age (LIA)" is generally recognized to be from 1250-1850, or about 600 years, but that is not called "climate change", merely "cold weather". It is also not talked of much at all in GW circles, since it was preceded by the "Medieval Warm Period (MWP)" of 950-1250 that among other things was the period when the Vikings lived comfortably in GREENland -- successfully raising crops.

Those especially nasty independent thinkers might notice another slight problem -- if the MWP was 300 years and the LIA was 600 years, we could well have entered another "3-6 HUNDRED year warming period post LIA, which would mean that we might until say "2150" before we settled back into some version of a LIA. Since the LAST MWP was warm enough to make some decent hunks of Greenland suitable for farming, I'm certain that while flying around in their jets, some of the Change Gurus will have no doubt purchased some great Greenland farmland, since given GW, it will certainly get warmer there than last time, and we can only expect that the warm period will be longer.

The article takes a nice turn to explain all these current temps away due to "more snow in Siberia". What I especially enjoyed is the following:

That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia.

There you have it -- the WEATHER Models are wrong! Oh, but the CLIMATE Models??? Clearly, not a snowballs chance in hell that those could be wrong according to the "Climate Change" industry!

Short "looking back" supplement to those interested. This quote is from the 2001 Time magazine that had a frying egg on the cover and a major section devoted to the "truth" of GW and a good deal of W Bush bashing. They say that "science" is about "predictions" -- take note that the IPCC "fixed their models" and said that "GW should accelerate" -- as late as Katrina, they were CERTAIN that we would see "more and higher severity hurricanes in the US" ... we have not, Katrina was the last big one to hit the US.

That is one reason the latest IPCC predictions for temperature increase are higher than they were five years ago. Back in the mid-1990s, climate models didn't include the effects of the El Chichon and Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruptions, which threw enough dust into the air to block out some sunlight and slow down the rate of warming. That effect has dissipated, and the heating should start to accelerate. Moreover, the IPCC noted, many countries have begun to reduce their emissions of sulfur dioxide in order to fight acid rain. But sulfur dioxide particles, too, reflect sunlight; without this shield, temperatures should go up even faster.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999630-3,00.html#ixzz19MOtc37J

Killing the American Dream

Who Killed the Disneyland Dream? - NYTimes.com

Rich is happily hammering nails in the coffin of the American Dream, all the time say "who dunit", and then snidely pointing to "the rich". It is just too funny that his last name is "Rich".

The idea that the American Dream is dead is as old as liberalism -- my family certainly preached that gospel as I was growing up in the 60's and early 70's and going off to college in the late '70s. "Gotta have connections, the big guys are all in cahoots, no way for a little guy to get ahead ....". The preaching of hopelessness and free passes from personal responsibility due to "race, creed, class, connections, geography ... what have you" is as old as the hills.

What happened since the '50's? Guys like Rich have gotten a lot more airplay and a lot more followers, so more people have been lulled into thinking "I don't have a shot at improving my lot in life". I really don't feel like going and hunting down the stat, but I have a very hard time believing that a much larger percentage of Americans can afford a trip to Disney today than could afford it in the 50's.

If that is true, does it REALLY matter what % of the income the top 400 or top 1% or top 10% or whatever gets? If everyone is better off, when what is REALLY the concern here?

Why "Bipartisanship" is Stupid for Republicans

Obama And The 111th Congress: Not So Lame After All | The New Republic

The American people speak about as clearly as they possibly can in an off-year election, and then what do the Republicans do? Hand the momentum right to BO and the Democrats -- who are justifiably quick to crow about how great they and BO are.

Is there any credit to Republicans in the media for this capitulation!! NO, of course not!! but they would have to be complete idiots to expect any. Let me recap:

-- Democrat that crosses party lines ala Lieberman? Turncoat, insane, pariah -- a couple of curses his way and he disappears.

-- Republican that crosses lines? ala McCain at times, Susan Collins, Olympia Snow, Murkowski,etc? They are PERSONALLY given a TON of credit in this for being "smart, correct, wise, etc", BUT, that is short lived, and as we saw with McCain, those accolades are ONLY while you are doing the bidding of the MSM and the Dems -- all the long term credit goes to the Democrats, and of course to BO, for being "a leader".

The Democrats are obviously completely thrilled, and they ought to be. The Tea Party sorts will now be more energized than ever agains the Republican establishment, which could well sow the seeds of more direct challenges to Republican candidates from the right in 2012. Meanwhile, the Democrat base is heartened -- big stimulus $$, a plum for gays, a piece of political theatre in the case of the 9-11 responders that the Democrats clearly set up the Republicans so they could beat them with it when they wanted to do tax policy.

Raising taxes in a recession is plain dumb, and Americans understood that -- as did BO, he was going to deal. The Republicans OUGHT to have gotten a MUCH better deal than they got, and then very loudly said "Merry Christmas" !!! Instead, they got completely stupid and rejuvinaed a BO whose stench was starting to become slightly more muted -- the pungency is back, thanks a lot Republicans!

Marxist Neutrality

John Fund: The Net Neutrality Coup - WSJ.com

In case the idea of "Net Neutrality" is somewhat vague to you and you wonder why folks like Al Franken are wildly in favor of it, read the next paragraph and then read the linked column. As I've said more than a few times, we are STILL in grave danger from BO -- it is a stench that will not be covered up with one election!

A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist."

The Purpose of Debate

Reflections on the Passing Scene - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative

I was struck by the wisdom of this particular comment in the column:

More disturbing than any of the issues of our time are the many people who debate those issues as contests in talking points, rather than as attempts to get at the truth. Too many people debate as if the point is to show who is smarter, rather than which conclusion is correct.

I think Sowell is on to something here. The purpose of NFL football games is to entertain -- and that is gained by the teams doing what it takes to win, which ALWAYS involves pushing at the edges of the rules and using them to your advantage. As an offensive lineman, you are taught how to "hold correctly" with your hands on the jersey or pads inside and your elbows outside. Receivers regularly discreetly push off, the edges of the field are used with amazing gymnastic moves to put the ball where only your receiver can catch it -- and get two feet down. The list could go on and on -- it's a game, and it is meant to be entertaining, and I for one find that it usually is.

Debate is also played as a game in High School and I assume college -- not so much for entertainment, but under strict rules of evidence and time, and judged by a known set of criteria. It is an excellent mechanism for the debaters to understand the topic, because they must have arguments set up so they can debate either side (one could only wish for this to be more common for Americans). The purpose isn't necessarily to get to "a right answer", but to understand the formation of rational arguments.

Shout show cable, and really all of our news media are "shows to make money" -- with more in common with football than debate. Some of the media folks of all stripes are seeking to win converts for a given political position, but the coin of the realm is ratings and money -- the very best, most reasonable, well thought out, well delivered arguments for a point are completely useless if they don't bring people to the set, the radio, the web page, the newspaper or what have you.

None of this is about truth. The vast majority of people look for evidence that supports the world view they already have, and the big change in the modern information buffet is how much it is to do just that. There are a number of great arguments that can be made for things that are widely accepted to be false -- people go through life with all sorts of "stories" for northern lights, "heat lightning", inflation, unemployment, dry skin, terrorism, the price of stocks, gold, oil, coffee, snoring ... the list is infinite, and often what is being searched for is not "the truth" per say, but a "reasonable story" that "feels right" and fits well with whatever set of other stories make up our world view.

My view is that most people DON'T debate -- they want to share their stories and they mostly want others to listen to them and generally agree. If the other person has a similar story, they might like listening so they can improve their story, but the incidence of actual debate, where new information might enter in and stories could be changed is VERY rare.

"Should" it be different? I might personally enjoy it if it was, but I've been around long enough to know that view is very rare. My belief is that the best way to change the general mind is through "improved story quality", and finding ways to increase the factual content of stories while still having them be palatable to a broad set of people. It is something much more excelled at by the more "liberal" in our world, and it is an area that those that want to preserve liberty will need to much improve in order to save the remaining liberty we have.

Samuel Johnson, A Life, By David Nokes

I've been going to read more about Johnson for some time. The standard text to read on him is "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by James Boswell, sometimes called the most famous biographical work written in English, which I will no doubt have to get to. Why exactly I picked this book up, I can't entirely recall, but Johnson is a large enough topic for a couple of views.

His "Dictionary of the English Language", published in 1755 was the standard for over 150 years, and that alone gives him enormous standing in the English speaking world. The book however is more attuned to the attempt of understanding what Johnson's life and thoughts were really about, and he was quite an interesting person.

Born sickly, possibly with Tourette syndrome, to a father deeply in debt for most of his life, Samuel's life had many difficulties. He was large and apparently quite homely, but also when not depressed or ill, quite vigorous. He was a devout man, but like all mankind, subject to temptations of sloth, excess and lust. Since he was a man of letters, diaries, written prayers as well as pamphlets books and plays as well as the subject of a number of biographies, we have a good deal of insight into his private life.

There seems little doubt that he was a genius of literature, able to read, comprehend, editorialize, and maybe most famously, produce the short pithy quotation:

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

One could go on forever with such quotes, he was a master of insight and language.

In 1763, he formed "a Club", a social group that included his friends Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and eventually Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon. They met Mondays at a pub called the Turk's Head in Soho ... a most august group of men of the era, and a testament to the intellectual standing of Johnson.

While brilliant, given his infirmities and difficulties with love and money, his life was a more or less constant challenge -- but to some degree, it does the heart good to listen to all his difficulty and realize he still lived to a ripe old age, and accomplished a good deal in that life.

Knowledge of Samuel Johnson is pretty much a requirement for a person minimally educated in English literature -- I'm not learned enough to say if this work is a decent competitor to "The Life", but I found it well done, and Mr Nokes reputation precedes him.

Conservatize Me

"A lifelong lefty's attempt to love God, Guns, Reagan and Toby Keith", by John Moe.

This book was (hopefully) intended to be 90% humor, with maybe 10% something worthwhile. I'm thinking that if one was a liberal (clearly the intended audience), it might be quite humorous. I read it primarily as part of my quest to understand the liberal mind.

The premise of the book is that Moe, a Public Radio broadcaster from Seattle, is going to take "one month" to "live like a conservative" and maybe understand how this (to him) very strange breed of humanity thinks, feels and lives. In what strikes me more as a potential way to make a buck than anything else ( NOT that there is anything wrong with that!), he gets the idea a bit from the "Supersize Me" guy -- yes, the overtones of conservatism kind of being like "junk food" would fit right in with the spirit of the book.

Again, since I believe that this book is vastly more about humor than truth, I'm not at all certain which parts of the actions he took were intended to actually shed any light, or were merely designed to create laughs (or maybe money for him).

He for example gets "a suit" to see all the big wig conservatives in DC and NYC -- but of course very few of them are wearing suits. He also gets a whole bunch of Wal-Mart based patriotic, NASCAR and cheap clothing, so he can look like the "average Joes" that at least an NPR guy would be convinced are standard in red state America.

Likewise, he must listen to only Country Music -- and for rather lamely constructed reasons, Kid Rock, on his iPod, get his news from all conservative outlets -- Fox, Talk Radio, NRO, Weekly Standard.

He talks to Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol and is surprised that they seem to be reasonably intelligent and he can actually understand (or thinks he does) how they think. He stops at the Family Research Institute and spends an inordinate amount of text on his visit to a College Republican Convention. During these last two, his fixation on his perceived vast mistreatment of "The Gay" by conservatives and Republicans becomes clear.

Apparently, in Moe' mind, not being in favor of gay "marriage" is exactly the same as being anti-gay. It comes down to a world view issue -- does everyone have "tendencies", and "free will" about what we make of the raw material of our bodies, brains, and some of us believe "spirits", or is it true that "we are what we are" -- gay, straight, pedophile, alcoholic, gamblers, moral zealots, liberals, conservatives .... whatever, and our only real task in life is somehow "getting in touch" with our "true nature". Moe doesn't actually get to actually try to understand anything here -- he is just clearly fixated on "how could conservatives be against The Gay", and of course, since the people he is talking to aren't as fixated on the issue as he is, he never gets anywhere in understanding how one might be against gay "marriage" since "it isn't any threat to HIS MARRIAGE". (I kept wondering if he was as perplexed how one could be against genocide in Rawanda even though nobody killing anyone there was a threat to us?)

Again, it is could be that all "The Gay" stuff was really just about getting liberal yuks at the expense of us religious dummy conservatives who don't support gay "marriage".

There are a number of other vignettes -- driving a SUV, Reagan Library, Nixon Library (he liked Nixon, didn't like Reagan), Rexburg Idaho (voted 92% for Bush), and a Toby Keith concert in Indiana, but the big themes are how conservatives supposedly dress, how they are supposedly all pro-war (yet none of the examples he interviewed in '05 were gung ho on the war in Iraq), how they are anti-gay, and how they are kind of "simple minded" ... again, although many of the ones he talked to were actually counter examples.

To try to capture a bit of what may be his actual non-humorous thinking:

Clarity is not always an easy commodity to come by when you live on the left. Much of liberalism is built on the idea of uncertainty. Iraq was opposed on the left because something could go wrong, tax cut programs are opposed because they could further harm the economy, the Patriot Act is opposed because it could lead to a police state. Not to say that liberals are wrong on any of those things, but they were all at least initially based on speculation. Conservatism begins with the permise that the reasoning and the outcome are not matters of conjecture and guesswork, but are rather certainties.

I'd say that liberalism being built on uncertainty and conservatism on certainly is a bit of a stretch. "Something could go wrong" would pretty much support opposing anything, if tax CUTS could harm the economy, then could tax increases help it? -- and is that a speculation? Again, I'm not sure if he is really serious because that paragraph ends with "Now if I could only find a way to open my heart and let Ronald Reagan, or someone like him, be my personal lord and savior". He is very lucky that Christians aren't Muslims -- or that sort of treatment of faith would be a swift path to eternity without your head!

Pretty hard to recommend the book to anyone but a really committed lefty -- I suspect if one is solidly in that world view, much of this would be honestly funny and probably comforting in a shallow sort of political porn way.

The List In our Pocket

NationalJournal.com - A Christmas Wish - Thursday, December 16, 2010

A column on the inherent complexity of life, but short and worth a read. I do believe that along with not being able to sit in a quiet room alone with our thoughts (Pascal), modern man is worsened by our reduced time at graveside. Having just read a biography of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the vast set of ailments that resulted in death at any age, and the rather common death of young children allowed people in the vast history of mankind to much better realize the fragility of their lives while yet alive. Eternity is so very much longer than the human span.

Dowd's (no relative of Maureen) younger sister, apparently a drug abuser, died of an overdose, and Dowd is struck by the poignancy of "a Christmas list in her pocket". We all have some form of such lists, and the thought of exiting with them unfinished from whatever cause is indeed poignant. Dowd has been something of a policial operative for both sides, and laments the quick and easy labels that we apply to each other and of course to politicians -- generally lamenting those of "our side", but feeling them nearly 100% justified as applied to the other. Apparently, thoughts of the ultimate turn his mind to politics -- especially in this season, I'm uncertain that reaches the meaning he is grasping after.

Death makes us look in the souls mirror and realize that we are all too human -- not nearly as super intelligent, wonderful in character, lovable, wise, and "godlike" as we might believe. Some more quite thought might bring realization that ALL the lists -- of politics past and future, goals, desires, hopes, expectations and "truths"(firmly identified by man) look awfully insignificant from graveside, staring eternity in the face. We, and all we love, live but one heartbeat away from being no more.

Perhaps it would be more worthy to look to the manger, then to the cross and realize that SOME "sound bites" and "labels" are very short and simple, yet crucial. Christian -- knowing personally the gift of the manger and the cross, and the humility to accept his grace and however weakly, to follow him. The truth of us all having a Christmas list in our pocket, nor any other truth, save the real meaning of Christmas, will make this, and most critically, the next world better.

Labels ARE the Problem

RealClearPolitics - Labels Aren't the Problem

At least when we don't agree on what labels mean.

From the founding up until the 30's, "Left" meant "Control" -- Monarchy, socialism, dictatorship, communism ... "statism". Leviathan run amok.

"Right" meant "chaos" -- extreme liberty, anarchy, "Solitary, nasty, brutish and short".

America was founded as "center right" meaning to the traditional measure of "liberal" as being rooted in "liberty", purposely slightly more toward chaos than control, realizing the natural tendency of control (power) to continue to aggrandize itself and corrupt.

So ...

The No Labelers are also right to be repulsed by the replacement of real argument with a vicious brand of name-calling. When a president of the United States is attacked simultaneously as an "extreme liberal liar" and a "Nazi," there is a sick irrationality at work in our discourse.

It's only "sick and irrational" if one doesn't realize that the term "liberal" has been corrupted to mean "left", when it's real meaning is "right", and the Nazi's were "National Socialists" -- and socialism is part of the left. Given today's definition of liberal as left and socialism as being part of the left, it makes PERFECT sense to tie "liberal and Nazi together" -- all be it that it makes the corruption of the language relative to "liberal and liberty" very plain.

The basic difficulty arises from a false equivalence they make between our current "left" and our current "right." The truth is that the American right is much farther from anything that can fairly be described as "the center" than is the left.

This is proof that we have moved so far left after TR, Wilson, FDR, LBJ and W that our left can't really figure out how to go farther. The"right" is so far left of center that our founding fathers wouldn't even see it as "right" at all. It is "right" only compared to today's left -- compared to an objective view of left/right, both are parties are parties of the left.

He has also been mugged by reality -- EJ would like to see some lefties that don't believe in markets, but once the USSR fell and even China does it's best to support markets, it is as hard as finding a flat earther after spaceflight. Reagan, Thatcher, the fall of the USSR, the rise of India and China due to market based reforms -- now even SWEDEN following market reforms ought to be the economic equivalent of orbital spaceflight to a flat earther.

So EJ has a few problems. He doesn't understand what left and right is, the world has moved so far left he can't find anything to the left of it, and the obvious fact of markets (that could not even be stamped out by the USSR) has forced nearly everyone (EJ must be holding out) to realize that outlawing markets is like outlawing gravity -- it may sound nice to some ears, but "reality bites".

The problem of the left is that they have actually "achieved" more than is achievable -- and now it is clear that the bill for the unachievable of Social Security, Medicare, Health Care, etc can't be paid. We have run into the left wall and what EJ sees as "something missing" is merely the left bouncing off reality.

Even Sweden Gets It?

RealClearPolitics - The Brighter Europe

I've heard snippets of this elsewhere, but one can imagine that the MSM would be awfully quiet on it. Sweden has been the poster child for "socialism that works" for as long as I can remember -- to have that be a myth would be nearly as painful for the MSM and left in this country as the fall of the Berlin Wall. How can it be?? It just seems so cruel for our leftward elite to learn such harsh lessons as "there is no free lunch", "working hard and being responsible is the way to a good life", and "socialism only works until you run out of other people's money".

Man, if it keeps going this way, the next thing the liberals are going to have to find out is that Santa is a myth!

BO Explains Tax Deal

This actually looks about as close to the truth as one could get I think.

Bush Smiles, Media Weeps

Why George W. Bush must be smiling - CNN.com

CNN and the rest of the left remain in a tizzy over BO considering "extending the Bush tax cuts" -- a euphemism for "not doing a tax increase in a recession".

A major part of their consternation is that they believe their own marketing lies on the tax cuts:

The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 provided relief for middle- and upper-income Americas with much of the benefits going toward wealthier citizens, which they argued would accelerate economic growth. The tax cuts reduced rates cross the board on income, dividends and capital gains. They also slashed the estate tax while lowering the tax obligations of married and working poor Americans.

Much as "global warming" is now "climate change", they HAVE changed from merely always saying "tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans" to the slightly more truthful "much of the benefits going toward wealthier". The original ratios were the same as what we have just been discussing: $3 TRILLION for those less than $250K a year income, $700 Billion for those over $25K over a 10 year period. That is over 4x the benefit for those making less than $250K, thus showing the lie of that commonly uttered statement "tax cuts for the rich". In fact, it is really more dishonest that that number, because the folks over $250K are paying over 95% of the taxes.

Much of what Bush did was "reality based", so as reality on things like Gitmo, Patriot Act, jobs creation, etc, so much to the chagrin of the MSM and the far left, as BO is faced with reality rather than political campaign rhetoric, he is forced to bow to reality. It is possible that makes Bush smile, I don't know -- but to the reality based, it really isn't any sort of surprise at all. My guess is that Bush smiles when things are going well for America -- the exceptional America of limited government and personal liberty, while the media weeps for things going well for that America. The America they want is "US Europe" -- just like Greece, "free" only as in "free from religion, morality and patriotism".

Nor is the fact that the left continues to rail against reality surprising -- the only way they can actually "have their way" is a totalitarian regime, and while most of them don't realize that, it would be the ultimate result of their efforts. Thus, our founders wisely tried to make it difficult to have unlimited government ... the scourge of BO has yet again been an example of their wisdom.

Don't Put Down Lewis

Power Line

Apparently even Chris Mathews knows to not sell C.S. Lewis short -- I've loved everything my him that I've ever read, and I have a number of items that I still would like to get to.

BO Alienates the Middle

From Audacity to Animosity - WSJ.com:

Good Peggy Noonan. BO pretty much managed to alienate everyone on the tax deal -- which I'd argue isn't all that surprising for an anti-colonialist in a colonizing nation.

A failed Community Organizer isn't going to know how to be President, so up to now, he let Nancy and Harry drive. It is now clear they politically drove him in a ditch, so now he has decided to drive -- but of course he has never driven anything, not even a lemonade stand, so it is unsurprising that his lack of driving skills is painfully obvious to all sides!

The president must have thought that distancing himself from left and right would make him more attractive to the center. But you get credit for going to the center only if you say the centrist position you've just embraced is right. If you suggest, as the president did, that the seemingly moderate plan you agreed to is awful and you'll try to rescind it in two years, you won't leave the center thinking, "He's our guy!" You'll leave them thinking, "Note to self: Remove Obama in two years."