Pour It On

The following is a great post from the WSJ that is worth a read. For those of us who have ever seen W live, we understand completely. During the Clinton years, the press always spent a lot of sympathetic time on "how difficult it was for poor Bill". All decent Democrats ought to be getting regular oral sex in the workplace I guess and that evil Republicans would seek to restrict a guy with as tough a job as Slick who felt everyone's pain, was just too much to contemplate. The MSM "support for Bush" ... or even any notice if he does anything positive is quite evident.

I've blogged enough in the past on some very solid attempts by Bush and Cheney to get the real story about Iraq out. There have also been ads run in MN at least by private groups that make a good attempt. The reason that Bush was re-elected is that when 100's of millions are spent actually getting the other side of the story out, and people are faced with having to vote for an actual Democrat, the numbers get quite different. Yes, there is "Fox News", and while it isn't over in the left ditch like the MSM, it isn't exactly the "Bush support system" that the MSM and Democrats make it out to be either. It was the network that broke the Bush DWI story just prior to the first election for example. What makes Fox noteworthy is that it is PRO-AMERICAN ... that is what is unique about it comparted to the MSM. Yes, Conservatives tend to be more pro-American, so in that way it is more "conservative", but it is a long way from "Republican".

The whole MSM, the Democrats, and a goodly number on farther right want to see this President break. This article makes a point that I suspect to be true ... bring it on, it ain't going to happen.


Pour It On
Whatever Laura's feeding George, it's working.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, March 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

For those of us who've complained for more than two years that this White House was ill-serving the troops in Iraq by not making the public case for Iraq, that changed this week in Wheeling, W.Va.

Whatever George Bush had for breakfast Wednesday morning, Laura should see that the White House larder is packed with it. By noontime, Mr. Bush was in Wheeling delivering the third in a series of public speeches to defend the Iraq war. For a president whose public persona--West Texas accent, smirk, swagger and errant word choice--has become the biggest butt of presidential comedy since Richard Nixon, it was an astounding, bravura performance. In fact, I'll pay him the highest possible compliment: It was Clintonesque.

Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill reside in the Valhalla of great communicators, but Bill Clinton and Harry Truman thrived as mere mortals, not only connecting with the mythic "common man" but somehow bonding to them. George Bush joined that class in Wheeling on Wednesday.

It wasn't the sort of set speech that presidents normally read, bobblehead bouncing between two teleprompters. Holding a hand microphone, Mr. Bush walked around a stage before a few thousand people giving a largely extemporaneous talk on Iraq and his presidency. It was mesmerizing. One kept expecting Mr. Bush, whose deepest supporters despair at his inarticulateness, to stumble into the underbrush of confused facts or argument to nowhere. Never happened. Not once. For over an hour, it was nothing but net.

OK, it wasn't Demosthenes, but it was George W. Bush at his Everyman best. The same George Bush who, when televised in front of the White House news corps comes across as a smart aleck, poured off the cable-news screens from Wheeling as a relaxed, buoyant, passionate evangelist for his presidency's most deeply held ideas--political freedom, military pre-emption and playing not to the polls but for the verdict of history.

Two obvious questions: Where's this guy been? And, to quote a long-ago factory boss, Is it a day late and a dollar short?

First answer: He was last sighted on the campaign trail. This is the man, liberal mockery and amazement notwithstanding, who won two hard-fought presidential elections, not as spin has it, only by Rovian genius but by connecting with audiences. But why what worked for a campaign was abandoned in time of war is something that will have to await an answer from the Bush White House memoirists.

The second question--does it come too late for his presidency or the war--is a tougher nut. Eerily, the Ides of March, the 15th of the month, just passed over the Bush presidency at perhaps its lowest ebb. His rating with the pollster's mob is an unseemly 37%. His version of the Roman Senate, the Republican Party, is in virtual political anarchy and content to let Mr. Bush bleed alone. Various Beltway solons have declared the president's war on Mesopotamia's Islamic fanatics a failure; Iraq is described by the press as on the edge of civil war. And almost daily one's close friends, strong supporters of Mr. Bush, say, "It's over."

But not until it's over.

When in our time people think of collapsed presidencies they often have in mind Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. For different reasons, both men broke. What Bill Clinton proved above all else is that no matter what the press, law and politics throw at you, the protective powers of the presidency are almost limitless--if you don't break. Mr. Bush's opponents, such as Democrats waving censure motions or blood-soaked front pages, had better get a grip: He isn't going to break. The Wheeling performance makes that clear.

Wheeling, however, also suggests both the promise and near-term peril for the Bush presidency. It was a signal event, but the print press largely ignored it. The Washington Post Thursday had no story; the New York Times and L.A. Times had minor accounts inside. The talk in fact broke no news in the traditional sense. But as in a presidential election, events that strike the print press as "nothing new" matter hugely in terms of public sentiment, that is, whose ideas win.

At the same time, the status of Iraq's government should be news. In last Thursday's Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius, writing from Baghdad, described in detail "unmistakable signs here this week that Iraq's political leaders are taking the first tentative steps toward forming a broad government of national unity that could reverse the country's downward slide." The column described intense negotiations following the February Samarra mosque bombing to form a national security commission acceptable to all political parties. A search of the Dow Jones-Reuters Factiva database for other accounts of these negotiations turned up only one story, a good one days later by Edward Wong of the New York Times, albeit on the bottom of page A10.

The tendentious editorial decision to paint the high-traffic front pages red with blood and demote the hard slog of political progress in Iraq to the unread inside has an effect. Any normal person would be depressed by constant face-time with stories of barbaric slaughter. If what amounts to a kind of contemporary brain-washing of both the American public and Washington elites causes them to falter and Iraq to "fail," no future president of either party is again likely to deploy U.S. military resources in any sustained, significant way. You can't imagine what "lose" will mean then.

The public's pessimism is at least understandable. Less defensible is that of Washington's exit-seeking elites. A bracing reality check for these folks has just been written by Frederick W. Kagan, a military specialist with the American Enterprise Institute. Hardly a flack for the White House, Mr. Kagan argues persuasively in "Myths of the Current War" (find under the Scholars listing at aei.org) that all the woulda, coulda, shoulda about going into Iraq and now getting out fast is simply irrelevant. "It does not matter now why we went into Iraq," Mr. Kagan writes, "only what will happen if we do not succeed there."

The White House has paid a price for not engaging these issues. Wheeling was a start. Keep pouring the Wheaties, Laura.

Sanding Off the Truth

MN Democrats have discovered a new way to talk about truth. While everyone in the world was on record as saying that Saddam had WMD, Bush apparently knew there would be none and his lie would be exposed, so he "lied" and went into Iraq anyway. At least that is what a "lie" used to be, you had to KNOW the truth but say something else.

Of course, things are far different if there is a "D" next to your name. For Bill Clinton, you just change the definition of "sex", "is", "perjury", and a few other things and "no lies". With MN Senator Majority Weasel Dean Johnson, it is "emebellishment" or "sanding off the truth". This is from a MINISTER, who other ministers have to tape record when he is lying to them, because they know he is a weasel. For non-weasels, you know they will continue to to stand by their words even if it is unpopular and costs them ... like Bush with WMD or Ports deal, but unlike Johnson.

'But Johnson said he did not 'lie' about the matter. To lie requires 'intent to deceive,' he said, while 'embellishment is sanding off of the truth.'" (Bill Salisbury, "Tearful Senate Leader Sorry For Supreme Court Gay Marriage Flap," Pioneer Press, March 17, 2006) No doubt the media will have a hard time staying on this story, but this web site should help

The man tells a group of ministers that he has talked to multiple MN Supreme Court justices and they have assured him there is no reason for a Gay Marriage amendment, there is no way they will overturn the law that MN has. Small problem, that would be a grave breech of judicial ethics were they to tell him that, but no problem it turns out they never even discussed it with him at all. So, he "sanded the truth".

The MN papers are being very careful to not call it a "lie", even on editorial pages, and they are mostly indicating that any attempts to keep this going are "politically motivated". A real rareity in politics. I'm sure we would see a similar viewpoint were there anything like this for anyone that had an "R" next to their name? Yea, sure, and if you believe that, be sure you aren't buying any discount watches on the street, I hate to tell you that they might not be quite "genuine".

Man, Democrats just hate tapes, stains, and oxegen starved wet secretaries bodies in their cars. They have this "sanding" down with complete media compliance even when there ARE physical facts, but those things are "inconvienient". The media is even willing to call any Republican prediction about the future that doesn't turn out to be perfect a "lie" (no matter how many Ds said exactly the same thing). It seems like the physical universe of fact ought to just be outlawed if one has a "D" next to their name and whatever they say is "truth". It seems only fair.

Feeling Lucky, Keweenaw Sledding

As a computer programmer I like to think that I understand reason and logic as well as the next guy and more than most, but I would never claim that those elements are the only, or even the major drives in my life. Case in point, I have been slowed and challenged by recovery of my broken elbow sustained on January 5th, with surgery on the 9th. I've been spending hours per day in various sorts of stretching activity trying to get motion back, lots of trips to the Doctor and bad nights of sleep trying to deal with a brace that keeps pressure on the arm to straighten or bend it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was first able to have enough motion to get my contacts back in, so I decided I was ready to snowmobile again. Anyone that buys a $7K machine that they may not get to use at all in a winter doesn't get top marks for reason, but I suppose taking off riding after surgery, rehab, and lots of lost hours when the arm still is far from 100% could be considered grounds for insanity, BUT, the trails were great, the sled was great, nothing bad happened at all, and it was WAY worth it! There are few things as much fun as doing something "insane" and coming out just fine.

Sometimes we like to think that it would be great if we humans felt the most motivated by what was logical and reasonable and showed the greatest odds of bettering our lives or the world around us all the time. In fact, a scientist thinking of "adaptive behavior" might assume that millions of years of adaptive evolution would produce exactly that outcome ... a very rational and adaptive human. They would of course be wrong.

We feel the best when we feel "lucky", when some sort of risk has paid off and things went well. We are forever cheering the underdog. Vegas and the lottery draw their billions, and like Lake Woebegone, we like to think all our kids are "above aveage".

Riding a snowmobile on groomed trails in the daytime without having any alcohol and staying generally at less than 60MPH isn't really completely "death defying" ... but relative to sitting behind a desk punching keys, it is pretty wild. The Keweenaw picked up 30" on top of the 15-20" that they had on the ground and we had some of the best trails ever, and very low traffic. managed to get the sled up from 160mi to 500mi, so got it broke in a bit for it's first year. It may not have been the most sane way to spend a couple days of vacation, but at least for me, it would have been hard to beat on the fun scale.

The Capitalist Manifesto

I was encouraged to read the Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein, and although I think it is a fine book and would encourage many to read it, for me it was a bit too much "preaching to the choir". I've already been over a lot of this ground with Hayek, Freidman, and like Bernstein, Ayn Rand. I'd like to find an author from the left that came close to being as fun to read and had as much an effect on readers as Ayn. My personal opinion over the years is that isn't possible, since economic freedom, rule of law and allowing individuals to choose what to do with the fruits of their labors is as necessary to economic success of a country as oxygen is to most life on this planet. The collectivist ideas flat out don't work, and all manner of attempts have failed to change that result, so writing something like this from the left would be like writing about a flat earth.

Bernstein goes over the good comparisons ... Hong Kong, East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Cuba and the USSR vs the USA. These have been well covered in many other books, and the results are completely clear. He also does a good job of questioning the idea that the Scandinavian countries are the exception, that socialism actually works there. It appears that we may have a case there of "killing the goose that laid the golden egg". Relatively pure capitalism was used in the past to create the wealth, and today that wealth is being squandered and the future borrowed against. One could argue that much the same thing is going on in the US with the entitlement programs like Social Security.

Where he does a little better job is in pointing out the fallacies of "the glorious pre-technology, pre-capitalist" past. Hobbes pretty much defined it, life was "nasty, brutish, and short". The VAST majority, like 90%+ lived in filth, disease, chaos, starvation, and pain for mercifully short lives. The myth of the "primitive secular Eden" is more widely held these days than the account of Eden in Genesis which those of us who are Christian hold to be true. Bernstein tars religion with the same brush as other partakers in the feudal system and given the history of the Catholic church there is merit there. Whatever the fault, when the masses are chattel that are not educated and allowed to improve themselves and their state, their lot is horrific. Church, King, or modern state, without the power of access to knowledge and the ability to profit from their labors, the material existence of the mass of humanity is not to be envied.

It is unleashing the power of the mind and the willingness to leverage it that makes capitalism great. By allowing "creative destruction", capitalism stays vibrant and in it's purest forms prevents the winners from one age from locking in their wins by stopping advancement and keeping things the way they like them, since the last round turned out in their favor. In general I agree with him, but it is at this point that I have trouble with the "pure approach". I understand why Bernstein takes it, like Rand he wants to leverage the obvious success of the capitalist system into a philosophy of life that "explains everything" in a tidy way. "The good is what provides the most/best life" ... the cynic in me says "he who dies with the most toys wins". Simple yes, but sadly lacking any real meaning.

This is where I part ways with the manifesto. If we are here by randomness and there is nothing beyond this, then other than maximization of pleasure, what would all this be for? The old supposed deep philosophy is "what will it all matter in 100 years"? Which of course is a way of saying "nothing", but in fact if it doesn't matter then, it doesn't matter now either. Dying with the most toys, dollars, friends, pets, or even books is still dying, and as in all things human, that is the final, not optional reality.

He also does nice defenses of attempted arguments against capitalism as causing war, being responsible for slavery, taking advantage of 3rd world poor people, and even defends the much maligned "robber barons". It is a solid work in defending the utility of the tool of capitalism, his only weakness is that he (like Rand) wants to decide that an economic model can be expanded to explain life, the universe and everything. Standard human idolatry, to convert "A good" into THE GOOD, and the ALL. We have a built-in desire to want more than meaninglessness, and also a built in compass that allows us to allow that answer to find us. Many decide that answer is not for them and go off and invent one. In the end, Bernstein looks at the universe and sees it as a nail to the capitalist hammer.

Democrat Outlook

As I saw the UAE ports deal go down by huge inside the beltway margins, I decided that all the parties inside the beltway except for Bush had found something they could agree on, stupidity. All the folks in Congress, Republican or Democrat are politicians at heart, which is very often just a slightly more complimentary way of saying “weasels”. Reagan is the only guy of my lifetime that managed to get to a leadership position that seemed to have far more principle than politics. Bush shows some good tendencies to that direction from time to time, and on this one his weasel quotient was exemplary.

We have established that a huge percentage of Americans, maybe 75% or more are anti-Arab company “ownership” of US ports. Very few of them likely know what they are really against here, but the media usage of “Arab", “foreign ownership” and “threat to security” was enough to stampede even more than the usual sheep. I’m reminded that 75% of the sheep were once in favor of the Iraq war as well, so the sheep are fickle.

When I allow the negative Democrat side of my brain to run wild I can see a dark vision in which the protectionists of right and left get together, pass some protectionist legislation that kills the current round of globalization. The Democrats win both houses of Congress in the fall and start impeachment for Bush, they pull out of Iraq, the markets crash world wide and the world plunges into the great depression II along with global terrorism. The MSM and the Democrats are insufferable in smug happiness as they settle in to blame it all on Bush as they blamed the first depression on Hoover and we face a new 50 dark years of Democrat hegemony.

Actually, just a negative dream, but March being the cruelest month in MN, it is tempting to think like a Democrat sometimes. As I look at the current Bush travails, I’m reminded that the media does a 50% good job of reporting with both parties; they report success well for Democrats, and failure well for Republicans, but there is always an issue of “hope”. Bill Clinton was always “the comeback kid”. Whenever he faced problems due to the evil Republicans or nasty stains, the media expectantly licked their chops and looked for another sign of a “comeback” … a good speech, a slight uptick in the polls, some stock going up, a woman with big hair within his reach, ANYTHING was a sign of a new fantastic “comeback”. They loved him.

Bush was “certified dead on arrival” after the 2K election … not really elected, “appointed president”. He was double dead when the great hero Jim Jeffords defected to the Dems and gave them a Senate majority. He was guaranteed to lose seats in the 2002 elections, presidents usually do, and he was guaranteed to. Afghanistan was a “quagmire” in 2 weeks. Iraq was a giant mistake from the beginning, and the list just goes on and on … “Mission Accomplished”, Abu Grab, 1K soldiers dead, the economy, jobs, this poll, that poll, Katrina, Meyers, now the ports. The MSM has declared Bush “dead and over” so many times they can’t be listed. So far he has recovered and come back from every one of them to date bigtime. He isn’t any “comeback kid” though … when the MSM sees Bush recover, their attitude is the opposite.

The Republicans in Congress have done themselves no favors on this one. Today the sheep think it is a great idea to diss the Arabs and Bush on the ports deal, tomorrow they will have changed their minds. When you tie yourself to polls and politics vs principles, tomorrow is even more volatile than the normal events of life and the world make it. We will pay for the ports deal over time. We need friends in the mid-east, the UAE have been solid friends, yet we have shown that racism, protectionism, and playing politics are worth more to us.

Ports Stolen from Barnett

The following is from the author of "Pentagon's New Map" and "Blueprint for Action", a strategic thinker that I think generally has his head on pretty straight. Fairly comprehensive and direct on the port issue, worth reading.

Time for America to grow up about the global connectivity of foreign direct investment: 

ARTICLE: “U.S. Lawmakers Receive Global Criticism for Objections to Ports Deal,” by Aaron O. Patrick, Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A4.
ARTICLE: “A Ship Already Sailed: America Ceded Its Seaport Terminals to Foreigners Years Ago,” by Simon Romero and Heather Timmons, New York Times, 24 February 2006, p. C1.
OP-ED: “Ports in a Storm: Do we believe in free trade, or don’t we?” by Zachary Karabell, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. A16.
EDITORIAL: “Ports of Gall: The new protectionists use national security as their cover,” Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A10.
ARTICLE: “Thwarted Attack At Saudi Facility Stirs Energy Fears: Officials Worry Terrorists Are Targeting Oil System; Crude Futures Jump 4%,” by Bhushan Bahree and Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: “In Ports Furor, a Clash Over Dubai: Debate Exposes Conflicts Between Security Needs And Foreign Investment; PetroChina Hangs On in Sudan,” by Bernard Wysocki Jr. and Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: “How Foreign Banks Scaled the Chinese Wall: Titans Acquire Minority Stakes With Little Control of Their Own; Will the Strategy Prove Wise?” by Kate Linebaugh, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. C1.
ARTICLE: “Intel to Build Vietnam Chip Plant, Raising Nation’s High-Tech Profile,” by James Hookway and Nguyen Pram Muoi, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2006, p. A4.
ARTICLE: “U.S. Funds Take On Global Flavor: Foreign Companies’ Equities Increasingly Populate Portfolios As Returns Pick Up Overseas,” by Tom Lauricella, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2006, p. C1.

America has been the single biggest kingpin in outward-bound foreign direct investment since the Second World War, meaning our cumulative total of investment in other countries is bigger than anybody else on the planet. Sure, when you bundle up Europe’s numbers, they are huge (2X ours), but that’s including all the intra-European investment, which is like counting Florida investing in Michigan. Strip away all the self investment, and America is more than equal to Europe’s overseas investment total.

Have we benefited from all that overseas investing? Sure. We’re sought out cheaper resources and labor over the decades, pushing American firms to become ever more efficient and to move up the production value chain to new heights of technology and productivity. Have such investments forced our economy and society to leave behind industries that once defined our labor pool? Sure, but that’s progress, unless you think it’s better defined by every child performing the same job as their parents once did, and their parents once did, and their parents once did, and so on.

All that investment has built up this magnificent global economy, which is bigger now than it has ever been, and features less violence and danger than it has ever had to withstand before. That’s right. You go back in history and you will find an ever increasing percentage of humanity either actively involved in or preparing for mass violence. Today, that percentage is lower than it has ever been, because the numbers and cumulative size of conflicts around the world are lower than they’ve ever been.

The spread of the global economy is responsible for that, and our immense role in exporting investments around this world has been preeminent in creating that future worth living.

And yet we are so fearful of the mutually-assured dependence we’ve created with all this investment, especially when it comes back at us in the form of other countries investing in the U.S., something that’s been a hallmark of our development for decades and decades stretching back to our infancy. I know, I know, America was a perfect democracy from the start and we built this entire economy on our own, with no help from anybody except the immigrants who showed up. This is the American mythos, and we love it. But the truth is we've had huge inflows of foreign direct investment throughout our history (Number 1? The Dutch.), as lotsa foreigners “exploited our cheap labor” and our natural resources. And we benefited hugely from this.

Truth be told: no country develops without access to foreign money in this global economy. So FDI must flow. In reality, it’s the Dune-like “spice” that drives our global economy—more than oil does.

So we are rightly criticized as hypocrites when our lawmakers object to the UAE ports deal. Not just because it’s anti-trade, but because it flies in the face of current reality: the countries that run the world’s ports, including ours, are those that most heavily depend on trade (Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, Denmark, China, Germany, Taiwan and that city-state called Seattle). Seafaring centers rule that trade (can I get a “duh”!).

This is our game, the one we created after WW II to keep great power peace, and it’s worked like a dream. Now, great powers and wannabe regional ones all play by our rules. So when one of them does unto us what we’ve been doing unto them for decades, it’s pretty strange for us to cry foul, and even worse to cry national security.

Did DP World have an advantage in bidding for the British company that currently runs a number of our ports? Sure. And we should we wary of letting states-masquerading-as-companies pretend they are playing on a level field? All things being equal? Yes. But all things are rarely equal. And if we’re seeing connectivity result that otherwise would not be there, then I say we choose investment over fear. Do I want Dubai to become a Hong Kong/Singapore of the Middle East? Sure. Because I want the Middle East to connect up to the world. In fact, that’s the whole purpose behind our Big Bang strategy of toppling Saddam: connecting the Middle East up to the global economy faster than the jihadists can disconnect it.

The Al Qaedaists of the Middle East know damn well what they’re doing: they want to sabotage the regions’ economies, disconnecting them from the world, and reap the whirlwind of social distress. Thus we should expect more attacks on port and energy facilities like the one that targeted the Abqaiq facility recently.

I know that some op-ed strategists want to play that game as well, arguing we should cut the global economy off from the Middle East by denying ourselves its oil as quickly as possible, but I argue for just the opposite approach. I want shared economic and strategic interests, not some rapid-fire economic divorce.

That’s the essential nature of the military-market nexus that we ourselves have forged in this era of globalization. I know we are called a debtor nation, but in reality we are a security exporter, one that overspends our public funds in order to pay for the world’s security, which only our power-projecting military is capable of providing. For that service, the world pays us by buying our debt. But that process can only go so far, as we’ve seen with Japan years ago and China today. After a while, our trade partners can accumulate only so much of our money in reserves. When saturation is reached (beyond the fear of currency speculation), then these countries naturally want to diversify their holdings; they want to own us as much as we own them.

This is natural and good and a furthering of the mutually-assured dependence that defines the Functioning Core of globalization. In fact, to move from the Non-Integrating Gap to the Core, such interdependency must be an avowed goal of the migrating nation (in this case, Dubai). We either welcome that mutual dependence or we renounce the very system of growing global peace that we engineered.

We are too far down this road to change course. Invest in a “U.S.” mutual fund today and you’ll find that much of its money sits abroad, seeking greater opportunity--as it should. Some can call such activity akin to being "economic traitors," a charge so foolishly wrongheaded as to deserve complete condemnation. Instead, such investments do more to secure our national security than all the efforts of our defense establishment.

And yet it is so sad to see American leaders, right at the moment of our emerging historical triumph, becoming so amazingly full of self-doubt and fear. What do we need to continue to succeed in the world we’ve created? A highly educated and ambitious labor pool of entrepreneurs. How hard is that to achieve? You tell me.

Other countries are responding to this challenge of Friedman’s “Flat World,” and they’re doing so with less fear. China lets our banks buy into their banks. Vietnam lets Intel come in and build a big chip factory that, a few years back, would have gone to China. Everyone is striving mightily to move up the production chain and all America does is fret over industries we’ve let go abroad instead of focusing on what we really need to do next: invent the next wave of industries that will define our future.

But I am being too harsh here: those industries are appearing across the dial in America. We just need to revamp a lifelong educational system to make American labor confident enough that we can collectively migrate our skills and labor to what comes next, instead of vainly trying to hold onto what came before.

Yes, yes, easier said than done. But what do these “far-sighted” protectionists offer us instead? Look closely, because upon further examination it comes off as a sort of economic back-to-the-future escapism that comes uncomfortably close to Osama’s arguments for civilizational apartheid: “Don’t deal with this challenging future; instead retreat into a more homogenous imaginary past.”

We need confidence now more than ever because we are closer—now more than ever--to the global future we’ve been crafting for decades and decades. I feel a huge debt to the Greatest Generation, one that requires I keep pushing the pile throughout my career. I have never felt more connected to both past and future as I do today, and it fills me with a sense of great optimism.

But optimism requires confidence. You have to see the world you’ve created. You need to feel a pride of ownership and a sense of parental satisfaction.

And at some time you have to let go of your fears. You have to accept countries for what they’re becoming, not what they’ve been. You need to seize the opportunities to turn enemies into partners and partners into close friends.

We are at that moment in history.

We need that confidence and that optimism that’s defined America’s past and will shape this world’s future even more.

We all live in a world of our making. Some deride that self-awareness as naïve or delusional.

I call it real power and tell all the fear-mongers to f--k off.

Disaster Party

It has been fun to listen to the MSM and especially NPR deal with the fact that Mardi gras is under way in New Orleans. Six months ago, this was the "lost 3rd world city of Bush incompetence". Tonight, the floats with the beads and black-tie revelers were rolling into the convention center that was so central to the "scandal" 6 months ago.

They keep working as hard as they can to have it both ways, it reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live skit where something is BOTH a floorwax and a dessert topping. New Orleans is BOTH a terrible example of federal ineptitude, AND, miraculously, it is a city ready for tourism and a huge party 6 months after a horrible natural disaster.

"Oh how terrible" ... "Come on down and PARTY!".

Ports

It was a good week for all of the media right, left, and middle, plus both parties on all sides to spend on the UAE ports story that I found to be completely uninteresting. My main reason for disinterest is that while I’m not much of a believer in big government (or even big business) getting close to everything right, I’m not a “no government” person either (those would be called “anarchists”). In order for this particular issue to be a real problem, a rational person would have to be a “no government” person. 99% of what is done in government (like in business) is done by people that are career employees just doing their job day after day with a lot of oversight, processes and procedures, and unless the organizations are completely broken, they are going to generally do an “average job” … not excellent, not horrible, just “average”. After a 28 year career in “big business”, one realizes that while all the checking, reporting, status and meetings are far from exciting or glamorous, they do go a long way to guard against “the big boo-boo”.

The human condition is not in general “rational” however. Nobody likes to admit it, and normally we don’t, but it is written into our snake brains to “prefer like”, so we are all snake brain level racists (and gluttons, and sex fiends, and prone to violence … all just parts of our basic human nature). The combination of “Arab”, “Bush Administration” and “Outsource” allowed masses of people even including liberal Democrats to display their racism with abandon. After all, the former owner of the loading function at the ports was a BRITISH company, and of course we KNOW that those folks wouldn’t be terrorists. (Oh wait, all the bombers there last summer happened to be British citizens, but no matter, they are trustworthy as opposed to ARABS.

I saw General Tommy Franks on TV discussing the fact that the port of Dubai services more US military ships than any other port outside the US and the same company that handles fueling, loading, docking, etc is the one that was going to be doing it in the six US ports. They don’t of course handle security for the warships, but they wouldn’t be handling it for the ports either, the US Coast Guard and Customs do that … agencies of the same US Government that apparently a ton of folks believe doesn’t work well enough to review an application for some dock hands. Note: that is really what we are talking about here, not “owning the ports”, “security”, “controlling the ports”, or a host of other pieces of misinformation that flowed from sources of the left and right in this case. This one united both the fringes.

This is the kind of political controversy that a Democrat would never face, they don’t have the character to stand up for something, especially when the political answer is completely easy. Everyone knows that outsourcing is unpopular, and everyone knows that “Arab” tends to be unpopular. Bill Clinton would never have got here, this is a tough political position to defend and be in, and he never stood up for any of those. The only thing he was fully committed to was sex with interns at the oval office. While on saner days, and apparently in private, many of the Democrats might admit that we sorely need allies in the Arab world, globalization is a reality, no US companies wanted to bid on the contract for the ports, UAE has been one of our best allies in the Arab world and racism isn’t that becoming, politics is a lot easier than statesmanship, so they are out sticking it to Bush, and if that makes the US look like a racist country that only bombs Arabs and has no real friendship with any, no matter.
This one has brought out a different class of Republican discontent. Harriett Miers brought out the folks that felt that winning elections ought to be about something, and if you made promises during the election, you at least tried to fight for them when you had the chance to make an appointment, even if you lost. Turns out that the fight is pretty darned easy in some cases and you CAN win, as was proven with Alito. The right wing folks out in front on this on are the “America first, last, and let the rest of the world rot if you have to” isolationist wing. What is sad is to see the number of Republicans that ought to be more up on world affairs willing to sit on the sidelines and let Bush just keep taking the flak, since they know this one is a tough sell politically. Some of it is no doubt 2nd term fatigue and off-year election jitters, but it is sad to see that there is more knee weakness in the Republican party than is often evident.

One thing certainly DOES give me major pause though. Jimmuh Carter supports Bush on this one! Jimmuh has been 100% out to lunch on every issue from asking Amy, providing nuke reactors to the N Koreans, to being Howard “Job is my favorite book in the New Testament” Dean’s spiritual advisor. Since Jimmy thinks that America is having a crisis of moral values (his book), I was generally heartened that things must be much better than I thought, now this! Goes to show that it is a complex world, I’m just going to have to chalk it up to one of those phenomenons like “even a broken watch is right twice a day”.

Both Sides of Humor

Trying to figure out "the line" for humor is a very interesting and telling intellectual problem that I believe tells much about individuals and the state of a given culture at a given time. Racial humor is an example of something that has become nearly 100% off limits because of the unacceptability of any sort of white to black humor being socially taboo. Being a bald guy, I know that jokes at the expense of bald men are always acceptible. Fat jokes are far less so, and it will be interesting to follow the future in that area. Bald jokes certainly bothered me when I lost my hair in my early 20's, but I adaapted, but I'm sure part of that adaptatation probably made me tougher and more combative without any thought on my part. The method of adaptation probably says something about my base personality that required little thought on my part, I believe we are very far from blank slates, on the other hand I don't believe we are already fully sculpted personalities either. My natural tendency was to think that I needed to learn to deal with it on my own; the idea of "victimhood", or "political correctness for bald guys" seems unlikely to happen and undesireable from too many levels to even begin to contemplate, so "adapt and deal with it" was my course.

On to the situation at hand. Harry Whittington walked out of the hostpital looking hale and healthy Friday and gave a gracious and understanding statement. Nice civil humor, the kind without any hatred being required could really begin now, so my guess is that humor will promptly end from the left. Cheney had a simple, though bad accident, but in the end, everyone walked away not only without much in the way of lasting physical effects, but very willing to forgive and forget. Both Cheney and Whittington acted as excellent examples of how to handle a very difficult personal situation, and the MSM and many Americans did an equally "excellent" job of showing how to let partisanship and personal animosity rise above civility and basic human kindness and understanding. I see all parties involved as very true to their basic natures. Cheney and Whittington because they are long ago classy gentlemen that really wouldn't know any other way to act, the MSM and many Americans because they believe that their standard of personal hatred, even to the point of in more cases than I would have imagined before last week, wishing a very impressive old guy dead if it would help bring down a VP they happen to politically hate.

Contrast is often a source of humor, but the comparison to Kennedy is far more than humor, it is understanding at a deep level that sometimes only a humorous contrast can fully bring to the surface. When the young secretary that it is commonly understood is in the midst of an affair with a senator is drowned in his car and he fails to report the incident to the authorities until the next AM, we have a situation that we need to be very clear on the "D" or "R" contrast to know how it would be handled. Here we have a "D", so Teddy continues on in public life and has so little concern for the past incident he currently has a dog named "splash". Being on the left means that scrutiny or even basic decency is something you can safely ignore. There is both humor and sadness in the comparison.

As a parent, it is hard to imagine how it must feel to have your child killed by a powerful national figure and to see that the concern from the local electorate doesn't even rise to the level to remove him from office, and nationally his party barely is able to refrain from putting him up as a presidential canidate. Is this a "joke" to point out the comparison with the mild Cheney accident, and thus cruel to whatever relatives of Mary Jo Kopekne that still may be watching? I think not, since to know that some still remember the travesty of justice and the callousness of the MSM and Democrats in this country willing to protect a Kennedy in the face of what looks to be at least very close to murder.

The contrast really does say it all. Mary Jo will not be walking out of the hospital and telling the nation that she is sorry for all the trouble that the incident at Chappiquidick caused poor Teddy.

Springtime for the Press Corps

The MSM and the late night humor folks are having a great time with the Cheney shooting incident. One would exepect it, and they are behaving exactly as would be expected. No need to go back on a littany of press "accidents", but let's just go short term and think about "12 Miners Safe" ... when of course it was 1 miner that was barely alive, and 12 that were dead. Infallibility is something that we are not going to be seeing from our MSM, nor of course from any of us. The usual response is rapid forgiveness, since we know our own feet of clay.

The victim in this case is still in the hosptial, had a heart attack induced by the incident ... I'm thinking the humor might be less if he wasn't a Republican too? We all know many hate Cheney and the term in German says it best; schadenfruede - malicious enjoyment from the suffering of another. It is very human, but not many amoung us really look at it as something that is less than evil in itself, EXCEPT in the case where the person that we are feeling it about has been judged to be less than human and worthy of no positive regard at all ... Hitler, Bin Ladin, Saddam ... and now we see clearly from the left, Cheney.

Schadenfrude is something we all understand, usually ascribe to our darker selves, and enjoy it only sparing and somewhat in private, EXCEPT with the exception above (and even then we understand the darkness). We now see that a lot of people have gorged themselves on enough MSM bile to actually categorize the VP of the USA as someone who one can share publicly a normally ugly human emotion. It is often the smaller things that let us see inside the souls of those around us more clearly.

The defense of Clinton was a larger, but similar clarity kind of example. I've already heard the obvious comparison, but even that tells more about the speaker than they intend. "Well, you conservatives took a lot of joy in Clinton and Monica, that is no different". Such a statement tells one that logical argument is of no use with such a person, because consistency CLEARLY is not an issue. Are we to believe that human males have no more control over their sexual impulses than someone has over a split-second decision in a hunting situation? Apparently yes, but in that case there is very little in human existence that would be under our control, which would tend to meet the liberal model pretty well I suppose. We are all here stumbling and bumbling about with absolutely no control or responsiblity for anything ... unless we are Republicans, in which case we are not only responsible, but constantly doing the wrong thing with evil intent (see "consistency is not an issue").

As Leno said, neither Clinton's or Cheney's aim was very good, but that is about the only similarity. Dick Cheney was responsible for an accident. There are no humans walking around of an age anywhere close the the VPs that haven't been responsible for accidents of similar sorts of parameters, though hopefully not of severity. Of course, there are many that are responsible for accidents of much worse severity, and in general as humans we realize our failings and are quite forgiving of even cases that are quite egregious in overlooking safety, since we well understand "there but for the grace of God ...".

Clinton made a conscious choice, not once, but many times. If he can't be held responsible for that choice, then we would need to take every sex law off the books, and every promise made in marriage off the books and mark it all down as "beyond human control". (along with essentially the whole concept of "self control" or "personal responsibility") While there were certainly plenty of jokes that arose after the ludicris defense attempts about "what is is", very few conservatives "enjoyed" the travails of Clinton. They despised his chosen behavior in the White House and hated what it said about the country that even such blatant case of disrespect for the Presidency and the laws of the land could not be removed from office. Most of the same folks who defended Clinton (and often still do) are now wallowing in schadenfruede for Cheney.

This story is essentially no story at all beyond a basic report, but the response of the press and a number of people in the public is the story. It lets us see that the souls of a lot of our fellow citizens have become so corrupted that they now display their dark side with pride and joy. Springtime indeed, Sig Heil! Enjoyment of the dark side is far from a new device to control the unsuspecting masses.

Leaking Truth

I suppose if you are a liberal and truth and consistency aren’t issues that concern you it gives you special pleasure to fool the sheep in devious little ways. This one is a great little example of how one runs into a dutiful MSM follower that skims over the vast amount of information available and comes out with such pieces of wisdom as “I read today that Libby was authorized by superiors to leak that stuff he is being investigated on”.

Indeed, the CNN headline reads “Libby: My ‘superiors’ authorized leaks”.



My first smile is that at least they are making some attempt to backpedal from the name “Scooter”, not being quite fearsome enough to arouse the kind of vision of evil they want to portray around their manufactured Plame affair, but of course the next part is the really devious deal. What does everyone know old Scooter about? Well, LEAKING in the Plame affair of course. Only problem is that this isn’t about that! This is about another report, called a “National Intelligence Estimate” that was well de-classified before he provided the information, so it wasn’t a “leak” (or even a “whistle-blowing” which would mean information that is anti-Bush or anti-American that the MSM likes, like whomever told the NYT about the NSA “domestic spying” program.).

In other words, the headline is a complete fabrication just to try to keep the Plame story somewhat in the public eye, and if possible fool a few MSM sheep into thinking that there is evidence disclosed that “Scooter” was authorized by the “superiors” (which would point directly to Cheney) to make THE leak. A rather deft sleight of hand actually in it’s own biased completely partisan way.

A Wellstone Moment

The Democrats managed to run the funeral of Coretta Scott King into somwhat of a Wellstone memorial moment, but the MSM has wisely toned it down so it is unlikely to have the kind of negative impact on them that it should. It certainly goes to show that when you have no religion but politics and partisanship, there is no limit to the venues where you will resort to that level of discourse.

Carter's comments on "they were wiretapped" were especially good. Well yes Jimmuh, they were ... by Kennedy and Johnson, good old Democrats of the sort that used Jim Crow as a political weapon to keep control of the south and feed off the animosity for Lincoln and the Republicans freeing the slaves for 100 years. If we had any sort of an unbiased media, that would be the kind of legacy that a white southern democrat would not mention more than once, but in the kind of left wing cheering section that we currently call a media, it goes over just fine. Hearing all the people in the audience clap for such a travesty is a testament to how well the democrats new plantation system has worked. They have the african americans in their column and locked into a system that gives them nothing but dependency and the corruption of their families, while they are herded by the real "Uncle Tom's" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Sadly, they are taught see blacks like Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice, and Clarence Thomas as "Uncle Toms" even though they are examples that have taken the mantle of personal responsiblity vs victimhood, and are about what they can do vs what they can get.

The comments by Joe Lowery were just the old rhyming jiving anti-Bush anti-war screed that is well worn, only the venue of using a funeral where 4 US Presidents had come to show their respects was new. "Partisanship"? "Divisive"? No such charges from the MSM of course, these people have a "D" next to their names. They can say what they want anywhere they want and it is never inappropriate. Will they play their hands too far and fail to have the pickups in seats of congress that they are hoping for this fall? One can only hope, but it has that look.

Cartoon Respect

We have been learning some not so unexpected information about about the world, the US media, and the left in general in the past few days. First, if people believe that they will somehow just "make nice" with Muslim fundamentalists, hopefully they are having some second thoughts. Are people who like to pride themselves on saying and showing any obscenity that could ever be imagined suddenly going to "show respect" to the extent that very mild cartoons will be off limits? To follow the favorite conjecture of the MSM on the Bush monitoring of calls to terrorists, "what is next"? What is next indeed? Women in burkas? Gays beheaded? One can only imagine what the "highly respected" Muslims might have in mind to stop burning and threatening if it works so well. We see that violence goes a long way in producing "respect" (I think it is better called "fear") for many of normally most vocal liberals.

The vaunted courage of the US media relative to "freedom of the press"? Uh, that seems to only apply to beating up on Christians, who actually DO turn the other cheek to all sort of abominations from crosses in urine to Christ depicted as a bi-sexual, to unspeakable and complete lack of respect heaped on their Lord at every opportunity, often at taxpayer expense. Were Christians the same as Muslims, we wouldn't be calling it "chilling" when they threaten to boycott watching some show or buying some product. Where is that word "chilling" by the way? Somehow as all the MSM runs scared of showing a cartoon of a guy with a turban with a bomb depicted in it, we see a completely different attitude.

It seems that we can see pretty clearly now what is bluster and fakery and what is real fear. We have seen lefties standing up boldly to the evils of Bush, Ashcroft, Cheney, and all the other "scary, chilling, threatening" aspects of the Patriot Act, survielance and "looking at your library card". They are SO bold, yet when the threat is violence from "the Arab street", maybe even in this country, they are suddenly nowhere to be found. Which threat is real, and which threat is made up for the vast population of US MSM believing sheep? It seems pretty clear at this point.

Yes, our freedom loving left is willing to show "respect and caution" in the matter of completely chaste cartoons when it comes to Muslims with flamable materials, signs, and probably bombs. Somehow their attitude to Christians is just a little different. The threat of violence really does work well, will they still be showing "respect" when the burkas come out?

Domestic Spying

The MSM and the Democrats have done a great job of “framing” the issue of NSA listening in on calls where one end is a suspected terrorist outside the US and one end is a phone in the US as “domestic spying”. It sounds like most Americans have the reasonable attitude that since most of us aren’t doing anything illegal anyway, who really cares if their phone call is being listened to except a criminal?

Considering listening to a phone call as an “invasion of privacy” is incredible considering the depth of government spying we put up with constantly. The government spies on our salary, our bank interest, our stock dividends and any other financial transaction that they can, and they have no warrant or permission from any judge of any sort, and the whole transaction can be in the US. For most Americans, the spot where we are most likely to get in trouble with the Federal Government is on taxes, and that is the area where our “privacy” is constantly invaded and we treat it as if we somehow have meaningful “privacy”.

We have been so brainwashed that in the case of the taking of vast portions of our property as taxation we give up the presumption of innocence and the need for a warrant for the government to invade our personal information with not even a whimper of complaint. Freedom of speech without the rights to protect our private property from Government search and seizure is very little more than the freedom to complain. Most Americans are too far gone to even understand that their key rights have already been lost. The Democrats and the MSM want to make sure that the rights of terrorists to act against the US are protected, but their concern for the real core right of individuals to work to achieve any financial success is to trample those rights in any way they can.

Kerry 53%

The following is from an interview with John Kerry on ABC by reporter Katie Couric on the subject of the State of Union speech:

Kerry: “I think that if you look at, look at education and competitiveness. What he did last night was timid compared to what we need to do. Of course we need to improve-”

Couric: “He said he wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.”

Kerry: “And that’s terrific, Katie, but 53 percent of our children are not graduating from high school. Kids don’t have after-school programs. Only nine percent of the people eligible in America will be able to get Pell grants this year and for the fifth year in a row they’re not gonna raise the amount of money to help kids who have a 57 percent increase in, in their cost of education to be able to pay for it.”

Of course 53% is way wrong, the real number is anywhere from the low 70’s to 85% depending on exactly how long you give students to graduate. Potentially he meant MINORITY students that are Black or Hispanic, in which case he may have been close. The key point however is that there was never any question of what it was that he meant by Couric, or as far as I know, any other media outlet to date. One has to be a “radical” to even go to any web sites where the gaff is reported.

Why bring it up? For starters, it is a bit more egregious than not being able to spell “potato”, and we know that was serious enough to bring down the political career of Dan Quayle. He brought it up, I suspect that nearly everyone would agree that education is highly important, yet a statistic as shocking as less than half of US students graduating from High School wasn’t enough to bring even a follow-up from an extremely well known reporter on a major network. The level of credulity given to some bozo with a “D” next to his name is shocking.

I find it hard to believe that he simply “mis-spoke”, although we will never know in this case it seems. Republicans get very little slack when it is completely obvious that they just said the wrong thing. No reason to copy that treatment, if he just didn’t say the right thing … meant minorities, or something else, then I have no problem with that. HOWEVER, since he brought it up, it seems very odd that he would have it wrong … after all, we are constantly told how smart and capable he is, and he certainly is a lot smoother vocally than say, Bush.

Let’s consider that Kerry (and Couric for that matter) may actually believe that less than 50% of US students graduate High School. Does anyone else find that incredible? How could they possibly support the NEA and the existing system of public education that is spending vast sums of money but by their stated number for results providing the minimal result of a diploma to only 47% of the students. That would be a DISASTER … even 85% success, where 15% fall through the cracks is bad enough, and the low 70’s is distinct cause for alarm, but around 50%? In a global enconomy? That is the kind of number that ought to make the hair stand up on the back of your head, damn the politics, and demand RADICAL CHANGE in a system that could fall to such a low result. Throwing a few extra dollars at it would not be an example of the kind of change required.

Of course, the fact is that at least Black minority students have rates very close to that 50/50 graduation chance travesty, and they are the students most locked in to the “plantation” of public education with no other options, along with being the most saddled with single parent households and the millstone of a victim culture. Something radical … like vouchers, private and church schools certainly needs to be tried to fix those kinds of numbers, but a John Kerry isn’t going to be the guy to see that.

Having a D next to your name means that you can quote any kind of stupidity you want and the MSM won’t so much as bat a pretty eye. So the vast majority of the population of sheep remain so out of touch that the idea of them voting is a pretty scary thought.

Kennedy / Kerry on Alito

If there was any doubt that Alito was a great pick for the Supreme Court, Kennedy and Kerry certainly put it to rest on the floor of the Senate today. We have elections to choose presidents that get to appoint supreme court judges, and it is completely unsurprising that the other side isn't going to like them. Of course, if the other side follows the constitution, they are supposed to discover if the judges are qualified and then "consent", maybe something like 96-3 as the Republicans did for Ruth Bader-Ginsberg when they were in about the same numbers in the Senate as the Democrats are now. Naturally, reasonable people would never expect Democrats to be reasonable, so Kerry and Kennedy just did a good job of doing what one would expect.

Both Kennedy and Kerry should have provided some great sound bites for commercials in the fall, Kennedy especially looked like a man unhinged and out of control, one would have thought that Alito drowned his daughter in a car or something. (Mary-Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment).

There is always something sureal about guys like Kennedy and Kerry screaming about "the little guy". One married into 800 million, and the other was born to a dynasty and has never known life without privliege and 100's of millions of dollars at his service. If either really wanted to "help the poor", they could give away 100's of millions to the poor, keep just a paltry 10-20 million each, and "scrape by" with a nice luxury condo or two each, fly commercial (horror!) and still do essentially anything they wanted for recreation as often as they wanted. But of course that would be a HUGE step down for them, and one THEY are not going to take.

On the other hand, they spend all their days trying to take actions to prevent a few million Americans from having a shot at building up a million or so and retiring someday to a decent but far from the lifestyle that they won't even deign to consider as a "sacrifice step down". They have the multiple homes, compounds, private aircraft, and trust funds that let them live the life of royalty while they try to deny the opportunity for a decent number to move to "upper middle class" with caps on Roth IRA's, high taxes on 401Ks, deduction limits, and has high a tax rates on income as they can possibly get. They know that income is the only leverage a lot of people have to escape dependence on the government, and they want to keep them dependendent so they can control their votes. During the '80s, too many people moved up enough to see a higher plane and ended up Republicans. They can't have that kind of opportunity.

It must be a cyncal life, living in opulent wealth, and holding as much of the masses as possible on the "Government Plantation" where any attempt to improve their station is beaten down with as much vigor as possible by programs that are supposed to be "fair", but only hurt people at a far lower srata then the lofty heights of a Kennedy or Kerry. There are few things that Democrats hate more than someone who has actually lived the American dream and moved up from government dependence to even a small level of personal independence. People like that leave their plantation, and when Democrats talk about plantations, they know of what they speak.

Stuck in the '70's

Michael Barone has a well written editorial called "Stuck in the '70s" here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-1_30_06_MB.html
He picks up on some of the themes of why it was the decade from hell on both the substantive issues front (Watergate, Wage and Price Controls, Stagflation, Iran Hostages, Loss in Vietnam), but the more mundane as well (Disco, odd clothes, mass media wasteland, horrible product and building quality).

He correctly points out that many Democrats and MSM people seem to be stuck in the '70's, but only claims that they are there because it makes them "forever young". I think he misses that part. The more I observe the liberal mind and behavior, I maintain that they are there because they look back FONDLY on the '70s. What certainly most conservative Americans, and in general, most moderate Americans see as "bad", the bulk of the left sees as the "glory days". Defeat in Vietnam and Nixon resigning were unalloyed great days of victory for them. The increased influence of the USSR and China, and Carter's statements that the best days of the US had past fit their model of a US in decline. The powerlessness of the US in the face of Iran was the US that they wanted to see.

To a huge mass of our opposition party and our media, the '70s are "the good old days", and understanding this is a major help in undertanding the agenda of Democrats and the MSM, and in seeing why they react the way they do to events today, and projecting what kind of America would be to their liking.

Limits of Democracy

Heading to work Friday AM the NPR announcer discussed how the win by Hezbolah in the elections was a huge problem for Bush, since he has been pushing for democracy as a solution in the Mideast, and now finds himself with a conflict of not being willing to work with an organization that has won a legitimate election that officially espouses terrorism and the destruction of Israel.

NPR is a great source of humor for me, and I was able to get a good belly laugh out of that one, as it shows the true NPR colors at a number of levels. The first level of course is that it is a problem for BUSH, since HE espouses Democracy. NPR, and of course liberals in general DON'T support Democracy ... they support "good results", or some other abstract concept.

They are very familiar with the idea that a Democracy can get "wrong results", since Bush is the President of the US ... sometimes they think because of Diebold messing up Ohio, but most of the time just because there are a bunch of idiot Christians in the red states that voted for something foolish like "values", rather then their proper "self interest" as defined by NPR and Democrats. They are very familiar with the idea of Democracy providing a "bad result" if they would just reflect for a second.

Is Hezbollah winning in Palestine a "bad result"? Democracy is one of those "it is what it is" things like a market economy. Are gas prices "bad"? Well, we would all like them lower (we think), but one of the things that the higher price provides is available gas. We like that part. Both the market and democracy (which is a political/ideas market) tend to provide a much more reality based view of the world than a command economy, or a dictatorship.

For people not taken in by the bleating of the MSM, it has been clear for a very long time that the Palestinian people generally support the destruction of Israel by whatever means, and so did their leaders, although they were very willing to lie to the likes of Billy Clinton, the UN, and the MSM if they thought it served their purposes. All that has happened now is that they have voted and let the rest of the folks know what non-sheep knew forever ... the majority of the Palestinians care more about the destruction of Israel than they do about their own safety, children, or any sort of future as long as Israel is DESTROYED!

Reality a huge problem for the left, and since one of things they like to do best is project their problems somewhere else, it is unsurprising to hear NPR call it "a problem for Bush". Hopefully Bush understands the right course of action pretty well ... it doesn't really make any difference how people with terrorist views get into power ... ballots, bullets, the answers are the same. Cut off their aid, cut off their trade, isolate them any way that we can, and help make the cost of their ideas as high as we possibly can. It is very true and unfortunate that a lot of them aren't going to change their minds until they are dead, so since they have selected their ideas, we need to do all we can to make sure that they get to live the logical Hobbesian outcome of those ideas (lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short)!

NPR and liberals like to be on the side of "reality avoidance". Providing aid and comfort to the PLO and cheering negotiations between Arafat and Israel even though the official position of the PLO was the annihilation of Israel was perfectly reasonable. It allowed the situation to go on forever, and it fit right into their world model where ideas don't have consequences, and there is no reason at all to have any sort of consistency in your view of the world. You make yourself feel good by negotiating with the PLO and simply ignore the fact that they want to destroy Israel by any means possible!

The vote is good in the sense that it is real. There should be a lot less doubt of what we are dealing with in Palestine. Conservatives at least tend to find that dealing with the real world has a higher chance of success than dealing with some abstract view of how we might like the world to be, the situation with Israel and the Palestinians is about as bad a reality as any around for hopes of success, but having a more realistic picture of the situation is at least a baby step in the way of progress.

Kerry vs Hillary

With the attempt to fillibuster the Alito confirmation it appears that Kerry is staking out his position on the left wing of the Democratic party for a 2008 attempt. In the lsat week or so he has also posted to the Daily Kos, a flaming far left Blog that amoung other things took the position that contractors that were killed and their bodies hung from a bridge "deserved what they got, and he didn't feel any remorse for them or their families".

Hillary seems to be in "scattergun mode". Take a shot at moving to the right by claiming that going tough and unilateral on Iran and North Korea, and then taking a shot at some ham handed race baiting with her "Republicans treating the House of Representatives like a plantation" comment.

I'll never figure out how one develops an affinity for politicians that seem to only cynically take positions for purposes of getting votes and gaining power, and one wonders if they have any actual beliefs at all beyond wanting to be in power.

State of Fear

After having the Michael Crichton "State of Fear" book on my shelf for over a year, being under the elbow weather was a good excuse to read it. I have to applaud him very strongly fore being willing to go completely gainst the general world view on the environment and Global Warming. The book is fiction, but he makes it clear in the forewards and on the web that he stands behind the science that calls global warming into question, and is very concerned about the kind of media and academic power that can create what is essentially a hoax, if not in complete reality, at least in the level of fake certainty of global warming being a fact.

For those that don't recall the name Crichton, he is the author of Jurrasic Park, and Andromeda strain to name a couple, creator of the TV series ER, and a graduate of Harvard medical school ... so not a complete idiot. He uses the theory of eugenics early in the 20th century as an example of a theory that had very close to the same level of scientific, academic, political, and popular support, but of course was dangerous and wrong. He does a good job of using fiction to point out the techniques that are used to create "facts" out of guesses, wishes, partial data, imagination, selective reporting and other more sinister techniques.

When someone that has something to lose comes out and strongly questions the "standard model that everyone agrees with", it is very refreshing. While he is far from my favorite author, and one gets tired to reading screenplays disquised as books, it is worth a read just hear some contrarian science to the dogma of global warming ... something that is extremely rare in the press.

Conservative Mind 2

As I said before, I in no way want to give the impression that a summary of this book comes even close to capturing the majesty of the book, and to go even further, a reading of the book shows that Burke, Locke, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, John Adams, Tocqueville and a host of others need to be read and understood to claim to be appreciating the meaning of what is written. To grossly summarize the key insights that stick with me however:

Leveling in all its forms is supremely dangerous to all freedoms of man, to the freedoms of both the masses and the aristocracy. We see the result of economic leveling in socialist and communist countries where the general outcome is that the overall standard of living is lowered in the extreme so that all may be “equal”, but the equivalence is of the lowest common denominator where nobody has anything worth having economically. The economic results are minor compared to the intellectual and spiritual cost, and in fact the tyranny of spiritual and intellectual leveling is perfectly capable to be carried out, and maybe even preferably so where people are in fact worshiping material gain and unaware that they have lost the meaning of their lives.

Sadly, we see that the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual leveling has already been carried out successfully for the bulk of the US population, and the mass of people are chasing various material goods while only dimly aware that they have no sense of meaning, allegiance to family, church, country or any other organization. They gather material with no more meaning than “the flies of summer”, since their connection to any higher power of history, culture, religion, family, or community has been taken from the them by the combination of minimal education, and a mass culture dedicated to the lowest common denominator.

The term “aristocracy” is used as a positive thing throughout the book, while it isn’t precisely their definition I’ll define it as “it is good to have betters”. I’m often maligned by people for saying that I actually appreciate that there are some people of wealth that can have multiple beautiful homes, private jets, and the like. The point I try to make is that jealousy isn’t the ONLY human emotion … one can appreciate the good fortune of others, and feel that the fact that things are possible for SOME is an improvement on them not being impossible for any, and raises the overall level of the economic system.

Most people hate that analysis, but after reading this book I realize in more depth the profound thankfulness and some level of jealousy that I have for a William Buckley. Without “betters”, we have nothing to even aspire to, or realize where life CAN go, to appreciate what is possible. We are dumb sheep that wallow in the pre-packaged crumbs of civilization, religion, and knowledge that are doled out to us by an educational system and media that by and large has lost track of what even exists in the store room of western culture.

This is again the same lament of the Closing of the American Mind. We have lost the basic connection with our own culture. From the Conservative Mind it becomes clear that this is at least in part a "conspiracy". When people are aware of the treasure of thought and culture that has gone before them in western civilization, that understanding in itself acts as a conserving anchor. When one appreciates what they have, they are far less likely to tear it down in a vain attempt to create some abstract heaven on earth.

All of the loss of meaning to life, the trivialization of religion, family, and all institutions other than the federal government was predicted and discussed by conservatives before 1700. The dangers of increasingly direct democratic rule, of removal of religion from connection with the state, and of even the rise of protestantism are discussed in detail as risks to freedom. As Bork points out in Slouching Toward Gomorrah, there isn't, nor can be any brake on the forces of radicalism and liberalism. Once the masses believe that they are on a train named “progress”, they are only interested in going faster and faster even if it becomes clear that the near destination is tyranny, hell on earth, followed by destruction.

The biggest sense that I’m left with is much the same as when I read “Atlas Shrugged”. How could I have gone through a normal US education and graduated from college and be completely ignorant of Edmund Burke? Much as in the case of the ideas of Ayn Rand, it becomes clear that it wasn’t an accident.

The Conservative Mind

“The Conservative Mind” by Russel Kirk takes it’s place at the head of my all-time favorite books, eclipsing “The Closing of the American Mind”. It may be that Closing is more profound, but it is much less accessible, so “CM” takes over as the single “must read” if one wants to get what it means (or ought to mean) to be a Conservative. I still search for a liberal book equivalent, perhaps I will find it in Rousseau or Locke in the future.

This is sub-titled “From Burke to Eliot” and makes it clear how woefully incomplete my education, and the education of everyone in the west has been at least since the 1930’s or so, and likely much longer. The push to liberalism didn’t burn the books and ideas of the past, it just chose to ignore them and declare them irrelevant. The list of books and ideas that need to be understood to even have a passing knowledge of what has gone before, what is known of human nature, democracy, the relation of God and man, what is knowable and what is not philosophically; this vast body of knowledge has purposely ignored so that the lives of man could be “leveled” by our educational and government systems. The work of economic leveling turns out to be minor compared to the intellectual and cultural leveling that has been done so that the vast bulk of mankind has no idea of what it is that they are even missing. Conservatives saw this happening hundreds of years ago and were unable to prevent it, but the thoughts live on, there remains hope.

An interesting extended quote; “This book distinctly does not supply it’s readers with a conservative ideology: for the conservative abhors all forms of ideology. An abstract rigorous set of political dogma: that is ideology, a “political religion”, promising a terrestrial paradise to the faithful; and ordinarily that paradise is to be taken by storm. Such a priori designs for the perfection of human nature and society are anathema to the conservative, who knows them for the tools and the weapons of the coffeehouse fanatics.

For the conservative, custom, convention, constitution and prescription are the sources of a tolerable civil social order. Men not being angels, a terrestrial paradise cannot be contrieved by metaphysical enthusiasts; yet an earthly hell can be arranged readily by ideologues of one stamp or another”.

In listening to the mass media and most of education, one would believe that ONLY “conservatives” have “ideology”. The book also runs into the problem that Hayak is so plain on that the modern use of “liberal” and “conservative” has very little to do with the real meanings of the terms historically. To help on that front, here are the 6 canons of coservatitism according to Kirk:

1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems are at the bottom religious and moral problems.
2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrow uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
3) Conviction that civilized society requires order and classes as against the notion of a “classless society”. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.
4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked; separate property from private possession and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic leveling, they maintain, is not economic progress.
5) Faith in prescription and distrust of “sophisters , calculators, and economists” who would reconstruct society on abstract designs.
6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than the torch of progress.


To contrast, the following are the radical or “liberal” tenents:

1) The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society.
2) Contempt for tradition
3) Political leveling. Order and privilege are condemned; eagerness for centralization and consolidation.
4) Economic leveling. The ancient rules of property, especially land, are suspect to almost all radicals.
5) Animosity to God, “souls”, or any power that is “above man”.

By way of introduction, that is a start. I’ll try to capture some more in another Blog.

Singular Design

The Singularity book brought to mind a number of recent technology and science issues. First, Ray has no problem creating a new religion based on the perfectibility of man via technology and becoming such an adherent to that religion that he is taking 100’s of supplements and medications an attempt to be granted eternal earthy life on the alter of human technology. He doesn’t hammer as much on the foolishness of belief in God as some, but it is there, he is a materialist through and through, so one of the wags that I read put it, “we are 100% meat with absolutely no spiritual additives”.

Why is this view so important to scientists? They are generally extremely intelligent, yet they fall for to grade school philosophy with formulations like “evolution is how different species were formed, therefore God doesn’t exist”? That statement would be akin to someone saying “this blog was written with MS Word, therefore there is no Moose”.

I’d put the initial blame with the old Catholic Church. When science was in it’s infancy and the Church was in full power, it arrogantly usurped the power of God to claim that it could understand that if the Bible said “the sun stood still” in that one Old Testament battle, then that had to mean it literally stood still, therefore astronomers that claimed the earth orbited it were heretics. It only takes a couple scientists being burned as heretics for them to become a but untrusting of religion. The church ought to avoid pronouncements on the physical, and science should avoid pronouncements on the spiritual.  By this point in human history, movies like ‘The Matrix”, and imagined technology like the Star Trek Transporter ought to make it eminently clear the difficulties of the  “what is reality” problem that perplexed ancient philosophers back to Plato and before.

Any God that can create the universe can create it whenever and however he wants to create it, including doing it while I’m writing this sentence, and from the perspective of any science we have, or ever WILL have, we would be unable to tell the difference. We can ONLY know how it APPEARS from the limits of our senses and thought, and whatever machines we can derive from those. Even if we derive a computer that uses what we see as every particle in this or N universes for computation, it would still be operating from the perspective that WE see. It is possible that is the “only real and true perspective”, but making that decision is every bit the leap of faith that belief in the God of the Bible or some other god is.

Aside from the fault of the church in the normal anti-God view of scientists we have good old human nature. The current discussion about teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) in the schools is instructive. The “unstated alternative” is Random Design (RD). If there is no higher intelligence behind the universe, then we are here due to randomness and all the “design” that we see is random. No matter how much the scientist appeals to very very very large numbers, the thought that all the intricate balances between the forces of physics that allow stars, planets, and eventually intricate chemistry that underlies life to exist “just happens” strains credulity.

Like many liberal arguments, it is relatively easy to point out perceived problems with 6-day creation, age of the earth, or the fact that natural selection happens all the time in say disease resistance of bacteria, BUT, the real issue of “what is the alternative”? is left open. Liberals tend to be good at criticism, but HORRIBLE at implementation or suggesting REASONABLE alternatives! We know they don't like a "god of order", but does declaring a "god of randomness" and then believing that science and figure out things due to order in the universe REALLY make sense?

The god of chaos is willing to to just stand off to the side of the stage and be worshipped without acknowledgement. He realizes that the human soul can be suitably corrupted by just removing the God of order and intelligence from view;  chaos, evil, randomness; all are perfectly willing, and in fact more than happy to rule from the shadows.

One of the keys to perceiving the dark side is the criticism with no alternative, or the “action to nihilism”. “We seek only to be sure that a religious doctrine isn’t taught in the schools, therefore ID must be removed”. But what is it replaced with? “Nothing”, or effectively RD. The decision to worship at the altar of randomness and chaos is an equal leap of faith (and when faced honestly is a greater move against the very human soul), BUT the IMPRESSION is given that it is more “free” (there are “less rules”). This may be the cruelest hoax of all.

If this truly is a universe of RD, what do we know about issues like the perfectibility of man? Our ability to find more answers and create heaven on earth through science? Well, precisely nothing. It could be anything, it is random. We know very little extra in an ID universe if we don't accept something like the Bible, but it seems easier to believe that an ID universe is likely to “make sense” over an RD universe since there was intelligence that begat it in the first place.

As Ray winds his way through toward the Singularity he muddles around with trying to figure out how to claim that the vast new machine intelligence that will arise will be “good”. He admits that by definition it can’t be controlled, and the closest he comes to a reason for it’s goodness is “because it is a child of our minds”. Considering that Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Bin Ladin were all kids once, somehow I don’t find that very comforting, and I’m not sure why he does … I suspect he just threw up his hands and decided to find it so since he didn’t like the alternative.

While I find Ray wildly optimistic, if one extends the time scale to 1000 years rather than 100, I suspect he may not be SO very far off. My reasons for optimism though have little to do with the technology being OUR children, but a lot to do with us and the technology being children of a designer for whom the computational capacity of all the humans that ever lived in one second of clock time isn’t even an issue since his existence and capacity is beyond time and measure.

The Singularity Is Near

The Singularity is Near is the latest book from technology cheerleader and futurist Ray Kurzweil. There is no doubt Ray is extremely intelligent and understands technology at very deep level given his pioneering work in optical character recognition, speech recognition, and electronic music. He has authored three books on the subject; “The Age of Intelligent Machines”, “The Age of Spiritual Machines”, and now "The Singularity".

The essential claim is that we are rushing headlong to a point in the quite near future (2045 according to Ray) where due to one or more of the “GNR” (Genetic, Nano-Tech, Robotic) technologies, “everything will change” in a way we can’t really predict now because a machine intelligence will arise and be instantly able to replicate over the net around the globe to all computing. Ray can see us rushing to this point due to Moore’s law and “the law of exponential returns”, and although he makes a lot of positive predictions, he admits that where we go beyond this new intelligence arising will be out of our control. (See Terminator movies for a slightly less positive view of what might ensue when the machines take over).

One doesn’t need to read on very long in this book (or his others) to know that Ray doesn’t have anytime for existing religions -- apparently that is why he is working so hard on his new one which says that among the many great outgrowths of all this technological advance is the fact that Ray is going to live forever!  (He is 60) By the 20-teens there will be enough genetic engineering and miracle drugs to insure that nothing like heart or cancer get him before his full 70-80 year current life expectancy. In the 20-twenties, nano-tech will insure that life expectancy is moved out to at least 100 and likely much more. In the 20-forties, no problem, Ray is leaving this biological veil of tears behind and uploading to a nano-tech / silicon super-self.

I got a kick out of his various “laptops”, machines the size of a current laptop that will provide the amount of computing available for one thousand dollars. His 2080 laptop could execute computing equivalent to the total computing power of all human brains for the preceding 10 thousand years in less than one second. Ought to be able to run a dynamite video game on that puppy! I suspect that one might need to have a bit of a lap pad to avoid “slight reddening of the skin” … it ought to have about the same level of heat being thrown off as the surface of the sun, so the cooling fans might put up a little howl and the battery life may not be too long, but hey, at those speeds just think what one can do before going looking for a plug.

Ray is a tad weak on software. It will be “much better” and “much smarter”, but there is a notable lack of anything like a Moore’s curve in the software industry. Too much exposure to Windows may lead people to believe that the glorious technological evolution that drives Ray’s future of wonder might be more like DE-evolution. Perhaps Unix was the pinnacle of software evolution and we are now “reversibly evolving” to the Cro-Magnon era where dumb brutes of Windows programs grunt in approval of the latest blue screen of death. I guess I’m less optimistic than Ray.

Hillary Hawk

Wow, what a tough lady. Bush has made a huge error by working with Britan, France, and Germany in negotiations with Iran, and made the same error by going multi-lateral with North Korea by including China, Russia, and Japan to North Koraa. In the cass UNILATERALLY. I can't drag out a speech, but we know that Iraq required MULTI-lateral action where that is defined as "more than Britan". To see the press sit and listen to such drivel with a straight face would be so very funny if it wasn't such a serious topic. This bimbo could theoretically be Prseident in the future.

Multilateral, unilateral, how does one decide? Hillary needs not explain, just "wrong, wrong, and wrong". Somehow that isn't hard to predict. She also has said in the last couple days that "The Bush Administration will go down in history as one of the worst ever". Ann Coulter points out that wives of Bill Clinton would be very wise to avoid the phrase "go down" at a all costs, nearly much as Teddy Kennedy ought to avoid the analogy "drowning in" as in "I'm drowning in e-mail".

Where Have I Gone?

When last spotted, the intrepid Blogging Moose was headed to the Keweenaw Penninsula of Michagan for snowmobiling. Thursday the 5th a great time was had out on the trails with the new sleds. The picture shows the Fusion sitting in Phoenix in the AM, there was plenty of snow on the trails, and both the Fusion and the Apex were fantastic. For a pure trail riding high performance person the Apex is certainly the ride to get if dollars aren't a problem ... unlimited power, smooth, gets quieter the faster it goes, fantastic ride, and just all around the sense of "reeks of quality". In general, it draws the most people trying to find out how good it is.

The Fusion however is a great pick if one is "well over 6'" as this writer is. Lots of leg position, tons of torque that wants to pull the skis off the ground, more "rider forward" for the sense of being able to throw the sled around, also great suspension, but at least as set up, a loser to the Apex, although still an improvement over even M-10. Super day with fine trails, although certainly not the kind of pristine trails we have round up there in the past.

Since I had been missing, I suspect that you can guess that something is coming, but not about sleds. Thursday night, black ice on the parking lot at hotel, 1 second cehecking position of vehicle and trailer, next 1/100 of a second, on back with bleeding head and sore elbow. Head was easy fix with stitches, but elbow turned out to be broken and needed surgery, before and after pics included. It is supposed to be 7 screws and a plate, I suspect that there are two screws looking like one at some point in there.

Before:

After


The cast came off today, and it is getting some typing use and holding up OK, so that is good news. Missed work all last week, but worked from home yesterday and went in for awhile today and plan to do more tomorrow. Things can go bad in a hurry sometimes, but apparently with a bit of Mayo Clinic assist, recovery is well underway.

Don't Even Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717

Here it is 2006 already, and I just have to get caught up with my reading with writing in the Blog. To finish up Lakoff and the Elephant, I’d like to reiterate that this is a very short, very easy read that allows people from either side to see how the left thinks of itself and thinks of conservatives. The guy deserves a lot of credit for his honesty, if not necessarily for his insight. As he gets to the back of the book he is busy rallying his troops to take on the evil conservatives. A lot of his advice certainly applies equally well to both sides, here are some examples and discussion:

• “Never answer a question framed in your opponent’s point of view. Always re-frame the question to fit your values and your frames.” If both sides follow this simple rule, then the shouting matches should at least be “all about frames”.

• I love this one; “Their health care would be covered by having the top 2% pay the same taxes they used to pay. It’s only fair that the wealthy pay for their own lifestyles, and that people who provide those lifestyles get paid fairly for it.”. A of the liberal model in a nutshell here:

“Fairness”, the emphasis above is his. Liberals are nearly as expert on fairness as 6yr olds. He uses “fairness” twice (and who but a meta-physician, 6yr old, or liberal could be certain about “fairness”?) and uses “payment” twice and manages to be wrong both times. The liberal sees all assets and income as “owned” by the government, so a “wealthy person” getting a tax cut is “taking money from the government” (and therefore not “paying for their lifestyle"), where a person getting the benefit of a government program is getting “paid” for something that they have “earned” by just existing. Liberals have a lot of "basic rights", such as to "a living wage", "retirement", or "healthcare". The liberal universe somehow just hands these "rights" out of the random godless ether.

The general rule is that private property, business, competition, and the market are NOT FAIR, where congress, endless government bureaucracy ARE “fair”. There are whole books written on the philosophy of that decision, but a liberal simply takes that on faith. They KNOW, in a way that is about as close as they come to religious faith, that any society that didn’t put them on some sort of "easy street" HAS to be grossly unfair.

• “People know how to spend their money better than the government. Reframe: The government has made very wise investments in tax-payer money.” … as if that was new. Democrats have been trying to call government spending “investment” for a very long time … it is one of their oldest and moldiest frames.

• “Use wedge issues, cases where your opponent will violate some belief he holds no matter what he says. Example: Suppose he brings up abortion. Raise the issue of military rape treatment. Women soldiers who are raped (by our own soldiers in Iraq, or on military bases) …. The wedge: If he agrees, he sanctions abortion, in government supported facilities no less, where doctors would have to be trained and facilities provided for terminating pregnancies. If he disagrees, he dishonors our women soldiers who are putting their lives on the line for him. To the women it is like being raped twice-once by the criminal soldier and once by a self-righteous conservative.”

Lucifer would be proud; I suspect Lakoff really enjoyed writing this. First of all, he gets to call BOTH our soldiers and conservatives “rapists”, which fits well with his basic frame. The concept is great too … the idea that someone would have to deal with “conflicting beliefs” and weigh the “greater good”, or “lesser evil” is a foreign concept to a liberal … John Kerry was a master. Why not just courageously take ALL positions? It does sound so much like a lot of the basic discussions between Lucifer and both God the Father and the Son. How proudly and smugly the trap is set where one would have to make a moral choice … a trap that a liberal who has judiciously avoided any concept of “righteousness”, self or otherwise, is completely secure of ever having to face. Such dilemmas are indeed a part of a life of real morals and values, as opposed to the kind of make believe “values” conjured up on the spur of the moment if they appear to be needed to win some more votes.

Much like any other rape, there is a crime, but it wasn’t committed by the fetus. The liberal should be asked how prevalent rape is among our service people (since he raised the issue), and if it is an issue, then is that a sign that women are integrating well into the military services? The idea that they should be integrated was a very strong liberal position, without which this “wedge” is removed.

• “Remember once more that our goal is to unite our country behind our values, the best of traditional American values. Right-wing ideologues need to divide our country via a nasty cultural civil war. They need discord and shouting and name-calling and put-downs. We win with civil discourse and respectful cooperative conversation. Why? Because it is an instance of the nurturant model at the level of communication and our job is to evoke and maintain the nurturant model.”

I guess that means that Gay marriage has always been here, there have always been a ton of issues with the use of the term “God”, or “Christmas” in the public square, and abortion was always completely legal and government funded?  Therefore, “Conservatives” are really radicals, and liberals are actually “traditionalists”? Prayer had never been allowed in schools or the public square, and conservatives are trying to force it in to "create division" for purely political purposes? One wonders what planet George has been on?

It seems that what he must be seeing is that prior to say the ‘80s the liberal agenda was moving forward with only token objection from some far-right Christians with no organization, a few whimpers from Bill Buckley and then of course Ronald Reagan, an aging actor that the country was nuts to elect. Things have changed since ’80, but it is a lot like the Crusades. They are depicted as “offense”, but they only started after the Muslims had taken Spain and were starting to push into France. It is true that the counterattack went all the way to Jerusalem, but a lot like the Arabs attacking Israel, it might be wise not to whimper TOO much when you find out that the door to the bear’s cage that you were poking with a sharp stick turned out to not be locked.

There is some degree of a “culture war”, but the real complaint from the left ought to be “we never thought they would actually fight”.

I’m going to give up now, but I know I’ve failed to capture the unique combination of smugness, cluelessness, and chilling duplicity that Lakoff brings to the table. This ought to be required reading for any conservative that has any illusions of “reasonableness” or “fairness” from the other side of the barricades. The left deals in abstractions, don’t be taken in. God is a real God of real order, and the other is abstract "god" of chaos (although that god is supported by a VERY real Satan!). One has to give both Lucifer and Lakoff some credit "for truth in labeling"; at least when they feel they are talking to their own.

Sleds

Playing around withe the Canon Powershot S2 1S taking pictures of my new sled and a buddies sled that is stored at my house as well. Realized that I had the camera set to 640x480, but those should be good sizes to post on the Web at least. Here is my Polaris Fusion 600 HO.

Here is the Yamaha Apex

Here are the two of them together:

My riding impressions from driving around my rather large back yard and some adjoining land. The Polaris sits higher, seems lighter (it is, close to 100lbs), wants to lift the nose under power, easier to manuever, smoother, quieter, adjustable steering position going to nice for dealing wiht rider fatigue during the day.

The Yamaha has more "attitude" and more of the "reeks of quality sportscar". All electric start, nice reverse except for dorky beeper, seems lower and more stable, it is heavier, but the weight is right. Yamaha harder to drive because the extreme torque/power make it shoot ahead, and the back pressure seems like the brakes are on ... however, in some configurations which I don't really have figured out yet, it free-wheels and has ZERO backpressure, so one needs to be on top of that as well.

In general, sort of like picking between fine chocolates, both are going to be fun, and looking forward to heading to the Keweenaw Wednesday.