BO Knows Better

RealClearPolitics - The Interrogation Memorandums

One of the terrible things about Bush was that he was "arrogant", which is another way of saying that he didn't kneel to the left on every issue (only massive spending and prescription drugs). Well, that is sinful, you have to agree with those lefties 100%, they don't believe in diversity of thought.

The four most recent CIA Directors-John Deutch, George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden-all recommended against the release of these memorandums. President Obama's own newly appointed Director of CIA, Leon Panetta, also recommended against releasing the documents. Yet President Obama, in a seemingly relentless effort to discredit his predecessor, George W. Bush, made the memorandum available to the public anyway.

See, BO, the failed Community Organizer from Chicago knows more about gathering intelligence than the previous 4 CIA directors (2 of them appointed by Clinton) as well as his own current director, Leon Panetta. BO must be a joy to work for -- if you aren't going to take the advice of the folks you hired to do a job on a self-inflicted wound like the release of these memos, it is hard to imagine how you will have any working relationship at all when the time comes where other forces are dictating the game, lives are on the line, and outcomes are uncertain. Not surprising though, BO has never led anything in his life, he has probably never learned "you need to dance with the one you brung".

BO is obviously still a WHOLE lot more interested in defeating Republicans than al Quaeda. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome of his actions is going to be a lot of dead Americans. I'm not sure if he figures "we deserve it" and he will just do more aopology tours after a major city is a cinder, or we are burying 100's of K smallpox dead in trenches, or what. I guess as long as he can win the "torture" PR campaign, his position is "whatever".

Dear Mr President

Dear Mister President:

Thank you for helping my neighbors with their mortgage payments.You know the one's down the street who in the good times refinanced their house several times and bought SUV's, ATV's, RV's, a pool, a big screen, two Wave Runners and a Harley.

But I was wondering, since I am now expected to pay my mortgage and theirs, too, could you arrange for me to borrow their Harley now and then?

They also need help with their credit cards, when will you expect me to start making those payments for them too? I operate with a balanced budget, something neither you nor they seem to understand, but it requires planning and matching income to outflow.

P.S. I almost forgot - they told me they didn't file their income tax return this year. Should I go ahead and file for them or will you be appointing them to cabinet posts?

"Agressive" Interrogation Works?

Bush-era interrogation may have worked, Obama official says - CNN.com

Tell me it isn't so. I thought everyone knew that:

1. The Bush Administration used TORTURE
   
2. It was COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE!! (and they knew it)
   

Now the media generally didn't go all the way to telling you WHY they would continue doing this, but the answers seemed obvious to me:

1. They were stupid
2. They were evil
   
3. Most likely both.
   

But wait, now we find out that "torture" was "something that didn't leave a mark". Putting a fuzzy caterpillar on your terrorist that was afraid of bugs, THAT was acceptable! (but not if it was a stinging caterpillar). In the Clinton administration we pretty much established that it wasn't sex unless pregnancy and multiple births ensued. Now in the BO administration we have discovered that little kids at picnics are regularly torturing their friends if they put a fuzzy caterpillar on them? What's more, the evil lawyers that tried to claim that such was NOT torture ought to be PROSECUTED for their opinion.

I stand corrected, I guess under THIS definition of "torture", it IS really rampant in America -- at summer camp, in the back yard, EVERYWHERE. I've heard that some of the kids (no doubt destined to become evil Republicans) will even make the claim that the caterpillar bites/stings to try to terrorize their victims more! The SADISTS!!

But wait! "aggressive interrogation" works! Wow, what a concept. It is like when the teacher comes into the classroom, sees an insult written on the board and asks "who did it"? According to what the BO administration has now figured out after careful study, if the teacher was to say "nobody leaves this room until I find out", that MIGHT have a better chance of working.

I hope we do a government study on that. Maybe they should try to figure out if people respond to incentives / disincentives in general? Finding out that they did would obviously be a huge piece of new information to the BO administration.

Memo's To Be Proud Of

The Case for the ‘Torture Memos’ by Rich Lowry on National Review Online

I've read a few of the dueling "torture books" -- on the left, the "horror" of any sort of treatment short of a comfy chair, nice bed and three squares a day is of course barbaric. The very idea that any sort of "coercion" at all would be used is simply unconscionable. If that is your standard and you want to accept the consequences of it, then so be it. I really hope they see the treatment of "right wing extremists" as being worthy of such high standards. They seem to be already calling for highly paid Wall Street types that they deem to be responsible for the financial meltdown to be "taken out and shot", "horse whipped", "hung", or some other not very nice sentiment. I'm certain those desires are meant to be figurative, but it is odd how much gusto they seem to be able to gather against those nasty Wall Street types. I wonder if it would help if they realized those folks are 90%+ Democrats and gave tons of money to both BO and the Democrat party to help get control of Washington?

Of course, the stogy issue from the right is to make "torture" almost boring -- we put our special forces guys through waterboarding to help them get familiar with the approach in case it is used on them. Most of them have likely had a couple "boo boos" already in their careers -- fractures, contusions, lacerations, hypothermia, deydration, sleep deprivation, etc, etc, so they have seen some of that more painful side of life. It seems that pain is pretty unavoidable for those that get away from the keyboard / tv / high horse from time to time, so the issue sort of becomes "how much pain" pretty quickly.

Thus, the memos -- "where is the line"? As Lowry points out, in all of human history, and even most all of the countries in the world today, any such thought process isn't even an issue. If one decides that they have a responsibility to their fellow citizens to protect them from folks intent on killing then by any means possible, then what one is interested in is methods that work within some boundary that makes sense. Perfection isn't even a consideration.

I'm reminded of surgeons -- no question, even today with anesthetic, they inflict some severe pain -- in civil war times, the pain often had to be beyond unbearable. They don't WANT to inflict pain any more than a US interrogator, but they know that to not to the surgery is going to be worse than doing it. So too an interrogator, they only want the information, the pain is just a side effect. One would think that your average liberal utilitarian "what provides the most good for the greatest number", and "man is the measure of all things" would not be so bothered. I'm not sure there is any pain that could be inflicted on a baby in a partial birth abortion that would even give them any pause at all, and that has no prospect of saving any lives, only of taking one.

So the memos drag on about using a caterpillar (did these folks ever go camping?), how far you can push the waterboarding, and using using special "walls" to make a loud noise so the person thinks they are hurt worse then they are. Now that BO has spoiled all the surprise, getting captured by the US must be at worst as scary as a fun house where you can sit and watch everyone come out the other side. Now our enemies know that US policy never did allow any "lasting injury", and the new policy appartently doesn't allow any detainees to feel more stressed than your average Carribean cruise.

I'm wondering if we are going to maintain this attitude when we lose a city, a stadium, or a few million people to germ or poison attack? One would have thought that 9-11 would be enough for a little "learning experience", but apparently not. Lessons are so quickly forgotten by some parts of our population. I can kind of understand forgetting 32-53 and 65-83, but 2001 is < 8 years ago. One would think we would have more national memory than that. "The short and the dead" I guess.

Those Nasty Christians

State retracts militia report | News-Leader.com | Springfield News-Leader

Gotta love this.

Missouri Highway Patrol Superintendent James F. Keathley ordered the Missouri Information Analysis Center to "permanently cease distribution" of the Feb. 20 report, which labels fundamentalist Christians, members of third-party political movements, strict followers of the U.S. Constitution and people who oppose taxes, abortion and illegal immigration as possible members of militias.

Gee, I wonder if a state had profiled say "Muslims, Hispanics, and Blacks" as potential "terrorists, illegal aliens, and drug users" there would have been any outcry from Federal anti-discrimination and "hate speech" types? Suppose that would have lasted 2 months????

Oh wait -- Christians, Ron Paul followers, folks that believe the Constitution means something, think they are better judges of what to do with their money than the government DO sound like REALLY radical types!!!

Uh, wonder where the ACLU is on the profiling thing in this case???

Facts and Reason on Carbon

Bound to Burn by Peter W. Huber, City Journal Spring 2009

This article is long and slightly technical, but it probably does about as good a job of summarizing a fairly complex issue as can reasonably be done.

First of all, what we already HAVE been doing since roughly the Carter era is making decisions that hurt our economy and while they MAY help OUR emissions, end up hurting world net emissions (stopping nuclear, developing less coal, failing to do oil shale):

Cut to the chase. We rich people can’t stop the world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can’t even make any durable dent in global emissions—because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we’re foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.

So, most of our energy saving efforts shoot both ourselves and the world emissions in the foot. But, as the liberals often say, "you have to do SOMETHING" -- they nearly always prefer counterproductive action to a relatively benign status quo. It is just the way they are wired.

The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil—but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.

Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the “Zero-Infinity Dilemma.” The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable—but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn’t be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn’t melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor. But that’s a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion.

So BO has promised to do carbon taxes and "invest" 100's of Billions in wind and solar. The 3rd world is doing coal for 3 cents a Kwh. Wind is 15 cents, Solar is 30 (when the wind blows and the sun shines) -- so even though we have no path at all to getting to the capacity that we require, we would be paying 5 and 10x as much for energy as the folks we are competing with IF we could get it that way (which we can't). Want to make a bet what is going to continue to happen to our jobs? We are going to pay other Americans inflated government salaries to hamstring us with a sunk-cost in ultra expensive energy for decades to come. Our major ongoing cost of production, communication and even entertainment is going to be 5-10x that of our competitors. I wonder who wins at that game??

Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms. Meeting New York City’s total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses. What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance about how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.

It’s often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller—and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.

There is some complexity here, but the bottom line, as in most things where the BO position is followed is "we're screwed".

BO Attacks On Pirates

The BO administration is claiming that there was an unfortunate misunderstanding relative to his orders on the Somali Pirates.

Apparently he thought he was authorizing "a TAX on Pirates" and it was fatally misconstrued as the authorization of "attacks".

BO will be traveling to Somalia to bow deeply to as many leaders as possible, apologize profusely and seek agreement on more taxes for high income Pirates.

Safety With BO

"On a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009."

One thing that Democrats excel at even beyond the "political normal" for any politician is inconsistency. We have heard 100's or even thousands of times how "Bush made us less safe" -- and of course, one of the ways that he did that was through "torture". Bush and Cheney were and are evil men that made the world hate us, and one of the reasons that the world hates us is "torture".

What was more interesting was the accompanying statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, trying to justify Obama's decision--or at least put it "into perspective." The perspective, the context, is that in the months after 9/11, "we did not have a clear understanding of the enemy we were dealing with, and our every effort was focused on preventing further attacks that would kill more Americans. It was during these months that the CIA was struggling to obtain critical information from captured al Qaida leaders, and requested permission to use harsher interrogation methods. The OLC memos make clear that senior legal officials judged the harsher methods to be legal."

Blair continues: "Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines."

So: We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

So either those horrible methods actually worked to put those dark days behind us, or all that was required was the sweetness and light of the divine presence of BO to make us safe.

We have now decided to tell every terrorist in the world "what we won't do"; for what? For the "benefit" of being able to re-state that BO finds Bush and Cheney to be evil? They won the election, they have said it over and over, when will they believe that they have made that point enough so that those that find their positions to be convincing are convinced, and those of us who are much less enamored with the divine power of BO are not likely to be convinced by further blandishments.

What the evil Bush and Cheney did "made us less safe" according to BO. On that, we are clear. It was evil and it didn't work, that is their position. Now, somehow, we are "more safe". How are we "more safe" than no terrorist attacks on the US since 9-11?? Are we now somehow metaphysically secure to not even have a cause for any concern due to the holy power of BO? I don't know, they don't say -- it seems odd that pirates took a US ship for the first time in 200 years, we are sending more troops to Afghanistan, and we have to shoot at folks from Predators in Pakistan. Is their a flaw in his most holy BO protective essence?

What will convince me of the correctness of the "BO Doctrine" of apology and blaming the past" will be RESULTS. Statements from al Quaeda to the majesty of BO and their desire to serve him humbly, or simply silence and a world wide reduction of violence in addition to no attacks against the US. As a citizen of the US, I find a "blame America" strategy to to be costly in that while there are no limits on how high we might have risen, there will eventually be some doormat level that we can't manage to sink below. When we are apologizing for existing and drawing breath, the next step could be painful.

We have fallen a good long way since "the change" started in '06, but seeing the acceleration since January, I'm afraid there is a lot of falling left to do.

The stench of BO's America -- a nation sorry for it's very existance.

Kooks, Demagogues, and Right Wingers On Tax Day

A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and Right-Wingers On Tax Day | Robert Reich's Blog

The nice thing about the left is that they are always so caring and respectful--they believe whole heartedly in diversity, and as the intellectual cream of the crop, they know that diversity of thought is the only kind that really counts. That is why they are so open minded.

A buddy of mine asked me which of the key messages of the tea parties will resonate with the general public? That they are deranged, or that they are dangerous? I responded that with something like 80% of the public, even though it looks like millions turned out in protest, what will resonate is "Tea Party"? Who did that, and did anyone show up? I looked out on CNN today a couple times, not a word about the tax protests.

Mr Reich, and a few of the more radical of the lefties are of course up in arms about anyone showing up from the right to protest for any reason. What right do those people have to a different opionion? Well, to listen to Bob or most lefties, none at all. Our founding fathers created a nation dedicated to total thought agreement and maximum enjoyment of the payment of taxes. The essense of "American" is to transfer as much of your income as possible to the government to redistribute to any bank, deadbeat mortgate holder, defunct brokerage house, failing unionized car manufacturer, or just someone that has less money than you for whatever reason. The reasons we are all Americans is that we believe in the government taking as much of our money as they want, and anyone that questions that is simply "not patriotic".

I was unable to attend the local tea party as I had a business engagement that evening, but I did get to drive by. Looked like in excess of 1K people peacefully and quite quietly gathered with signs that were generally pretty tame -- "Trillions in Debt: CHAINS we can believe in" was pretty good I thought. What a far cry from Code Pink throwing buckets of blood on people or all manner of "Bush is a Terrorist", etc anti-war signs. Cindy Sheehan in a ditch outside the Bush ranch in the summer of '05 was a national story for weeks. One woman and some occasional hangers on saying "get out of Iraq" was worth hours of coverage, millions of people questioning the spending of many trillions of dollars is worth virtually none. Our press has no biases.

I shudder to think what would have happened if the Bush administration had come out with a Homeland Security finding on "Left Wing Anti-War Protesters" the week of some sort of planned anti-war demonstration. The press would have been apocolyptic for weeks -- and I'm not sure that if such a thing had happened, I might somewhat agree with them. Surprise, the BO administration comes out with a finding on "Right Wing Extremeism" on Monday of this week. Not a single MSM invocation of "chilling", even when the report goes so far as to indicate that "returning servicemen are a special threat". Oh, really? I thought the "demean the soldiers" went out with Vietnam -- apparently not.

A lot of the lefties seem to think that if you didn't protest a $400 Billion deficit, you can't protest $2 Trillion deficit. Huh? If I don't get mad over someone driving 40MPH, I'm not allowed to say anything about someone driving 200MPH? If I don't bitch about someone having 4 beers, I'm some sort of a hypocrite if I say that 20 is too many? There seems to have been a sudden development of some sort of logic that would receive rather shrill laughter were the shoe on the other foot. I believe that it is supposed to be the claim of the left that the right has all these "hard line views" and doesn't understand "gray". Most Republicans I know are "unhappy" with any deficits at all, were VERY pleased when the combination of the Repubilcan congress and Bill Clinton gave us a surplus, and VERY dissappointed when the combination for Bush and a Republican congress gave us deficits.

BO is exceeding the entrie Bush 8 year deficit spending in 4 months, and will exceed the entire deficit spending of all US presidents prior to him in 8 years by his own rosy estimates. The protests are not primarily about CURRENT taxation, they are about the DIRECTION that our country has turned. Some of us believe that we have turned in a direction that calls into question the very meaning of "America" in ways that may not be possible to ever recover. Are we right? Only the future will tell, but at one time we were a country where "diversity of thought" was considered a very good and prudent thing. We believed in not only an economic market, but even more importantly in a market of "idea competion" where concerned citizens were willing to stand up and take a postiion, even if (and sometimes especially) if it was contrary to the views of the masses.

Has that day passed? Maybe, but I'm proud to cast my lot with the "Kooks, Demagogues and Right Wingers".

Core Liberal Argument

Excellent coverage of the most effective liberal argument. 

SHUT UP!

BO Really Is Historic!

Hostage captain recaptured by pirates after dramatic escape attempt - Times Online

Hey, BO makes history! First US ship that pirates have taken in 200 years!!

More details have emerged about Wednesday’s dramatic seizure — and release — of the 509ft Maersk Alabama, which became the first US merchant vessel to be taken by pirates since the North African Barbary Wars two centuries ago.

The MSM doesn't seem to be making as much of a deal out of the historic nature of this one would expect! I got to read quite a bit about the Barbary Pirates in  "Six Frigates".

BO's Country?

RealClearPolitics - Articles - It's Your Country Too, Mr. President

Charles has another great column, but I disagree with his premise about the US being BO's country. BO seems to be more proud of being Luo (his tribe). He is very proud of his Kenyan heritage, but he seems quite ambivalent about white folks.

The MSM seems be in continuous worship mode and somehow seems to think that the BO trip to Europe was a "success" -- in what way? He got no stimulus money from those goverments, no help in Afghanistan, no help on Iran, and even less than no help on N Korea after saying:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

So what was the "strong international response"? Nothing!!! The security council couldn't even agree that Korea had done anything wrong. BO was snubbed 100%!!! Totally ineffectual with the UN, the body that he declared would be so important to his foreign policy. How does the MSM treat that abject failure? They don't -- "hail BO the magnificent".

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

It is pretty clear what BO meant by being "a citizen of the world" during the campaign -- he seeks to apologize for the country that he was elected to lead. It is hard to imagine a sadder commentary on where we have fallen.

The Culture of Debt

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Reversing America's Culture of Debt

Good article -- I'd argue that the core evil that caused a lot of this problem is the creation of FICA. The idea that "everyone deserves a decent retirement", independent of how much they saved over the course of their life pretty much instigates the idea that "I might as well enjoy myself now" -- because tomorrow, I'm taken care of.

Recently, America has been moving from a culture of ownership to a culture of debt. People went from wanting to own their home and car and have enough for retirement to making monthly payments on everything they consume while relying on someone else (the government) to pay all the bills when they get older.

We have also been moving to a culture of "economic relativism". Democrats for years kept piling on long term entitlements -- FICA, Medicare, Welfare, Foodstamps, etc, etc that were effectively "debt". The promises were made to their voting blocks, and the checks would have to be cashed by subsequent administrations and generations. Yes, Bush piled on the same stupidity with the prescription drug benefit, but it was something that very few Republicans supported. The saddest part about it -- and his daddy's tax increase, was that it muddied the waters. With the dominant culture being Democrat, it is very important for Republicans to stand very firm -- when they don't, as in the case of Bush Jr and Sr, but even in the case of Reagan with the big FICA increase and large deficits, it all adds to the "both parties do it, so we might as well have the Democrats, cuz they give us more".

The other nasty part of the relativsm is that the sheep get confused about the numbers. When Republicans are in power, the size of deficits are a never ending source of sensational articles in the MSM of how HORRIBLE the numbers are. Of course, when the Republicans are in power, we tend to have a growing GDP, which means that the deficits as a % of GDP are low. If I tell you "I spent $1,000", the only way that is really meaningful is if I tell you what I make -- $10K a grand spent is huge, $100K it is significant but only 1%, $1,000K, and it is "lunch money". So the Bush deficits of $400+ Billion were chided as "records" but only in raw numbers. As a % of $10T+ growing economy, they were not records.

Suddenly, deficit numbers in the $2 or even $3 Trillion area on a GDP that is shrinking are now of very little MSM concern. Other than the issue of "Are they big enough??".

These policies are a Trojan horse creating not only a mentality of government reliance, but also a mindset where a lifestyle of permanent debt is acceptable. Not long ago, someone paying massive interest to finance things they couldn't afford was looked upon as irresponsible, and their behavior shameful.

Now, instead of debt being an unfortunate necessity for massive purchases like a house, everything is being financed by interest-bearing debt. If you can't afford something, don't save up until you have the money, just put it on a credit card and pay 12% or 20% interest for years. This interest can double the sticker price, cutting in half people's purchasing power and plunging them ever-deeper into debt.

I'd argue that we got here long ago -- we just keep going deeper, and the BO policies have put us in hyperdrive going straight down.

The Lack of Knowledge Depression

Our Epistemological Depression — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

I'm starting to love that word even more. Epistemology, the study of knowledge and of the limits on man's ability to know.

In many cases, even more importantly, our willingness to jump to anything that SEEMS like knowledge because it "sounds good enough". We don't really like to think about complex things much, even less if the answers turned out are grey to maybe negative, vs nice quick judgments that seem to show our enemies to be wrong, evil and deserving of punishment while showing those that we like, and above all, ourselves to be brilliant and morally above reproach!!

So with our current financial situation, the congress, the president and the MSM grind away about "greed, rich folks and the failures of Wall Street" -- and how in hind sight, it is all so "obvious".

These factors have received a good deal of attention. But they are not the whole story, and certainly not the most original part of the predicament. What seems most novel is the role of opacity and pseudo-objectivity. This may be our first epistemologically-driven depression. (Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and limits of knowledge, with how we know what we think we know.) 

That is, a large role was played by the failure of the private and corporate actors to understand what they were doing. Most heads of ailing or deceased financial institutions did not comprehend the degree of risk and exposure entailed by the dealings of their underlings—and many investors, including municipalities and pension funds, bought financial instruments without understanding the risks involved. 

We should keep this in mind when we chastise government agencies such as the SEC for failing to monitor what was going on. If the leading executives of financial firms failed to understand what was taking place, how could we expect government regulators to do so? The financial system created a fog so thick that even its captains could not navigate it.

The article goes into a quite a bit of detail about how the financial firms were thinking and operating and that when it all went down, all the "features" that were supposedly there to "keep them safe" -- diversification, hedging, fancy mathematical models and "insurance" all turned against them and aided in the fall.

Confidence cannot just be conjured out of air. Nor can it be created with injections of capital or fiscal stimulus. It will be rebuilt to the extent that financial institutions take actions that lead us to believe that they know what they are doing. And they are more likely to know what they are doing if they are smaller, less diversified, and less engaged with financial instruments that are too clever by half. 

Some recent policies seem likely to exacerbate the problems I’ve outlined. Take the Treasury’s encouragement of institutional consolidation through amalgamation. Bank of America was encouraged to take over Merrill Lynch; and JPMorgan Chase took over Bear Stearns, and then bought the assets of Washington Mutual. Whatever the purported advantages of these takeovers, the creation of ever larger and more diversified companies makes it more likely that these firms will be plagued by the epistemological problems noted above. The Treasury has created more firms that can’t really be understood (or whose riskiness can’t be assessed)—not by their managers, not by government regulators, and not by investors. 

To speak of a crisis of financial epistemology may sound abstract, but it has had very concrete and disastrous consequences. Understanding this underrated aspect of our current crisis is a prerequisite for getting us out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into.

I think that McCain was more right than we know when he discussed the "recession" in early '08 as being more mental than anything. In the late '90s, the MSM was VERY worried that impeaching Slick Willie would "hurt the economy". Somehow, when it came to casting the Bush administration as completely corrupt, incompetent and to talk about the economy as "depressed", before anything severe had even happened, there was suddenly no "confidence issue".

As in a lot of things, confidence is a lot easier to destroy than it is to build -- like economies, countries, investment accounts, relationships, careers -- and so much more. It can take decades for the things to be built (or longer), but usually, it is possible to destroy much if not all of what was built in a very short period of time. Look at how successful the Democrats have been! They only took over congress in '06, and the WH and filibuster proof congress in '09, and already we have the worst economic numbers in at least 25 years and the largest deficits by all measures in the history of the world!

BO Likes Secret Wiretaps Now

Government opts for secrecy in wiretap suit

There would be some elements of a hopeful sign here if BO is ONLY going to follow the same very limited actions taken by the Bush administration to thwart terrorism. The REAL problem with the Bush did is and always was "precedent", which was made much more horrible by the media "outrage" over the "destruction of constitutional rights". Naturally, considering how buried this obvious move by BO to keep the same programs legal is, we can see that the REAL MSM focus was on "destruction of the Bush administration" -- which I must admit that they succeeded at very well.

The Justice Department said Friday that government agents monitored only communications in which "a participant was reasonably believed to be associated with al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization." But proving that the surveillance program did not sweep in ordinary phone customers would require "disclosure of highly classified NSA intelligence sources and methods," the department said.

Uh, Duh!!! Suppose that legally proving how you knew that some of these phone numbers were attached to al Qaeda would compromise getting that info in the future??? Who would have thunk it!!! Naturally, no such Bush defense would get even momentary consideration by the MSM as having any merit, but hey -- this is BO, we can trust him!!!

Unfortunately, I suspect that we can "trust him" to wiretap political adversaries, create a bunch of false indictments and do IRS audits against "enemies" like the Clinton administration liked to do. Of course, nothing to be worried about there, all those evil people would be on the RIGHT, and the MSM knows that they whatever THEY get, they deserve!!

Fluent Austrian?

Uh, gee BO, I think you will find that "Austrian" is not a language. He isn't sounding so good again -- maybe they don't have a teleprompter there?

How Could Al Qaeda Last So Long"?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Axelrod hits back at Cheney: Not behaving like a ’statesman’ « - Blogs from CNN.com

We all remember that supportive "statesman" Al Gore, and all the MSM criticism of him! Yes, former VPs coming out with such incendiary statements as "we think our policies were better" is something that certainly calls for condemnation.

I find it supremely ironic, on a day when we were meeting with NATO, to talk about the continued threat from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they're still plotting against us eight years — or seven years later," he said. "I think the question for Mr. Cheney is, how could that be? How could this have gone so long? Why are they still in business?"

Irony -- one of those things like beauty that tend to mostly be in the mind of the beholder. Now of course the MSM successfully spent a lot of time rubbing the nose of any Bush adviser that predicted that Iraq would be a "short battle" in it over and over -- and indeed, extended the comments of a few to be "administration policy that it would be short and easy", when the facts show that it was well understood to likely be a long hard slog.

So, we can be guarenteed that there will be no terrorist threat from Al Qaeda against the US in MUCH less than 7 years. It is utterly amazing to Mr Axlerod how even an administration that they have labled as "utterly incompetent" and "the worst ever" could not take care of this problem in less than 7 years. Let's not push them very hard, let's just assume that they are a mere 4x better than the "worst administration ever". That would mean that it would be "ironic" if there was still any remaining threat from Al Qaeda in 1.75 years. So by the time of the congressional elections next year, the new "better way" will have completely removed the Al Qaeda threat.

This is very useful. I'm sure the MSM will be reporting on that with the same alacrity that they are on this Axlerod comment.

BO Does Bush Impression

The great BO goes overseas where apparently not everyone in the press feels that licking his boots is the key function of "reporting". Looks like maybe no teleprompter for a change?

All of a sudden it is uh, ah, pause, uh ... and then a very meandering dissertation of who knows what. Of course, if he was a Republican, the nightly news would be the worst 15 sec sound bite!

The One Thing You Need to Know

About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, By Marcus Buckingham

This book is at the crossroads between business success directions and self-help. More on the business side. It is quite efficiently written, so I'll try to do the same in the review. There are 3 major points, I'll reverse his order because I think the last is applicable to all of us, the other two are less so.

1. The one thing you need to know about individual success -- "Discover what you don't like doing and stop doing it". Whenever you become aware of some aspect you dislike, do not try to work through it. Do not chalk it up to the realities of life. Do not put up with it. Instead, cut it out of your life as fast as you can. Eradicate it.
2. Are leaders born, or are they made? They are born. A leader is born with an optimistic disposition or she is not. If she is not, then no amount of "optimism training"is going to make her view of the world as optimistic as it needs to be to lead. To lead effectively you must be unfailingly, unrealistically, even irrationally optimistic. Like it or not, this is not learnable.
3. All managers excel at turning one person's talent into performance. They will succeed or fail based on their ability to make their employees more productive working with them than they would be working with someone else.

The rest of the book is coverage of why these 3 items are especially important, as well as supporting information and anecdotes as to why the specific positions taken are true. My belief is that these three items ARE as critical as indicated, and are very much related. If you are bad at the task of turning talents into performance, you aren't ever going to be a great manager, no matter how hard you work at it ... and indeed, by breaking rule one, you are most likely to fail.

The same sort of analysis is key relative to leadership -- are you leading or are you managing? They are very different things.

The idea to not do what you don't like (and will typically be bad at as well) is sort of a reverse on discovering your strengths. There is some logic here -- sort of like the discussion about Michelangelo doing "David" supposedly said he didn't "create", he just uncovered the image that was in the stone. By removing that which we do not like, we become better in touch with "what we are", and increase our chances for success.

Quick read, well written, fairly useful information from a big picture point of view. Recommended.

BO Bows In Respect

I guess BO must know where all the oil comes from!!

90% of Guns

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S. - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com

Common sense would tell you that the statement "90% of the guns used in crime in Mexico come from the US" is a lie. Virtually all of those guns are fully automatic, and fully auto guns are ALREADY illegal here, and have been since the '30s.

This article shows that the number comes from "Of those guns that have serial numbers indicating that they MIGHT come from the US and are sent here for tracing, 90% of them actually are from here"!

That is like saying that "90% of the crime committed in WI is committed by Minnesotans" when what you "meant" was that of the criminals that you found to have MN IDs, 90% of them actually turned out to be from MN".

Doesn't seem like a "mistake" does it? That is because it isn't -- it is an overt attempt to set the sheep up to support an "assault weapons" ban because "of all the harm our guns are causing in Mexico". This is how the lefty's and the MSM get the herd bleating in unison!

Steven's Charges Dropped

Some Alaskans See Stevens As Good As Vindicated : NPR

I'm sure this won't get nearly the coverage as his conviction one week before the election!! The article says "some Alaskan's think he would have won had he not been convicted the week before the election". Ya think?? Gee, he lost by a whole 1% even though he WAS convicted!! Sure glad that I have NPR to tell me that he MIGHT have won!!!

I wonder if this was reversed and a long time Democrat had lost, the Republicans had taken over the White House and the Congress with big margins, if there might be "one or two" media stories about how the legal system was used to take away a Senate seat???

Note, CNN finds there is some really big news this PM so the Steven's story can't make it on their page -- the HEADLINE is a "Struggle With Food Allergies"!!! Democrats outright manipulate an election to steal a Senate seat and then it turns out that they had no case!!!!

Not even a National Story!!!

Make Democrats Tax Exempt?

The Associated Press: Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes

Can BO find **ANY** Democrats without tax issues? It just becomes clearer and clearer why they are so much in favor of high taxes!! If you aren't going to pay them, it really doesn't make any difference how high they are!!

No Half Measures

Obama, Brown call for tough moves against economic crisis - CNN.com

BO seems to believe that mankind controls it's own destiny and that there is no need to have "cycles". I wonder if that means he is due to banish death? I've heard that is unpopular with a number of people and gives them the "false impression" that many really important things are not within their control. Oh well, I guess that is old pre-BO irresponsibility talking. Now that BO has got it all in hand, the future is only sweetness and light!

"We've passed through an era of profound irresponsibility," Obama said at a joint news conference. "Now, we cannot afford half-measures and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably burst. So we have a choice: We either shape our future or let events shape it for us."

Warming Heretic

The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile - NYTimes.com

Long article on Freeman Dyson -- sort of sad that the fact that he doubts Global Warming is somehow "controversial". He also is very anti nuclear weapons and has been a big war protester -- he is just a very intelligent man that keeps his own counsel. The kind of man that our founding fathers created America for, but now one that our elites find "inconvenient".

Heil BO, Der Corporate Fuhrer

GM and Chrysler failing to turnaround. Wagoner out. - Mar. 30, 2009

Forget shareholders. Forget the Board of Directors. Forget the Constitution. Forget it all, this isn't America any more, it is the Obamination!!! Der Fuhrer has spoken!

This **is** "National Socialism". "Nazi" is derived from "National Socialism" -- the hallmark of SOCIALISM is redistribution of income and the "safety net". The hallmark of communism is the government just 100% takes over everything.

Nazis like BO are very tricky -- they essentially raise lying to a new art form, and the removal of Wagoner is a great example. BO ousts the CEO, names a replacement, and then says that the government is going to back car warranties! ... But THEN, he clearly states that "he doesn't want to be in the car business"!!! What does that mean? Well, it is a direct bold faced lie! Nazis redefine EVERYTHING in political terms -- Der Fuhrer is god, leader, father, brother, boss -- everything. We aren't "in danger of turning Nazi", we are THERE!!!

Where in the constitution under the "separation of powers" does it say that the President can remove a corporate CEO??? Where are all the people that talked about how "chilling" it was when Bush tapped calls to known terrorist cell numbers?

Nowhere. The sheep are bleating quietly.

Heil BO!!!

Seeing the Space Station

My recent quest to watch the ISS pass over was rewarded this evening on the 8:53 orbital pass. I found the time and likely magnitued on HeavensAbove walked out the front door at 8:50, and right on schedule, a nice yellowish bright object began rising in the W-NW. I was actually surprised that it wasn't faster, but then when I watch it on the satellite tracker on the web, it doesn't exactly race along the screen either -- even at 16,500 an hour, it takes over an hour for it to get all the way around, and it was visible for close to 3 min.

The listed magnitude was -2.5, which is brighter than the brightest star, and close to Venus (magnitude 4.0) ... I'd guess it was about that as it got to around 45 degrees, but I was surprised that it was already getting dimmer by the time it went over and when it got to like 70 degrees in the E-SE sky, it rapidly declined in brightness and winked out -- my assumption is that it went into the earths shadow at that point.

It is easy to see, so probably worth going out on a reasonable evening and seeing it.

Pin Drop Patriotism

This showed up in my mail with the "pass it on if you are proud to be an American". Having Bush named in it prominently made me reflect on  how we heard from celebrities that they wanted to leave the country when Bush was elected, how little actual policy difference there was between Bush and Clinton, and how few folks from the right you hear talking about leaving the country now. 

I suspect that the pride in America for most on the right has not changed much, since HISTORY has meaning in our constrained vision. For those on the left, "today is what counts" -- the mere election of Bush was outside of their vision and something that caused them to question that vision. For those of us that are of the constrained vision, a country picking BO is all too understandable. We see human nature as a constant, so the selection of leadership that operates against the very values of America is no surprise at all. 

I suspect that Snopes or somebody has found things to say this is "apocryphal" (like "myth") ... well, so be it. This is the sort of America that I believe in. 

We just elected a complete hoax to be president -- I'm guessing none of the "fact checking" sites will bother to point that out! 

On to the "Pin Drops"

When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying, 'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?'  

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'

You could have heard a pin drop.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S. , English,Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was  chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

AND

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. "Then you should know enough to have your passport ready." The American said, ''The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."  

"Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France !" The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

If you are proud to be an American, pass this on!

Not Being Europe

The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

This is a FANTASTIC article by Charles Murry. I rate it a "must read", it is slightly long, but he is a solid writer and it is EXTREMELY well thought out. Best of all, it ends on a HOPEFUL NOTE!! Not very common among those that think with their brains in these times. Don't be distracted by my prattling ... skip it and just go read it yourself!

One of the main things I dislike about BO and many Democrats is that they fail to understand the very core of what makes America unique and special in the world! I've only recently discovered that is because they believe in the "unconstrained vision", and one of the many things they are unconstrained from is HISTORY! They are 100% positive that their current ideas are better than any before in the history of mankind. They tend to apologize for America, and their general attitude in looking at Europe, or even Canada is "hey, the grass looks greener over there!".

Putting aside the fact that without the exceptionalism of America, we would all be speaking German today, there is (or at least WAS, pre-BO) more to America than money!

First, the problem with the European model, namely: It drains too much of the life from life. And that statement applies as much to the lives of janitors—even more to the lives of janitors—as it does to the lives of CEOs.

I start from this premise: A human life can have transcendent meaning, with transcendence defined either by one of the world’s great religions or one of the world’s great secular philosophies. If transcendence is too big a word, let me put it another way: I suspect that almost all of you agree that the phrase “a life well-lived” has meaning. That’s the phrase I’ll use from now on.

"Drains too much of life from life" -- from the few trips that I've taken to Europe, that is a really good description. Life is "secure", but also "closely controlled and boring" -- there is no "future potential". If your historic family had some kind of a home, you may be able to keep living there, if not, you are in a price controlled very small apartment and that is where you will stay. The old joke of "you are born, life is hard, then you die" is replaced by, "you are born, life is predicable and easy, then you die". It SEEMS like that ought to be "better", but it turns out that it isn't.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

"Nothing worth having comes easily". We all know that to be true, yet the mass culture often encourages us to forget it. So how do we get worth? Largely "relationships in organizations" (including very small ones like a family).

If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith. Two clarifications: “Community” can embrace people who are scattered geographically. “Vocation” can include avocations or causes.

He talks about the whole social democrat program boiling down to "having the government take some of the trouble out of things" -- about where that is good (eg. having an FAA and having a police force), and then discusses what the problem with it is:

The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality—it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable.

When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away.

There is the precision of "the life out of life", and a better job of capturing the reasoning that I've tried to impart about why it is that BO actually hurts those at the "bottom" of life more than those at the top. Even if he takes ALL the money from those at the top! The people at the "top" believe what they are doing is important! Many of the people at the "bottom" very much need families and the local church to make their lives worth living!

He then goes into some of things that are being found and that he imagines will be heeded, he talks about Consilience, which I blogged on previously. I would love to share his optimism on the reasonableness of the "anointed" on the left, but I fear that the their vision of "heaven on earth" is far too strong to believe that "human nature can not be changed" -- they have gone down this path before, most famously in Nazi Germany, and modern methods may well just make them more virulent -- eugenics, drugs, brain washing, taking children from families -- when the ends justify the means and there is no belief in a higher power doing any judging, there is literally no limit to the methods they might seek to employ. However, I applaud Murray on his optimism -- it is better psychological policy to believe him than me!

The second tendency of the new findings of biology will be to show that the New Man premise is nonsense. Human nature tightly constrains what is politically or culturally possible. More than that, the new findings will broadly confirm that human beings are pretty much the way that wise human observers have thought for thousands of years, and that is going to be wonderful news for those of us who are already basing our policy analyses on that assumption.

But the real effect is going to be much more profound than making my job easier. The 20th century was a very strange century, riddled from beginning to end with toxic political movements and nutty ideas. For some years a metaphor has been stuck in my mind: the 20th century was the adolescence of Homo sapiens. Nineteenth-century science, from Darwin to Freud, offered a series of body blows to ways of thinking about human beings and human lives that had prevailed since the dawn of civilization. Humans, just like adolescents, were deprived of some of the comforting simplicities of childhood and exposed to more complex knowledge about the world. And 20th-century intellectuals reacted precisely the way that adolescents react when they think they have discovered Mom and Dad are hopelessly out of date. They think that the grown-ups are wrong about everything. In the case of 20th-century intellectuals, it was as if they thought that if Darwin was right about evolution, then Aquinas is no longer worth reading; that if Freud was right about the unconscious mind, then Nicomachean Ethics had nothing to teach us.

Here it is, that which was once the unique province of Americans -- an optimism that "they will make the future better", not only in some "responsible aggregate", but for THEM -- for their own families! What is more, their children will do the same and the country will just continue to get better! And it DID! or at least it did until we decided to start throwing it away and heading down the wrong road in '06.

American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I’m thinking of qualities such as American optimism even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it. That’s quite uncommon among the peoples of the world. There is the striking lack of class envy in America—by and large, Americans celebrate others’ success instead of resenting it. That’s just about unique, certainly compared to European countries, and something that drives European intellectuals crazy. And then there is perhaps the most important symptom of all, the signature of American exceptionalism—the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. It is hard to think of a more inspiriting quality for a population to possess, and the American population still possesses it to an astonishing degree. No other country comes close.

Note that class warfare is at the CENTER of the BO agenda! He seeks to "blame the successful", and new dangerous levels of envy and outraged are spread to the masses every day now. I'll let Murray close here -- I agree that it is important that this happen, I shudder to think "how"?

What it comes down to is that America’s elites must once again fall in love again with what makes America different. I am not being theoretical. The possibility that irreversible damage will be done to the American project over the next few years is real. The drift toward the European model can be slowed by piecemeal victories on specific items of legislation, but only slowed. It is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.

Saint Pelosi

On a Saturday afternoon, in Washington D.C., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's aide visited the Cardinal of the Catholic Cathedral.

He told the Cardinal that Nancy Pelosi would be attending the next day's sermon, and he asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Pelosi to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Pelosi a saint.

The Cardinal replied, "No. I don't really like the woman, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over certain of Pelosi's views." Pelosi's aide then said, "Look. I'll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to your church if you'll just tell the
congregation you see Pelosi as a saint."

The Cardinal thought about it and said, "Well, the church can use the money, so I'll work your request into tomorrow's sermon." As Pelosi's aide promised, House Speaker Pelosi appeared for the Sunday sermon and seated herself prominently at the edge of the main aisle.

And, during the sermon, as promised, the Cardinal pointed out that House Speaker Pelosi was present.

Then the Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation -- "While Speaker Pelosi's presence is probably an honor to some, she is not my favorite person. Some of her views are contrary to those of the church, and she tends to flip-flop on many other views. Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a thumb sucker, and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief.

Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed.

She married for money and is using it to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for shirking her Representative obligations both in Washington, and in California. She simply is not to be trusted."

The Cardinal completed his view of Pelosi with, "But, when compared to Senators Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, and John Kerry, House Speaker Pelosi is a saint."

Type "O" in the Water

O'S FOREIGN FAILURES - New York Post

Great article.

AMERICA'S enemies smell blood and it's type "O."

All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing. But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence.

He goes on to cover a litany of sad facts from the first couple months of BO. As I predicted, we have a President that finally looks to be able to fill that Democrat dream of making Jimmy Carter seem like a decent president!

Apart from Iraq a success Sen. Obama did all he could to prevent his foreign policy's an instant wasteland. By comparison, the Carter administration is starting to look like a model of manly strength, courage and patriotism.

Those Horrible AIG "Bonuses"

Op-Ed Contributor - Dear A.I.G., I Quit! - NYTimes.com

Just read the article -- and weep. This nation has driven off a cliff and is lighting boosters to see if we can accelerate into the ground. We are beyond madness.

Nervous In Boston?

Cool it on the bonus blowback - The Boston Globe

Beantown isn't known as exactly a bastion of conservatism. Could it be that even some of the snobs of Kerry/Kennedy ville realize that there is danger that lurks in "off with their heads populism". Especially when it is "your own team" -- Democrats, that were completely responsible for all sides of the bonus dilemma. Would that Republicans could have seen the danger on turning their backs on their own guys and merely going for "a pox on both your houses"!!!

Ater all, Congress created the AIG bailout plan, with input from the White House economic team. Either lawmakers knew what was in it when they voted for it, or voted for it without knowing important details. If they are angry at anyone, it should be at themselves, for failing to fulfill their responsibility as fiscal watchdogs.

The same holds true for Obama's economic team.

The AIG contracts, which provide for the bonuses regardless of performance, were written in March 2008. A full year later - after the taxpayers became 80 percent owners in AIG with a $165 billion bailout - the bonuses were protected by a special provision inserted into the stimulus law by Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd.

So, the lefty media is telling it's boys to just shut up and move on! When you are in a hole, STOP DIGGING!!!!

Pretty hard for folks with egos the size of Dodd and BO -- we shall see.

The Vision of the Anointed

I'm on a Thomas Sowell binge I guess. The subtitle of this one is "Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy". I like his terminology of "constrained vs unconstrained" used in Conflict of Visions better, but this one is even more readable, and focuses on the real use of the unconstrained vision in social policy with disastrous results that are never allowed to be attributed to "vision problems" because the media is part of the "anointed".

He mostly calls unconstrained "anointed" in this book, the constrained is either called "benighted" or "tragic". I think "tragic" is OK, since it points to the "tragedy" of mans position -- limited, flawed, mortal and all the while tending to think far more of ourselves than an unbiased "higher power" likely would.

I think he does a great job of capturing how the anointed put their ideas over on the sheep:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious. (remind anyone of Global Warming?)
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe. (Stimulus?)
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few. (Carbon Cap and Trade)
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes. (The Surge HAS failed -- Harry Reid, before it started)

One of the points Sowell  hammers home very well is how the anointed find the decisions of "others" to always be wrong -- it makes no difference if they are the cumulative decisions of thousands of years of law and culture or the combined decisions of a market of millions or even billions of people, the anointed believe in their vision of "justice" or "equality" or "morality" with such fervor that there will be no consideration for alternate views whose results they blame for all problems. Their vision will fix all that -- TOMORROW! Their perfect ends justify use of any means.

I love this quote from Hayek: "Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. "

Well said!

This is about as true as it gets: "Systematic processes tend to reward people for making decisions that turn out to be right-creating, producing great resentments among the anointed, who feel themselves entitled to rewards for being articulate, politically active, and morally fervent".

I enjoyed his discussion on the political left and right. "Among the many thoughtless labels which have gained currency, the dichotomy between the political left and right is one of the most striking, not only for its wide acceptance, but also for its utter lack of definition--or even an attempt at definition. Essentially, only the left is defined -- very loosely, and "the right" is just defined as "those that are opposed to the left". As he points out; "Although the free market is the antithesis of state control of the economy, such as fascists advocate, the left-right dichotomy makes it seem as if fascists are a more extreme version of "conservatives"".

I find his "constrained/unconstrained" to be a MUCH better description of the differences that we commonly refer to as "left/right" or "liberal/conservative" in this country.

It is hard to leave this book without having a significantly negative prospects for the long term chances of the US. The anointed are never interested in the actual results of their policies, in fact, when one of their policies like "the war on poverty" INCREASES poverty, that is simply a call to do more of the same!

The same sort of problem is very severe in the case of the courts. While those of the tragic vision feel that a constitution is meant to be followed and only amended by the procedures for amendment that were set down at the founding, the anointed feel that each case ought to be judged on "the best capabilities of the judges on that day". Sadly, since the those of the tragic vision have a strong desire to preserve precedent, the nation continues to legally drift to the vision of the anointed with very little prospect but for the "rate of slide" to be slowed during some periods of history.

I highly recommend the book and at this point suspect that I need to try to find the time to read most everything this guy has written.

Punch Drunk

It is a rather good description -- is it really that funny to have millions unemployed and the government throwing TRILLIONS at every nook and cranny that they can, including million dollar retention bonuses -- that were a "mistake"??

BO Special Olympics

NYTimes' Cooper Somehow Misses Obama 'Special Olympics' Jab | NewsBusters.org

So the great and powerful BO has made a quip about "The Special Olympics" on national TV. Naturally, the RIGHT thing to do about this is for him to "apologize and move on" -- he has, and it appears that to the entire national media, this has happened. Let's think about why this is.

Those on the right believe that ALL humans are flawed and prone to saying AND even "believing" (deep down) things that are "inappropriate". BO saying this is as expected. In fact, the difference in the actual "innate goodness" of Mother Teresa and Hitler isn't all that much -- it is more about "who is driving" -- God, or "other". Even in the case of Mother Teresa, the amount of "God direction" is exceedingly low compared to Jesus (100%) -- BUT, a very little God makes a VERY big difference!

Those on the right believe in CONSISTENCY -- "do unto others". They know they would defend themselves or someone on their side of the political spectrum if they did something "equivalent" -- say misspelled "potato", got drunk and said something about Jews while being arrested (Mel Gibson), etc.

On the left, the NYT and most of the MSM have done about all they can do to completely ignore that it even happened, and when they DO mention it is to assure everyone that it is nothing at all -- doesn't do ANYTHING to diminish him in ANY way. In fact, maybe it makes him better!!

Since they care NOTHING for consistency, and "do unto others" is some sort of "radical religious idea", it bothers them none at all that if Bush, Rush, Newt, or even a midly conservative entertainer (Mel Gibson) did this, they would do all they could do to destroy him in any way possible! It WOULD be  EITHER a very serious character flaw, or very serious stupidity!!! It would be important for the "violator" to answer the question over and over that effectively is "Are you evil, stupid, or both?" ... and in what ratio???

Were Bush to have made this comment, it would be "bigger than Misunderestimated". If Sarah Palin said this, she would be FINISHED politically!!

This is the America we live in. To not realize this is to ignore reality plain and simple.

Constant Campaign

Obama re-enlists volunteers to build support for agenda - CNN.com

One of the horrible things of the Bush administration was that the evil Karl Rove constantly worked with a large national organization to try to "control the message". It was often brought out as somehow immoral, and some how "inappropriate" for the Bush administration to try to "influence people". It also had connotations of "big money" being involved.

One of BAD things about the Bush White House was that it was supposedly "in constant campaign mode".

I'd argue that it WASN'T nearly enough in "campaign mode" and that turned out to be a HUGE problem for both Bush and Republicans in general.

So, what would be different now??? This is bigger? The amount of money that BO has to do this kind of thing is more vast than has ever been seen?

Oh, wait -- BO is good, and Bush was EVIL. Yes, that's it!!!

Iraq Anniversary

Got a chance to hear a little NPR piece on the anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. In the past, I've been lucky to hear a few of these, and they tended to dig into the "lost cause" aspects with gusto. Today had a certain sad and haunting quality as they sent reporters to Fallujah to talk to people about how much they had lost. I really didn't get a chance to hear the whole thing -- one of the problems of radio and the car, but it struck me how certain NPR is. They were certain Iraq could not be run, now they seem certain that it was too costly. Apparently the costs of living under Saddam Hussein are "free" -- sort of like the costs of Castro dictatorship, USSR Gulags, or Mao killing his millions.

Meanwhile, the BO budget deficit is now projected at $2 TRILLION -- Bush getting close to hitting $500 Billion was a scandal for them. The only issue now is that it is important for people to understand that we need "Education, Green Energy and Federal Healthcare" to get out of this. Apparently, there is no such thing as too big a deficit for NPR when we have a Democrat for President.

The new organic garden at the White House that includes arugula was also an important news item!!

Ah yes, publicly funded radio.

Dodd-ering Bonus?

Amid AIG Furor, Dodd Tries to Undo Bonus Protections He Put In - FOXBusiness.com


Think that the financial crisis has any Democrat fingerprints? Gee, AIG alone gave over $100 grand each to Dodd and BO. Early on in the campaign I wondered why BO was getting a huge amount of his money from the financial houses.

If the MSM would report it, everyone would know why now!

That Dodd actually WROTE THE PROVISIONS in the TARP under which these bonuses were paid and is now talking about taxing them would get a LOT of ink were Dodd a Republican.

Maybe Suicide and Stay?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time - Blogs from CNN.com

Nice to see our elected officials having a good time beating up on businessmen that actually make and LOSE money. Taking money by force, spending that and trillions more on pork while flapping your jaws randomly must be quite respectable in some circles. The average person in prison is probably only about twice as trustworthy as 90% of our Senators.

Given the size of the Federal Deficit and the general ineptitude of our government, potentially we would be MUCH farther ahead if the Senators all committed suicide and STAYED in their positions!!

Grassley's initial comments came Monday afternoon during an interview with Iowa radio station WMT. During the interview, Grassley endorsed what he viewed as Japan's corporate model, saying it is customary for failed executives to either relinquish their posts or commit suicide in disgrace.

"In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology," he said during that interview.

I wonder if Chuck is aware that Japan has been in a deeper recession than we are currently in since '92 and shows no sign of getting out? Does he endorse their RESULTS as well as their practices?

Seems to me that committing suicide prior to making the apology at least guarantees that the apology won't be wordy. In the case of the Senators, I think doing the suicide prior to the apology would REALLY save a lot of time -- heck, Biden might never get around to the permanent exit if he was doing an apology with words.

Bottom?

How Will We Know When the Economy Hits Bottom? - NYTimes.com

This article contains 3 very well done charts. There is no way of knowing if history is any guide at all to the future, but it is pretty much the only thing we really have to look at. Based on the P/E ratio, we MIGHT be either just at, or close to a bottom in the market.

The consumer spending chart would indicate that we are still at pretty high levels of spending relative to savings and will likely need to do some more catchup before we "return to the mean".

The housing chart is the most depressing of the 3 -- Fannie, Freddie and the Democrats took us a LONG way up a steep bubble and we likely to have to drop another 30-40% before we are close to returning to THAT mean.

History is no Guide

Commentary: Don't let history be your guide to investing - CNN.com

The following information is quite interesting:

Historically, stocks have produced the greatest long-term return of any financial asset, and "stocks for the long term" was the traditional mantra.

The thinking was that investors took on a worthwhile risk by putting money in stocks rather than taking the guaranteed interest on a U.S. Treasury bond. The idea was that the risk would be justified by stocks posting a better return than bonds. But by the end of 2008, for the first time ever, we saw a 25-year period in which long-term U.S. Treasury bonds actually outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 stocks

So are bonds a good bet now?

A word of warning about long-term Treasury bonds. I think rates are likely to rise, probably quite sharply, over the next few years, which would clobber the prices of existing bonds. My reasoning: As the world financial panic (which has turned Treasury securities into a supposed safe haven) abates and the impact of huge U.S. government budget deficits is felt as the government has to sell vast amounts of bonds to raise money, rates have nowhere to go but up.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify ...

Cutting The Cable

Dreaming of cutting the subscription TV cord | Digital Media - CNET News

In the BO Economy, doing with less is the expectation. One pretty much has to have the internet in the current world unless we are down to ARs and beans over the fire. A discussion of some ways to get by without cable.