When Giants Fall

The subject book by Michael Panzner is an orgy of doom and gloom, but the reasons why along with any potential for escape are cloudy at best.

"For many Americans, the years ahead will be nothing short of a Modern Dark Ages, where each day brings forth fresh anxieties, unfamiliar risks, and a deep sense of foreboding ..."

He does go on to assert that an "enlightened few" that have things firmly in grasp could do well, but after reading the book, I'd have to say that other than being a survivalist with some buried gold, he is short on advice for how the "enlightened" might get along.

Why is all of this coming upon us? There is no one clear reason, but here is an example :

"Now though, the circumstances that have made the United States a beacon of light and the economic and cultural agenda setter over the course of many decades are changing. Many blame the disastrous military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the newfound acceptance of barbaric torture techniques and scandals like the mistreatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, others put it down to a general sense of arrogance, of unilateral decision making and hubristic exceptionalism, especially during the two terms that President George W. Bush was in office."

Again, the guy is clearly no neocon -- two terms of George Bush may well have been what killed America! Certainly not a very robust nation, in that merely ONE horrible President, even with the very able 2-year assistance of a fully Democratic congress could irreparably destroy the nation. Think of it -- we survived the '60s and '70s ... Bay of Pigs, the massacre at My Lai -- is killing women and children in cold blood worse than harassing Iraqi prisoners? the loss of 50K lives in Vietnam in complete ignominious defeat, assassinations of two Kennedy's and MLK, Watergate, the economy running to 20+ % inflation and 13%+ unemployment --- BUT, we were brought down by two wars in which we have lost less than 10K soldiers and which at this writing, there seems to be every prospect that we will win both of them!!! Wow.

I'm not so sure the guy is wrong, but I think it has a lot more to do with "America" than it does with Bush -- for the first time in my lifetime, the MSM / elite in this country decided that they so thoroughly hated a president that there were no boundaries on how they would attack him. It is reminiscent of diseases like arthritis or MS where the immune system goes nuts and attacks the body. Humans are designed to live in groups of 250 people or less, and we are wired to do whatever it takes to "maintain enough status to breed" (and to protect our families / offspring) within that group. When the leadership of "our group" identifies someone in the group as "unclean/beneath contempt/outcast", it is well documented that we are "wired" to "pile on" -- it is too late for that one, the only way to save ourselves is to "go with the group".

I think our mass media has crossed a boundary where for most Americans it supercedes whatever their "actual group" is (work, family, church, etc) and the level of disparagement of Bush made him our "ultimate pariah". Oddly, mankind seems to have evolved an odd type of creature sometimes called an "iconoclast" -- which I prefer to call "Moose". I feel most comfortable far outside of the "common wisdom" because I find nearly all common wisdom to just be "popular foolishness".

The rest of the world is well enough wired to our media that the spectacle of a supposedly great nation completely turning on a leader that they had elected a mere two years before in a growing economy with no major policy changes was simply too much to maintain any respect for. When that sudden change of heart was coupled with a radical shift to the left in '06, most of the world validly saw us as just plain nuts. But I digress, this guy thinks it is "Bush" -- and that is a popular view.

Whatever the reason, he is convinced that the age of the unipolar US dominated globe is over, and as the US itself descends into financial, industrial and military ruin, the squabbling for leadership among China, Russia, Europe, Venezuela, etc will speed the worldwide decline.

"Worries and resentments over falling wages, surging unemployment, and the widening gap between righ and poor will also rouse nationalistic, protectionist, and xenophobic hostility. Throughout the world there will be a push for tighter borders and controls on the flow of people, goods, and capital. Immigrants and foreigners will become scapegoats for domestic ills. Meanwhile, a variety of home-grown woes will stir up social unrest, triggering obstructive and antagonistic responses. In many cases, governments will implement ill-conceived policies, including hyperinflationary expansion of the money supply, which will engender further instability. Enfeebled nations will see the reins of power commandeered by populists or tyrants. Some will tap the destructive energy of old rivalries or demonize wealthier rivals, including the United States."

Here is a little quote from a guy named JR Nyquist that I found interesting:

As it happens, men are not global creatures. They speak a specific language, relate to a specific culture, and share specific historical experiences. Although it may sound enlightened to say that we are "all one", it is nonetheless untrue. We are not one. We are individuals with individual traits and attachments. What attaches me to the globe is nothing compared to the reality of language, culture, family and tribe. Every individual has a motherland and a mother tongue. There are national sentiments and national interests.

Very well put -- and for BO, that is KENYA and the Luo Tribe!!!

"To cynical observers, the 1973 publication of "Small is Beautiful" market the peak of hysteria about the limits to growth. ... Perhaps it is ironic that despite decades of apparent evidence to the contrary, Schumacher's vision of the future has not disappeared from view."

Welcome back to the age of malaise! Economic freedom inspires risk taking and innovation which provides growth that breaks down the old "limits to growth". There is a strange paradox that for the "liberal" that finds any restriction on sexual behavior from marriage to sticking with the opposite sex or same species to be restrictive beyond belief, the idea that folks ought to be able to labor at the job of their choosing and keep most of the money they make is scandalous beyond belief!! The "cynics" are the ones that believe that the human mind and ingenuity is unlimited, and of tremendously more importance than the supposed "limits to growth". Potentially, if the average liberal spent 1/10th as much brainpower on new economic horizons as opposed to new sexual horizons, the malaise could be subdued!!

"After years of ever-growing profits, easing regulations, and a yawning gap between the incomes of workers and those at the top, political and social pressures will force the pendulum back the other way. The result will be increasing taxes on businesses and their overseers, restrictive legislation and political interference, tougher rules on governance and executive compensation and pressure for payoffs and handouts ... "

And the result? Well, less for everyone of course!!

In many ways, this book is like one of those reality chase videos on TV where the fleeing car is driving erratically and very fast, with an ever tightening police pursuit -- it becomes certain that there will be a bad crash at the end, but it is impossible to see how to prevent it. Our vehicle "made impact" in '06 when we put the drunken Democrats in charge of Congress, and in '08 when we handed the wheel to the Kenyan Obozo, we drove off the cliff of unknown height and now we just await the sudden stop at the bottom.

Oh, if you are feeling happy and wonder what depression is like, it will work! I wish there was a little less truth in it.

The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century

The subject book by Thom Hartmann is actually a lot "better" in that it is fairly well written. Thom took over the mike on Air America from Al Franken and is considered the most influential "progressive" radio host in America. One really should read through the Wikipedia entry for him just to see what sort of nutcases have influence with the left in this country. Thom hasa PHD!! in homeopathic "medicine" -- the "medicine" where one dilutes substances to the level where single molecules or less exist in the "dose". It has been known to be complete quackery for a least 100 years, yet Thom has a "PHD" in it!!!

Among his other wacky beliefs is that John Kennedy was murdered by a trio of mafia dons. There are a couple of quotes from the book that I find to be base concepts of the liberal mind:

"It's not human nature that is broken or sick, it's our culture, which has spread across most all of the world. The culture of domination and conquest. Of the thousands of tribes on earth, only one has gone so insane that they'd lock up food and make people work like slaves to earn it. And that tribe, that culture, is ours".

That "insane tribe" is the US for Thom -- and from looking at a list of his other books and writings, one can pick out that he is CERTAIN that ANYTHING is better than the current US culture!!! One really wishes that Thom could spend a few joyus months in Mogadishu or with some other similar "better tribe".

"... I guess it would mean that I couldn't continue to just get along and go along, to feed the machine of the multinational corporations and the kings and the despots of the world, to be a wage slave. I'd want to find a way to make a living that wasn't toxic to the earch, to other humans, to all life".

There you have it ... why don't we all live in some way that makes zero impact on the planet? Amish maybe? He didn't say HOW -- he just said what needs to be done.

This guy is a best selling author and his radio show took over the slot of a guy that was elected SENATOR !!! He is a radical new age quack and he is the most influential liberal talk show host in America!!!

Airport for Nobody

Remote Murtha airport lands big bucks from Washington - CNN.com

Remember the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska? One of those horrible examples of Republican pork that helped the MSM and the Democrats bring down that Republican majority? You ought to, it was covered like crazy.

Take a look at the silent little $200 Million taxpayer funded airport used by an average of 20 people per day!!! Courtesy of John Murtha, Democrat. Plus, it goes on giving -- we can only hope that more people don't use it, since each ticket is subsidized by the Feds for $100!!

War With BO is OK

For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all | Washington Examiner

I happened to be out on the road for a few days and got to see a bunch of old "Bush/war" bumper stickers. So if the wars were so horrible with Bush in office, what is up now? Well, as York, reports, just like Clinton/Kosovo, nothing -- being left means having no fixed principles, so as long as your side is in, war is just fine.

The Fish Rots From the Head

The White House - Blog Post - Facts Are Stubborn Things

Note, the MSM doesn't find anything "chilling" about THIS!! Hey, turn in your neighbors to the BO White House! We'll decide what to do about their "misinformation"!!! Naturally, the cud chewing lefty sheep find this to be very comforting. They regularly have trouble fully explaining the latest BO program that is going to "improve care, be less costly, cover everyone and allow you to keep all the same choices you have to day with no negative impact"!!! Hey, who could be against THAT, and why in the world would you ask any questions about it!!

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Worries on the Left

Obama's healthcare horror | Salon

Please read this, Camille Pagila is a lefty with impeccable empty headed views on creating a perfect world with a few simple government programs.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

A "strange servility"? Apparently Camille has missed most of her lefty compatriots quietly chewing their cuds when Democrats held power in the past.

In case you doubt that she is actually a certified Bush hater, and therefore obviously intelligent in the eyes of the MSM and it's followers ...

Aug. 12, 2009 | Buyer's remorse? Not me. At the North American summit in Guadalajara this week, President Obama resumed the role he is best at -- representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Obama has barely begun the crucial mission that he was elected to do.

Imperial Congress

John Fund: Congress’s Gulfstream Jet Scandal Is Just the Beginning - WSJ.com

Naturally a corporate CEO wanting to leverage his time by using a Gulfstream is something that ought to be pointed out as wasteful of money and damaging to the environment.

Congress though, not THAT is a completely different story!!!

The Bloom Coming off BO Rose?

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign - WSJ.com

Are the masses waking up and starting to smell the stench of BO rather than the lofty airs that the MSM has been telling them are associated with BO? One can only hope. It is going to take a WAVE to get even minimal leverage to right the ship in the next election. Even I would not have believed the level of damage that BO has been able to wreak in 6 short months.

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them. 

Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning. 

It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.

Un-American Protests

Column: 'Un-American' attacks can't derail health care debate - Opinion - USATODAY.com

Remember when it was "chilling" for some to claim that it was "un-American" for the NYT to sensationalize Abu Grab and to leak classified documents on rendition programs and other supposedly covert activities? They thought that such activity was bound to embolden more terror and to make the US out to be the bad guy. Wow, folks that think like THAT are "radical" -- let's see how the left thinks about people making statements about BOcare.

However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.

Well now it is "un-American" to protest your government adding trillions of dollars to the debt for BOcare. This is an America where you have no right to oppose the will of BO and Nancy Pelosi. "Change" has come to pass!!

It is interesting to note which side is offended by what. Conservatives tend to be offended by flag burning, not supporting the nation at war and chants and disruptions at campaign events. Democrats are offended that not everyone agrees with them at a Town Hall meeting. One might wonder if the "Town Hall" is supposed to be more like the local Politburo? Where we all get together to say the same thing?

Simple Truth

Remove the complexity and often the truth is quite simple!

Who's Nazi Nancy Now?

RealClearPolitics - Nancy's Nazi Shock: Did She Forget the Bush Years?

A nice jaunt down memory lane of the Bush years. Gee, who would have ever thought of likening someone you didn't like to Hitler or a Nazi!! Wow, we have NEVER seen that before!!

How short some memories are. Nazis were "National Socialists" -- gee, which side of the spectrum are socialists normally on? But wait! There IS a correlation -- Republican = evil = Nazi!! There, that makes sense!

Republican Mobs

Democrats say Republicans staging town hall protests - CNN.com

I've never been to a major Republican campaign event where some number of Democrats didn't show up to demonstrate on the street outside, try to cover the speaker with boos or chants, or just yelling. In order to see Newt Gingerich speak 15 years ago, I had to walk through a line of chanting democrat and union protesters (they stopped and let me through nicely -- it helps to be 6'4" 250+).

They were being LED by the Democrat that was running for congress from this district and received more coverage from the local media than Speaker of the House Gingerich. I think every national Republican convention for at least the last 8 years has been heavily demonstrated against and typically had someone have to be carried away during the major acceptance speech. I've never heard the media have nary a negative word to say about it, nor have I seen where they publish some Republican complaints about it.

So Democrats have been turning Republican events into shout-fests forever, but somehow it is "evil" if Republicans say something? Staged? The protest over Newt just being here was completely led by the Democrat that was running for Congress. What is that?

The insanity builds -- BO and his Democrat cronies are spending TRILLIONS of $$$ that they don't have and anyone that doesn't agree with them is supposed to just shut up?? How close are they to trying to FORCE the opposition to shut up?? Are any of the sheep starting to hear some warning bells here?

Utopia vs Freedom

RealClearPolitics - Utopia Versus Freedom

Sowell states the obvious that it seems that nobody understands these days. One man's utopia is another man's hell. Our country was founded in the ideal that I have the freedom to try to find MY utopia as long as it doesn't interfere with your freedom to find yours!! Freedom ALWAYS means **RISK** ... human's are vastly flawed, and things are not here to make us happy (one would think that death might be enough of a clue of that fact for even the most non-observant). Therefore, we have a right to PURSUE happiness -- not "have it". A right to "have it" is a guarantee that the vast majority will have anything but happiness and that "unalienable right" to pursue it will have been squandered in the bargain.

The other very operative factor is that it IS possible for individuals to have significant freedom. but it turns out to NOT be possible to have utopia in this world (again, death is a nice clue). So the trade-off is giving up the real for the fictional -- a very bad trade.

I don't need to quote it, it is short, just read it!

Moderates on Healthcare

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Gov't-Run Care Is A Study In Soaring Costs

With the country deep in the left ditch, the term "moderate" seems to have fallen completely out of fashion. When we were only on the left shoulder with extremely moderate Republicans like Bush and McCain in the drivers seat, the current crop of socialists were of course "moderates", but now that we are buried in the left ditch with little apparent hope of rescue, "moderates" are no where to be found. It seems that the MSM and the bulk of the lefties just can't imagine the use of the moderate term for ANYONE that isn't on the left. "Moderate" is good, left is good -- if you look at the world that way, and that is just how they think.

I'd argue that Boschwitz and Penney are a pretty moderate combination, and they are even prone to this currently completely missing thought of "common sense". If we are going to sign the government up for a gigantic medical entitlement, ought we not look at how they have done with the two giant entitlements they have today in the medical area -- Medicare and Medicade??

What kind of impact did Medicare, the first large government health insurance plan have in budgetary terms? Medicare rose from $5.1 billion in 1968 to $436.0 billion in 2007 an astounding increase of 85.5 times over the 40-year period. Will ObamaCare be better?

Their article goes over all the comparisons with the rest of the budget, but the bottom line is that about the only thing the government seems to be able to do at an ever decreasing percentage of the budget is defense.

The Answer is Always Left

Commentary: Why Obama's plans are stalled - CNN.com

BO's 2nd 100 days haven't been as stellar as the far left ditch was sure they would be. Why is that? Well in 2nd position, there are of course still those evil Repbublicans, but when one has a 60 vote majority in the Senate, even your more sophisticated lefty has to realize that it is hard to JUST blame the Republicans. The problem?

One of the biggest challenges has been the division within the Democratic Party between a handful of centrists and the liberal base. The tensions immediately became apparent when moderates forced Congress to reduce the size of the economic stimulus bill back in February.

Damn!! Those Democrats just aren't far enough to the left!! Not only do we need to get to one party rule, it is imperitive that party be ideologically pure! Note the "slight" difference here that Bush -- he of perscription drug benefits, trying to save FICA with private accounts, and No Child Left Behind (Federal involvement in education) -- HE was a "hard core radical right wing ideologue". Note the lack of "ideology" on the left -- what would it take to find a left wing ideologue? Apparetntly there is no such thing.

For most of the MSM, my guess would be that if we were left of China, they would still find a few too many "moderates" outside of prison somewhere that were causing trouble.

What Do You Think???

Boston officer's apparent racial slur may get him fired - CNN.com

Just read the link and tell me what Boston Officer you think of? Notice the pictures.



The guy on the top is Jim Crowley the officer involved in the Gates arrest, the guy on the bottom is Justin Barrett the guy who sent the note. Barrett had nothing to do with the arrest, yet the fact that the note was sent was linked below the CNN headline about the Gates incident.

One wonders how many crank notes the Boston Globe gets on a daily basis? What percentage do you suppose they publish??

Does the MSM try to "subtely" influence what people think via "assumed relationships"??

How many times did we hear from varies media and Democrat sources that "Bill Clinton was set up"?? Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky were "openly rumored" to be "plants". Even the first lady talked on national TV about "the vast right wing conspiracy", yet to the majority of the left, anyone that even claims that there is a media bias is "a nutcase".

At the very least, the "message" that covering some officers screed note to the Boston Globe gets across is "The Boston Police are Racist". Who benefits from that message?

I think it is pretty hard to argue anything but that the Boston Globe and CNN thought it would be good to plant the seed that "the Boston Cop" had sent a racist note, so he was a racist. I bet over half of their readers looked at it and said "SEE!! The cop is a racist!!!"

Losing Prosperity for Equality

RealClearMarkets - Is Economic Equality Worth the Loss of Prosperity?

Naturally, the MSM and the left will assure us that this is a "false choice" -- they ought to know, they are getting pretty expert at them lately -- "BO stimulus or depression, BO healthcare or "nothing" (whatever that means). Their thinking is that one DOESN'T need to have those "animal spirits" of capitalism in order to have "prosperity". How do we know if they are right? Well, let them get rid of all the capitalism and make everyone dependent on the state for basic food, and then we can see ... of course when we get there, we may no longer be able to do anything about it, but then that would be OK with the lefties as well. Must be Bush's fault!!

The radical idea that all men should be equal before the law, each free to pursue happiness using his own means, created a nation of innovators that transformed the world. American culture had little tolerance for hereditary privilege, instead celebrating the self-made man accepting unequal outcomes as the price society pays to motivate entrepreneurial risk. Our founding social contract gave almost everyone a shot at riches but guaranteed outcomes for none. The system lasted 200 years because the same market that rewarded innovation eventually spread its fruits to even life's laggards. In the historical blink of an eye material luxuries became necessities became basic human "rights."

A Contrast Worth A Trillion Words

American Thinker Blog: Obama's revealing body language (updated and expanded))

It is worth looking at the picture that leads the story and the one that ends it, and then just spend a moment on the contrast. BO is pictured by the MSM as "compassionate, caring, a man of the people, non-partisan, approachable, etc" ... in other words, all things good. Bush on the other hand "pompous, arrogant, partisan, out of touch, uncaring, only thinks of the rich, ... in other words, all things bad.

The press assigns those characteristics to those men because those are likely the feelings that they have as they think of them and their policies. BO promises that he will make OTHERS do a whole lot of "caring and compassion", but what will he himself do? How "caring and compassionate" does a giant government bureaucracy on the public dole staffed by union employees with nearly total job security but zero capacity to improve their position by better performance become?

One look at Bush helping the oldest Senate Democrat down the stairs shows more about compassion than 100 slick speeches read off a teleprompter in my book. One look at Crowley helping his accuser who ripped into him while he calmly did his job as an officer down the steps while BO is completely oblivious to the needs of his friend shows who it is that needs "teaching".

We live in a nation where the 24x7 coverage of everything makes it SEEM like it is "the words that matter", but in fact both individually and as a nation, it is eventually who we ARE that speaks so much more loudly than what we SAY. We have lost sight of that, and unfortunately the vast majority of Americans continue to follow the words of the MSM and charlatans telling them that "it is all someone elses' fault, the rich can bail us out, trust the government not yourselves ...".

A Serious Look At The Gate's Debacle

iowahawk: Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty Assholes

If the term A**hole is too offensive, then skip this. If allowances can be made in the interest of very well done satire, then highly recommended.

Summer Office

In these days of internet connectivity and many meetings being call-in since travel is often restricted, I've spent a good deal of time working from the covered deck this summer. Even with current laptop screens actually working outside is difficult to impossible -- the sun, or even a somewhat cloudy day washes the screen out too much to allow it to be productive. Having the deck covered seems to solve the problem though -- face the screen away from the outside and it is very visible.

Makes some of those hours of work MUCH more enjoyable -- and for those days when I'm not working, that reclining deck chair works very well for reading that often ends up with the energy state being lowered even a bit more.

Is the MSM Effect Limited?

NPR Poll Finds Tough Sledding For Obama : NPR

The nation is close to evenly split in its assessment of the president's policies to date, and there is great intensity on both sides of the debate with dwindling numbers in the middle.

The MSM is finding this almost unbelievable and trying with all their might to shore up the sinking BO. How in the world is it that a failed community organizer with no leadership experience would be having problems being president of the US? To lefties that assume that they could handle any job in the universe better than whomever happens to have it if only they were recognized for the brilliance that keeps getting ignored, the concept that somebody that "sounds good" might not be able to make a great leader is beyond comprehension.

As is always the case with the those that simply "know better" independent of facts or results, the cries to stamp out those that are not in agreement are rising. The WH is encouraging folks to rat out anyone saying anything "fishy" (now there is a technical term) about BOcare!! Naturally the MSM is largely ignoring this, let alone calling it "chilling".

Questions For BOcare

RealClearPolitics - 10 Questions for Supporters of 'ObamaCare'

Not that supporters of "hope and change", now currently in the guise of BOcare are likely to be either the question asking or answering type, but in case there is anyone that is starting to wonder if "not all change is positive change", these would be some reasonable questions to want to get answered before going many more trillions in the hole.

If a slick car dealer came up to you and said that he was going to get you a cheaper and better car and get some other guy to pay for it, would you believe him? Would you believe him if he read everything to you off a teleprompter?? If not, it would REALLY be a good idea to think just a little more deeply about BOcare.

How People Think

RealClearPolitics - A Racial Power Equation

I found this column to be a lesson in "why we don't just all get along". We open with an assertion:

If race were the only issue, there would be much less hyperventilation about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s unpleasant run-in with the criminal justice system. After all, it would hardly be the first time a black man had unjustly been hauled to jail by a white police officer. The debate -- really more of a shouting match -- is also about power and entitlement.

Would it be the first time a white man was unjustly hauled to jail by a black officer if the shoe were on the other foot? But, "it's about power and entitlement". Let's think about that for a bit -- do we not REGULARLY have all sort of white "celebrities" of various sorts in the news for everything from disorderly conduct, various driving problems, alchohol, drugs (even the very recreational pot use)?

Consider virtually any rock band? I try to pay as little attention as possible, but Brittany Spears, Mel Gibson, Rush Limbaugh (detained at Miami Airport for having Viagra without a prescription, along with his well known Oxycontin addiction). I'm sure I could go on, but so what?  "Powerful whites" don't get arrested?.  It seems VERY questionable based on evidence.

I'm talking about President Obama, obviously, but also Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons, entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and many others -- a growing number of minorities with the kind of serious power that used to be reserved for whites only. In academia, the list begins with "Skip" Gates.

So we move forward with the orignial suspect assertion. The REAL PROBLEM is that the POLICEMAN was somehow "pissed off" BECAUSE this "big cheese" was black -- otherwise he would have "turned the other cheek". But wait, I thought we CELEBRATED the "powerful" falling under the normal rule of law like everyone else? Young George Bush got a DWI even though his Dad was hugely wealthy and powerful. The Bush twins got busted for underage drinking WHILE their father was President. Even Teddy Kennedy at least had to file a police report for killing his young secretary. Had any of these folks decided to start screaming at the officers involved, I'd be surprised if they would have gotten much in the way of press or other left-wing sympathy.

Apparently, there was something about the power relationship involved -- uppity, jet-setting black professor vs. regular-guy, working-class white cop -- that Crowley couldn't abide. Judging by the overheated commentary that followed, that same something, whatever it might be, also makes conservatives forget that they believe in individual rights and oppose intrusive state power.

That paragraph is pretty rich. What have we here? The "Law and Order Democrats"?? Are we asserting that it is usually CONSERVATIVES that are on the side of "to hell with authority, let's abuse the fuzz"?? Police stopping by to see if your home is being robbed is NOT "intrusive state power" ... it is sort of "minimal expected government service". Would one actually to be in favor of police NOT doing that, one would be in favor of anarchy. What we have here is a naked (and poor) attempt to equate a view that private citizens need to observe basic compliance with government authorities doing their jobs with some sort of "racism". One hopes that the formulation is disingenous, else the author borders on the insane.

And then the big finish. If Lawrence Summers were to have gotten into a similar shouting match, there would have been no arrest. The columnist is secure in there being no way to "prove" such a thing -- non-arrests don't make much in the way of stories. The assumption is however that Larry Summers would have decided to get into a shouting match with the officer. Most all of us have had occasion to deal with police under various and nearly always stressful circumstances. How many of us have gotten into shouting matches with them? I'd hazard to say very few, or none -- the fact is that Larry Summers would be VERY unlikely to do so, since what HE would see is an officer simply trying to do their job and have absolutely no animosity about him doing it.

Yet Gates' fit of pique somehow became cause for arrest. I can't prove that if the Big Cheese in question had been a famous, brilliant Harvard professor who happened to be white -- say, presidential adviser Larry Summers, who's on leave from the university -- the outcome would have been different. I'd put money on it, though. Anybody wanna bet?

But Henry Gates is part of the "racial hatred industry" -- to him the white officer was a symbol, not a person. The officer was representative of the "oppressive racist white ruling class" -- and indeed, "didn't know who he was messing with". Were Henry Gates race baiting industry to die, he would no longer be famous -- his need for existence would cease to be. Gates was virtually REQUIRED to take umbrage at a white police officer in his home. To do otherwise would have  been impossible.

Likewise for BO -- in his books he complains about the "driving while black" syndrome. All of us have been pulled over at one time or another for what we saw as "no reason". When we are white, it is just "getting pulled over" -- for black Americans it is "racial profiling" plain and simple and there is no amount of logic or statistics that will change their mind.

Taxes Are Moral

Rangel under tax evasion investigations while promoting income surtax - WSJ.com

Well, they are if someone ELSE pays them!! Rangel is a well known crook to anyone that strays from the MSM sheep pasture. All this has appeared before, but suffice it to say Charlie believes it is the "moral duty" of OTHER Americans to pay much higher taxes -- it just isn't for HIM!!!

Why Be Afraid Of Government?

Commentary: Why be afraid of government? - CNN.com

I love the title. Were the Germans in WWII afraid of Government? How about the Russians in 1914? The Chinese after WWII? Nope, there is NEVER any reason to be "afraid" of larger and larger government -- the bigger the government the better as long as you are CNN, MPR or just a standard Democrat.

Of course the REASON for us to be OK with big government is:

And finally, Medicare has proven to be more popular than private insurance programs. So, for all the talk about hating big government, the big government seems to be doing something right, according to numerous polls. According to a Kaiser poll, 68 percent of respondents said they believed the Medicare program would put "your interests above their own" compared to 48 percent for private insurance.

Hey, it's popular!! And why not? The people on Medicare are getting VASTLY more than they paid in, and they are getting it all at the expense of current and future taxpayers!! What a GREAT SYSTEM!!! Just like bailouts, FICA, and the proposed "universal health", once a program is in place and the constituents of the program are enjoying ever growing benefits at the expense of others, the program is POPULAR!! ... and "popular = good". Popular government is a GOOD THING!!!

Only, a lot like "what goes up must come down", it is good right up until it isn't. Is now that breaking point? I have no idea, but anyone can look at deficits now in the Trillions per year and projected to be in the 10's of Trillions per year and realize "this isn't going to last. What is really funny to me is that Democrats used to yowl about "the Reagan deficits" or "the Bush deficits" when we were running low 100's of Billions in the midst of generally growing GDP. We were running deficits that were mid single digit % of GDP (the WORST Bush pre-Democrat Congress number was 5.3%, and even 2008 was only 7.4%) ... we are projected for 12%+ in 2009 and it just gets worse from here on out.

So deficits that were "5%" in a growing economy were enough to raise holy hell with constant talk of "irresponsibility", while deficits of 12% with a declining economy but your boy BO in the WH are fine? And some folks wonder why it is hard to respect a Democrat's honesty.

Wishful Shark Jumping

Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Has Liberalism Jumped the Shark?

Fun little article to read. It would be nice if folks were figuring out that the empty suit messiah and his cronies never had any ideas about how to "get to good", but I think he has too much faith in the current america.

Columnists as Campaigners

Op-Ed Columnist - Costs and Compassion - NYTimes.com

I don’t know how many people understand the significance of Mr. Obama’s proposal to give MedPAC, the expert advisory board to Medicare, real power. But it’s a major step toward reducing the useless spending — the proliferation of procedures with no medical benefits — that bloats American health care costs.

Well, the significance is that a federal beauracratic board will tell you what works and what doesn't work, BUT, since BO and the Democrats refuse to bite the hand of the trial lawyers that feed them, the Doctor will be between the "rock" of the MedPAC board telling him "that test doesn't have a high enough effectiveness, so we won't pay" and the subsequent malpractice lawyer saying "are you aware that had you done test X there is an x% chance that the condition would have been found and little Susy would have been saved?". Damned if you do, damned if you don't ... something which government excels at!

Mr. Obama was especially good when he talked about controlling medical costs. And there’s a crucial lesson there — namely, that when it comes to reforming health care, compassion and cost-effectiveness go hand in hand.

But wait, the CBO says that BOcare will cost a TRILLION MORE than what we have now. I guess that "talk" is "especially good" when it is served up with a huge helping of chutzpa from Krugman's perspective. TALKING about less while spending a Trillion MORE is somehow acceptable, even though the Nobel Prize winning economist says "compassion and cost-effectiveness go hand in hand". Indeed -- an extra Trillion in economy wrecking deficits while a government agency cherry picks procedures on the basis of campaign contributions or phases of the moon doesn't sound all that compassionate to me.

Well, in the case of health care, one pill means continuing on our current path — a path along which health care premiums will continue to soar, the number of uninsured Americans will skyrocket and Medicare costs will break the federal budget. The other pill means reforming our system, guaranteeing health care for all Americans at the same time we make medicine more cost-effective.

How can one win a Nobel prize and think that sloppily? Really? There are ONLY two choices. 1). Do nothing 2). Do whatever it is that BO finally figures out that he wants (if he ever figures it out)? In this vast nation with 300 million people, there are ONLY TWO choices!!!  Wow, if you believe that, then you most likely voted for BO, and until you turn your brain on, there isn't much to discuss.

Leading by Stupidity

Obama Defends Cambridge Police Criticism in Henry Louis Gates Arrest - ABC News

"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that [Gates case]. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

As the immortal Forest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does". Where is that old "truth to power" deal now? Just try to imagine if we had a BLACK cop arresting a WHITE Harvard Law professor, "bringing the cops mother into it", and then have a WHITE President ganging up on the lowly black cop on national TV! (of course, the white president would have to be a Republican, cuz the MSM isn't much for criticizing democrats, no matter what they do.

BO and Gates should maybe look in the mirror -- tenured Harvard proffessor and President of the US are actually pretty high positions. Now if anyone still had any ideas that BO was just "caught up in the moment", this link is from TODAY ... he is defending his stupidity and adding to it.

The president said he understands the sergeant who arrested Gates is an "outstanding police officer." But he added that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

Say what? Every day normal Americans ought to be looking at "healthcare, the economy and the wars abroad" as they do their daily work, and THAT ought to be taken into consideration by a police officer responding to a burglary call??

BO needs to keep that teleprompter turned on and stick to ONLY what rolls across it!! That kind of thinking borders on complete insanity!!

Anniversary of Malaise

Noemie Emery: In praise of malaise Opinion Articles - Noemie Emery | Editorials on Top News Stories | Washington Examiner

As having had to live through the decade, I like the assessment in this paragraph:

To most people, this was less a giant step for mankind than one of the low points in what has been justly described as a “slum of a decade,” but Hardball host Chris Matthews, a one-time speech writer for our 39th president, convened two ex-colleagues - Gerald Rafshoon and Hendrik Hertzberg (now at the New Yorker) - to commemorate and discuss the event.

One can't get much more apt than "a slum of a decade"  as an epitaph for the '70s for at someone who "came of age" in that decade with HS graduation, college and getting into the work force as I did. Thank God for Reagan!!! The pain of the '70s was salved by the glory of the '80s.

This is a thought provoking analysis:

“Today, the malaise speech is being revived as a totem of Mr. Carter’s unrecognized greatness,” as Hayward tells us. “Jimmy Carter was a visionary president! If only we had listened to him!”

 

If only we hadn’t had to listen to Matthews’s idea that presidents always “appoint” their successors by being their opposites: Hoover “created” Franklin D. Roosevelt; Nixon created a “truth-teller” like Carter, and it took a catastrophe on the level of George Bush the younger to give us the radiant presence who rules us today.

 

“You might say he begat Obama,” he babbled to Hertzberg, “It took Bush to make us see the importance of an Obama...What do you think about a...sophisticated Obama coming in after an incurious president like Bush?”

 

Hertzberg, of course, would be up to the challenge. “We really required a comprehensive disaster...to make Americans ready to take this extraordinary and wonderful leap of faith that they took in electing this remarkable president that we now have,” he replied.

Historically, of course, it took a disaster like Carter to make Americans take a chance on a 69-year-old ex-movie actor who cured their “malaise” in short order. Since malaise appears poised to be making a comeback, perhaps this will happen again.

I might say that from my perspective "it takes a rise of the power of the MSM to create a true disaster" ... Nixon was no worse than LBJ or certainly not FDR on skullduggery ... it is just that Nixon was hated by the MSM so he had to be destroyed. Bush was hated by the MSM and although they did their best to destroy him, they didn't succeed -- which made them REALLY hate him! The "disaster" of the Bush years was primarily in both houses of congress going to the Democrats in '06 -- the slide started immediately thereafter.

BO has us set up for the kind of long term disaster of FDR proportions -- one hates to consider that we may end up hoping for WWIII to bring about an end to the BO  travails as WWII did for FDR.

 

Even "Moderate" Democrats Are Too Conservative

Harold Meyerson - The Blue Dogs' Can't-Do Attitude and the Health-Care Debate - washingtonpost.com

When your side has a 60 vote Senate advantage, it is hard to dodge responsibility for governing. When you are liberal, your idea of government is "Gimme That Thing ... and make someone else pay".

Who ought to pay? Well, that "wealthiest 1% of course".

To today's centrist Democrats, this has become a distant memory, a history lesson they cannot grasp. The notion that actual individuals might have to pay to secure the national interest appalls them. In the House, the Blue Dogs doggedly oppose proposals to fund universal coverage by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of the nation's households. Their deference to wealth -- whether the consequence of our system of funding elections or a byproduct of the Internet generation's experience of free access to information and entertainment -- is not to be trifled with.

People that are lucky enough to have multi-decade successful careers, stable marriages, good investments, good health, successful private businesses or other such "good things" SOMETIMES get to the point were they get to that "1%" when they are in their late 40s or 50s. Since they got to that point, they paid high tax rates all the way through their lives and get to pay the full cost (and part of the cost of a few others) of their kids education in college along with full cost on anything else that is "income adjusted". That was SUPPOSED to be "the American dream". Many decades of hard work gave one the CHANCE to get A FEW EARNING YEARS in that upper level of income.

Now it is evil to get there, so there ought to be huge tax penalties that treat the folks that managed to succeed as some sort of a "redistributionist pinata"

I don't think so. Making high income is very hard. Cutting ones income is very easy. Nobody that got to the top 1% is stupid enough to send in well over half of the money they earn to the feds so it can be spent on the "pork of the day". If those awful "Blue Dogs" lose and Mr Meyerson "wins", then what we are going to see is an  "easy chair revolt".

Engine Of Poverty

The Greenroom » Forum Archive » The Engine of Poverty

The best thing going for the poor is the increase in their standard of living brought about by the energy of free enterprise. The only way they can ever escape from poverty is by obtaining a good education, and getting a decent job. Big Government is a miserable failure at the former, and an active threat to the latter - as can be seen from the obscene cap-and-trade bill, or Obama’s health care proposals. Nothing should be a higher priority for the poor than slashing the size of government and radically cutting taxes. The free markets are always hiring. When they slow down, it’s because they aren’t free.

Here here. Good little restatement of the obvious.

Hopeful Suicide

Op-Ed Columnist - Liberal Suicide March - NYTimes.com

Being a supposedly conservative NYT reporter is sort of like being a moderate Catholic at the Vatican. While he may be LESS liberal than most of the NYT folks, that isn't exactly saying much. Therefore, he tends to follow the "left and right are treated pretty equally" view, so it is easy to see how he might think that the left is over reaching just like he thinks the right did in the early '90s.

Of course, the right "over reached" with such far out righty items as prescription drug benefits, Sarbannes Oxley, Hurricane Katrina (man, those righties are powerful) and "compassionate conservatism". For a couple of years those "steamroller righties" happened to have a whole couple seat majority in the Senate and couldn't get Miguel Estrada, a latino judge appointed to the federal bench because he was "too conservative".

The standard for "over reaching" toward the right sort of looks like a tepid move leftward, where I tend to disagree with Brooks that even federally taking over a bunch of banks, GM, running up multi-trillion deficits, cap and trading the economy to oblivion and converting health care to a political playground is even going to come CLOSE to be being as much of a leftware over reach as the Republicans supposedly made.

Bush was so "moderate" he approached being a RINO ... BO is so far left it really gets difficult to see where his views would differ from a socialist. MIGHT he be "over reaching" -- sure, but with the MSM all in his corner, it is going to take a lot of pain before the sheep figure out that "there has to be a better way"!

Engine Of Poverty

The Greenroom » Forum Archive » The Engine of Poverty

Read it all, here is a teaser:

Big Government is the most formidable engine of poverty the industrialized world has ever seen. The worst famines to sweep the twentieth century were caused by either incompetent or malevolent government, with the Holodomor famine in Ukraine being a particularly horrifying example. Millions of Ukrainians were starved to death in the Holodomor, as a deliberate matter of Soviet policy. The infamous Ethiopian famine of the mid-80s prompted a well-meaning response from the West, including the Live Aid concerts organized by Bob Geldof… but while hundreds of millions of dollars were raised, much of the aid money and relief supplies were simply stolen by the Ethiopian military junta. Collectivist governments around the world have produced uniformly terrible standards of living.

I think everyone really knows that the poor are way better off in a market economy, but that makes no difference to Democrats. Their only concern is really about them being in power -- the poor are just pawns in that purpose and having them stay poor is fine with them.

Blue State Meltdown

The Blue-State Meltdown and the Collapse of the Chicago Model — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

Not that the MSM likes to focus on it much, but the states that are in the most trouble are the most liberal ones. Our founding fathers wanted "13 laboratories" in which we could test the various theories of government and decide what worked and what failed. We have done our best to water that down with Federal rules and money transfers, but we have never been completely successful. The "Blue States" are in the worst shape of all because in case anyone missed Japan, the USSR, Western Europe, Cuba, and Chile, "socialism doesn't work".

On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of Representatives while the key committees are controlled by representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay Area—bastions of the gentry.

Despite his famous no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states carried last year by President Obama. The inner cabinet—the key officials—hail almost entirely from a handful of cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area.

So we have BO pushing the "Chicago Model" of "pay to play" at a national level with the idea that all we really need to do as a nation is to move money between those that make it and those that support BO. "Don't play (or work) and don't pay" is sounding like the best model.

How long until the American people get wise to this? I have no idea -- but there isn't much need to worry about it. Just watch the Blue States melt, no doubt followed by the whole country, and EVENTUALLY I bet more folks will realize that "the rich" aren't the complete patsies that BO and company has made them out to be.

F-22, The Importance of Symbols

The remarkable vote to kill the F-22 and what it means for America's military future. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

I like fighter planes, I have no idea how bad we need F-22's. Neither BO or Slate would be on my list of sources that I would want to go to for the specific advantages of the F-22 system, but one thing that I do have at least a reasonable grasp of is relative amounts of money.

The Air Force brass wanted $4 billion in the fiscal year 2010 budget to build 20 more F-22s. Gates slashed the request to zero. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted, 13-11, to shift $1.7 billion from other programs in order to fund another seven planes. That's the line item that the full Senate excised this afternoon.

So we saved something between $1.7 and $4 Billion. Our federal budget is approaching $4 Trillion. $4B is 1% of $400B and .01% of $4 Trillion. Folks that are angry because the multiple trillions spent on "stimulus" money "wasn't big enough"! are giddy because someone decided to not spend $.01% of the budget on a set of new fighter planes.

Symbols are very meaningful.

The Lure of the Single Party

Hope, caught up in a sea of obstruction - The Boston Globe

For the majority of Democrats, trapped in the permanent adolescence of "I want it all and I want it NOW at zero effort to me", Republicans are as permanently backward as parents who claimed that resources were limited, curfews were for your own good and tomorrow and "never" were not the same thing. This whole article should be a must read for folks that still have just a smidgeon of connection to reality.

But today, beneath the optimistic rhetoric, lurks another possibility that no politician and few pundits want to admit: that the system is no longer up to the task and that the factors that once brought relief are no longer operable. There is the real possibility that this time we will not win but rather founder the way Japan has done since its economic catastrophe. There is the possibility that this time it is hopeless.

Wow, the last time I remember it being "hopeless" was when Carter was in the White House. So why is it "hopeless" this time? Well, because we still have those damnable Republicans! That's why!!

What those Fathers could not have anticipated was a political party dedicated to total obstructionism - dedicated to making certain that the government would fiddle while the nation burned. For this we have the Republicans to blame for their actions and the Democrats to blame for their inaction. As comedian Bill Maher recently put it, “The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.’’

Yes, anyone that isn't in complete agreement with multi-trillion dollar deficits, government takeover of major industries and a foreign policy of apology to all  is insane! At least we can see that the "moderates" at the Boston Globe want to have an intelligent discussion on merits!

... you can readily see that not even the Democrats’ 60 votes in the Senate are sufficient to move legislation even if there is a public outcry for action. According to polls, roughly 70 percent of Americans want a public option in healthcare. With that kind of support, the fact that it is even being debated is testament to how decrepit our system has become.

And so we are now a nation with great professions of faith that we will succeed but little real confidence that we will, a nation that focuses more on what can go wrong than on what can go right, a nation that can’t seem to get action. We are a timid nation with small dreams and even smaller plans - a nation that seems to have lost its capacity to do big things. We all know the nation is broken, but we may no longer have the will or the institutions to fix it.

I wonder how many Americans want to live to be 100? have true love? win the lottery? I'm thinking it is way over 70%, to that must be REALLY a testament to how broken our system is that we haven't guaranteed THOSE items!!! Every teen knows that the prime determinant of what we get is very much supposed to be what we want. 

So we have a "timid" nation spending Trillions more than we have, taking over private business and rushing government programs through to gaurentee us everything from the right climate to the right healthcare. It is clear that the only thing that can "save us" is to get rid of the Republicans. Can't we abolish old age, sickness and baldness while we are at it? What could POSSIBLY limit folks that can say "yes we can!"???

Meaning of Military Deaths

We had five soldiers from MN die this past week in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I listen to MPR all the time, so I've had a reasonable number of opportunities to hear of the tragedy of losing our soldiers.

Today was an interesting departure for MPR. The person they talked to was a military person that had formerly had the job of informing families, so the focus was on the value of the sacrifice and the importance that the military places on dealing with the families.

Over the previous years when Bush was president, the standard MN military deaths reporting on MPR involved interviews with the family and friends of the lost soldiers and almost always included the obligatory voice saying something about "optional war", "we were lied to", "he went into the guard never expecting to be deployed", "this is a senseless loss", etc.

I'm often struck with how significant the more subtle bias differences are. The vast majority of people that I know of a somewhat moderate to conservative leaning either never would or no longer listen to MPR -- they simply get irate as to the level of bias inherent in the reporting model.

My sense is that with the increase in media forms, capacity and diversity, Americans less and less listen to each other. Many Americans pine away for the days of Walter Cronkite -- yesterday MPR devoted the noon program to an hour on him. The idea was "EVERYONE trusted Walter", and that was a GOOD THING. One man should tell millions what to think as long as he is a left winger!

Naturally, the points that were covered in the interview were that he was one of the first on Watergate, he decided the Vietnam war was going to be lost in '68, and it was interesting to hear him talk about "favorite presidents of his life", FDR and Kennedy. He didn't want to go to "worst", but it was pretty obvious "Reagan and Carter". Carter because he was a failure, Reagan because he successfully "rolled back the new deal" in Cronkite's words. Strange -- last I checked both Social Security and Medicare faired quite well under Reagan (HUGE tax increases) and it was under CLINTON that welfare reform happened. But I digress.

The point is that from MPR and the general MSM view, their ought NOT be "competing political views" -- we ought to all "listen to and believe Uncle Walter". We ought to all use our "freedom" to "freely" believe the same thing.

How does that happen? In general, subtly -- each little story about soldiers dying, the economy, natural disasters, etc is "crafted" ... naturally by the views of the reporters, not a "conspiracy" to fit into the narrative of their world view. All humans have a world view narrative, and we all have "confirmation bias" to accept that which fits our view and to reject that which does not.

So must we all just live with our own stories, not being able to understand each other and believing that there is no truth? In my opinion, not if we are willing to accept the wisdom of the ages and to fight the confirmation bias by being able to cogently argue as many points of view as we can. I think the best we as humans can do for knowledge is "approximation", but that means that some approximations are FAR closer to reality and truth than others and there is ALWAYS room to improve your own approximation!

Our tendencies are the same -- and will NEVER be completely modified, because we are all human, but it may be possible to temper them by at least being able to listen to both sides and ideally to be able to argue either side reasonably well.

Jail-order Brides

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

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

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

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

Captured Soldier Afraid?

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

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

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

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

Apollo, Murray and Cox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RealClearPolitics - The Moon We Left Behind

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

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

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

The Secret Victory

RealClearPolitics - An American Victory

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

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

I'd Rather Have Shame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inequality Made Simple

Thomas Sowell : A Personal Inequity - Townhall.com

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

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

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

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

Change I Expected

RealClearPolitics - The Consequences of Big Government

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

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

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

Cost, Price, Value

RealClearPolitics - Alice in Medical Care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glendower:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

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

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

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

BO seems to be doing a lot of calling.

BO May Be Human

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

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

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

Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Settled Economics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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