Liberal LA Times on BO Tax Cheats!

41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

It would REALLY be nice if this got some SOLID MSM COVERAGE for a change! How and WHY does ANYONE defend these people?????

We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

As in, 1,000 times one million dollars. All this political jabber about giving middle-class ...

... Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along -- unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office.

These people TAKE OUR MONEY so they can make TWICE what the average American makes, yet even at the top, they owe over $800K in taxes!!!

Helloooooo !!!! WAKE UP!!!!! We are getting taken in very very broad daylight!

Please Please note!!! This is the LA Times, NOT "Fox News" ... are at least a few folks out on the left FINALLY finding a litte outrage at these bozos???? One can only hope!

"Corruption??" "Clean out the swamp??" ... people that oppose BO are racists? You have to be a racist to be against tax cheats these days??

THROW THE BUMS OUT!

Let's Burn the Mosque

Obama: Quran-burning plan is 'recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda' - CNN.com

How DOES the mind of BO operate? On the Mosque issue, he is a "constitutional defender" -- well, of COURSE they have a legal right to build a Mosque, but DO YOU SUPPORT IT???  Which of course, he really does, but he sorta backpedaled on the "wisdom of it". The Victory Mosque will be an excellent recruiting tool for al Qaeda ... they don't have any other Victory Mosques at Ground Zero, and it will give explicit proof that they are winning and we are rubes.

Might some Islamic nuts put quaran burning by some hick in FL on their "hit parade"? Sure, but it isn't like they don't have THOUSANDS of grievances against us infidels anyway ... Israel, Democracy, loaning money for interest, allowing gays to live (uh, marry? I'm not sure they can even fathom that one), letting women vote and show their faces, US forces anywhere on "Muslim soil", made up things like US soliders flushing the Quran at Gitmo (Note, the MSM nor Democrats were hardly concerned at all about that hoax potentially killing US soliders. It made Gitmo look bad, which made W look bad -- WIN! ...  no matter how many soliders may have died over the supposed "added anger") ... we could go on and on ad nauseum. They are going to hate us until we praise allah and are under sharia law! GET USED TO IT!!!

The only thing that makes sense here is that to a liberal, consistency is NOT an issue!

Some other points:

• Must both the MSM and BO be such complete idiots and give this guy publicity? He has a congregation of FIFTY PEOPLE!!! Helllloooooo ... there is ZERO reason to make this an international issue!!!
• BTW, our media CLEARLY knows how to ignore things ... palestinian kids laughing and singing in the streets after 9-11, IGNORED. many many things in BOs first book ... IGNORED! All sorts of crap about "Community Organizers" ... IGNORED ... the list could go to PAGES.
• My God, BO is supposed to be PRESIDENT of the most powerful nation on earth. Doesn't SOME little buzzer go off in his supposedly brilliant little brain when he is commenting on what some nut with a congregation of FIFTY!!! people MIGHT do???? A first line manager at most tiny companies would be at least 2x that smart or they would ge GONE!

Liberal Help for BO

RealClearPolitics - Obama's Shrinking Presidency

One of the bad parts of being a liberal politician is that you have to rely on liberals for your support. Since liberals possess no underlying principles, and don't believe in the personal responsibility of anyone (except maybe rich Republicans), "liberal support" is something that I suspect makes the recipient shake their head as much as to be happy he has their "support" -- such as it is.

First of all, very little, if anything is ACTUALLY wrong -- the basic problem is that standard problem of "the stupid American". What is so disheartening is that Americans were absolutely BRILLIANT less than 24 months ago, but stupidity has set in yet again. Why? Well mostly the same old bugaboos -- stupid stupid rumors, innuendo, all that bad stuff. Like "W didn't fly when he should have, we have PROOF!" ... "W is a coke addict, and Laura sold the stuff in college", "Reagan is a complete dunce that is running the country based on astrology tables and sleeping in meetings" -- you know, that BAD STUFF, that only ever happens to Democrats because Fox news and talk radio just ignore the facts like the MSM never would! The MSM is always "fair and balanced", so you would never hear "bad stuff" about a Republican president.

Oh, yes, were you aware that both Ronnie and W were so stupid that it was hard to even measure how stupid they were? Yes, it is absolutely true, but somehow, through hook, crook and just blatant luck, they got just absolutely BRILLIANT handlers to somehow make them look way way better than they were -- even though the 20% or so truly smart Americans could still see their stupidity.

What is really really odd though is that guys like Carter and BO, and Slick Willie in his first two years, even though they are certifiable geniuses which is completely plain to all, they somehow manage to surround themselves with dunces that are almost as stupid and incompetent as republican presidents! It is a gigantic mystery how this happens, but it makes these brilliant democrat presidents come off as somehow lackluster when the opposite is true. Yes, they are victims, just like the rest of us!

You can read the whole piece, but I've summarized it faithfully -- it is just plain a sad state of affairs that is very very hard to fathom.

Iconoclast, by Gregory Burns

Very solid read on how the mind of an iconoclast works. By his definition,  "A person that does something that others say can't be done". That definition is a bit of an update -- originally it meant "breaker of icons" as in religious icons. The word morphed to at least something like the way I like to think of it "one who challenges the common view", which is my personal definition and one that I see as critical to us moving forward. It is also something that I naturally enjoy doing -- although I'm not nearly as successful as some of the really cool iconoclasts he uses as examples.

The book has a good general brain science, historical, psychology and other approaches to how iconoclasm works, doesn't, how you can get more of it, how you can more effective, etc. There are a lot of little examples and anecdotes of how humans are risk and especially loss averse. One, the "Ellsberg paradox" has two urns -- the left one with 10 white and 10 black marbles, the right one,  a different, but unknown ratio of black and white marbles. Subjects are asked which urn they would prefer to randomly pick a white marble, then the same question with a black marble. A very high percentage take both picks from the known left, but of course that makes no sense. You know the odds on the left are 50/50 ... if you took white from there, you are ASSUMING that black is in a higher percentage in the unknown jar. The fact that you take the known shows that you (like everyone else) are risk averse.

One of the other problems with the human brain is that we want to "go with the crowd", which isn't going to do much for innovation. Why?

All our primate cousins, and even the earliest hominids, have depended on their clans for survival. As a result, a million years of mammalian evolution have produced a human brain that values social contact and communication above all else. The way in which we interact with each other is, in many ways, more important than what our own eyes and ears tell us.

Of course, following the crowd does not an iconoclast make -- and in fact, part of being an iconoclast is almost always going to cause some friction with at least some of the crowd.

There is a very good section though on "connecting with iconoclasts" through familiarity and reputation, in which Picasso, an iconoclast who died popular and rich, and Van Gogh, who died penniless and alone are contrasted. Picasso was prolific and loved, Van Gogh was less prolific and positively aloof. Picasso had a much more influence -- a key difference between successful and unsuccessful iconoclasts.

I thought the following by Peter Diamandis, an iconoclast working on private spaceflight was interesting:

"We are killing ourselves in this country by how risk averse we have gotten. It is destroying our ability to make breakthroughs." Speaking to entrepreneurs and CEOs and venture capitalists, Diamandis exhorts, "You have to take risks, because the governments can't, and the large corporations cannot. The government can't stand the Congressional investigations every time something goes wrong. The large corporations can't stand the plummeting stock prices".  ... "There is only one group left. It is the individual who says, "I can't afford not to! This is my dream! If I don't do it, no one else will". 

He was talking of spaceflight, but one might just as well apply it to the economy in general. Worthy book, fairly easy read, positive but not must read recommendation.

The Supreme Court: William Rehnquist

Very worthy read on the history of the court. Here is an excerpt written by John Marshall as part of Marbury vs Madison, one of the key cases in court history:

The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls andy legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act. 

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acs it is alterable when the legislature shall place to alter it.

But of course, today, basically since the '30s, the congress is no longer limited, so we now have UNlimited government. Rehnquist doesn't go there at all -- he provides the history of what happened, but there is very little in the way of his opinion. One of the most interesting parts for me was the way that the cases are decided -- lots of prep work by the justices and law clerks, but then, with ONLY the justices in the Chief Justices conference room, the Chief starts out with his analysis of the case and how is is going to vote and then it proceeds to each justice in order of seniority to have their say. I found the following comment interesting ... especially as Rehnquist had moved all the way from the most junior to being Chief.

Probably most junior justices before me must have felt as I did, that they had some very significant contributions to make, and were disappointed that they hardly ever seemed to influence anyone because people didn't change their votes in response to their, the junior justices, contrary views. 

This book is what it says it is -- history, from an insider. There is VERY little in the way of opinion. These are the justices involved, these are the key cases (as seen by Rehnquist), here is how they were decided, some of the key reasoning for and in dissent, and how the court works from the inside.

I found it an easy and good read, but the only "answers" in it (NOT stated by Rehnquist) is that the power of the court has increased, the constitution has decreased, and the power of the government in general has grown most of all.

Bring Back the Unions

RealClearPolitics - On Missing "Big Labor":

Dionne lefts his socialism way out of the bag on this one including praise not just for big labor, but for Eugene Debs. If all there was to wealth was "spreading it around", and it was never created or lost but just "was", then I suppose we could spend our time just distributing it. As it is, it is more like "beer", and if you just focus on distributing it, there will soon be none to drink!

Please Please take note that the primary home for unions today is with public workers where the profit motive isn't operative and all they need do is fleece taxpayers for ever more. That is why their current average wages and benefits are DOUBLE those that are paying for them! (roughly $60K vs $120K)

"A movement historically associated with the brawny workers in auto, steel, rubber, construction, rail, and the ports now represents more employees in the public sector (7.9 million) than in the private sector (7.4 million)."

Weekend With Summer Recovery

Power Line

With apologies to "Weekend At Bernies" ;-)

Economic Indigestion

Dana Milbank - Economist Christina Romer serves up dismal news at her farewell luncheon

I actually got to hear some of this mess, it was enough to give ardent left winger Dana Milbank a good deal of heartburn. Her cheery HS glee club delivery did add sort of an air of the surreal to the proceedings. She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things. Here is Milbank on the topic:

What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: "Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare."

It must be a bit scary to even the liberal elite as they bask in the remembrance of that joyous time of Katrina, just 5 short years ago, when it was all so simple. The combination stupid and evil W was responsible for all that was ill. Through maximum press and political maneuvering, they managed to convince vast swaths of the electorate that what was needed was "change". 14 months later, the shining new "age of change" was ushered in Nov '06, as Nancy and Harry took the reigns of congressional power, and Dodd and Frank the control of legislation over our nations financial system. The evil W was the lamest of lame ducks, one last "declared to be a failure before it started" gasp in "The Surge", and happy days would be fully here.

A year and a half later, the financial system would teeter on collapse. Victim of a housing bubble exacerbated by Sub-Prime Loans and lax government oversight on one hand, and massive amounts of leverage from Wall Street on the other. To the Democrats, "sauce for the goose". The broad shoulders of W would do yeoman service as scapegoat, the likely shallow recession would be trumped up to "Depression" in the interests of electing the ultimate change agent: BO. Even sweeter, vast amounts of taxpayer money and debt would be transferred to the financiers that had bankrolled the Democrat takeover, as well as the Unions and any other group that was on the left side of politics.

Now in charge of the candy store, the joy of handing out free candy to all their friends is fading as the shelves become more and more bare. Clearly the world is unfair, the shelves ought to be automatically replenished by hard working conservative drones ... or something. For certain, the entire enterprise is a matter of extreme confusion to the liberal economists in the BO stable.

It's All Hopeless

Op-Ed Columnist - Freedom’s Just Another Word - NYTimes.com

When reality becomes apparent to liberals, their heart turns to hopelessness. Their shining knights of goodness -- currently BO, formerly Slick Wille, and in the 7o's, Jimmuh, of "Desert Classic" fame were all certain (in their minds) to achieve greatness upon election, but their images end up needing much burnishing of the kind that can only be gotten by working to tarnish those of Republican presidents -- even those from decades ago. In the Democrat mind, their leaders stand tall because they have buried their counterparts to the waist in mud. The way BO is going, it looks like they are going to need more mud. Perhaps BO will look "tall" if Reagan is buried to his ears.

I remember the Carter time -- the twin spots of Vietnam and Watergate could never and should never be expunged from our American political soul (the only kind of soul that Democrats will admit to). The situation was not fixable -- and of course, in their minds, it was not fixed by the '80s ... as Rich says in the article, a "cartoonish" era. America was and is a tarnished place -- racist, sexist, militaristic, unkind to the poor. In need of massive change, not jingoistic cheering of the Reagan sort. Oh, how sad the '80s were for guys like Rich.

Now, 30 years later, the twin spots of Iraq and "overspending" under Bush have added yet more rot to that imaginary American "political soul". There is a lot of sadness in being a liberal -- the only thing that apparently approaches "happy" is pointing out the supposed horror of being a conservative. There was a brief 2 years of hope under Slick Willie, before those hopes were dashed by Newt and that horrible band of pirates taking the house that had so rightly belonged to the Democrats for 50 years.

Now, after owning that house for 4 short years, and the whole of government for a mere two, they survey a wreckage beyond what they beheld in '94 and possibly commensurate with the devastation of '80. How can it be so?? They are so good, so right, so intelligent, and yet the powers of reality seem to work against them -- yes, yes, it MUST be that "political soul", corrupted by the evil right ... with their lies and machinations of power cooked in kettles by Rupert Murdoch and the demons of Fox news.

Oh, the pain ... the sadness. The little people are blinded and even the brilliant BO has failed to transmit the proper message to their sorry "political souls" ... oh, the humanity!! Perhaps if we put on sack cloth and ashes and tended our boils alone in the wilderness -- then, maybe then, we could see the truth of life as seen by guys like Rich. Yes, there ought to be the campaign mantra of the Democrats --- vote for us, pay your penance in poverty and pain, admit to your political sins and willingly accept your punishment. Only by seeing the decadence and failing of America and by being very very sorry for the sins of electing evil people like Bush and Reagan is there hope of atonement for America -- and even then, it is but very very dim!

I think I'm beginning to understand why Howard Dean's favorite New Testament book was "Job". To the liberal mind, that IS reality!!

Hawking As Lord

Stephen Hawking on God, Science and the Origins of the Universe - WSJ.com

A good short synapsis of the fact that we live in a "Goldilocks Universe" ... not too hot, not too cold ... or "too" a whole bunch of stuff, but JUST RIGHT. How can that be if it is all "random"?

Well, the easy answer is that God created it that way, but that is never good enough for the REALLY REALLY smart among us. As Hawking says at the end:

Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

Were one to accept even the strong potential of a creator infinitely smarter than even Hawking, Hawking would no longer be "lord of creation". Given Hawking's physical state, this would seem to prove that the human mind is the source of hubris, not the body.

So how is the new level of "just right" explained, now that Carl Sagan's "billions of stars" that used to be the explanation has proved too small? Easy ... way, way, way, way .... way, more UNIVERSES than even billions x billions ... 10 to the 400th is a postulated number of universes "theorized" (imagined?) at this point.

What is my prediction? Well, it used to be "enough time", then it was "enough time and enough systems" ... but the more we learn, the more it looks impossible with even the time and space that we can see that we could happen, so we are now "scientifically" postulating 10 to the 400th universes with no current way to verify in order to say "there is no god" with a semi-straight face.

BUT, I strongly bet that if we manage to create say a quantum computer, that allows us to see vastly more than we do now, and it turns out that 10 to the 400th is still not enough, I wager there will be some amazingly larger number of "meta-universes" ... or "sub-universes" or maybe "string dimensions" that allow it to be "clear" that God really isn't necessary after all and at least the REALLY REALLY "smart" among us are "lords of creation".

No matter how far we "advance", there we are.

Steve Wynn Takes On Washington

Steve Wynn Takes On Washington

Well said. Just take the time to watch a guy that knows just say it simply as it is.

Carter or Clinton

Will Obama be a Clinton -- or a Carter? - CNN.com

My my, the old comparisons were FDR or Lincoln, the new comparisons are Slick Willie or Jimmuh. The mighty have indeed fallen. This is CNN, so maybe the Obamanites are finally returning to earth.

Iraq Through the Looking Glass

Iraq Through the Looking Glass - The Corner - National Review Online

He covers a lot of my thinking with some different text, but the thesis is the same.

1). BO can't possibly take legitimate credit for Iraq. He was against the surge (as were Biden and Hillary), the withdrawal agreement was done by Bush/Petrayus, he just honored it. (which, given Gitmo, "open government", campaign finance, and a ton of other things, is pretty amazing).

2). It is REALLY disingenuous to take credit for Iraq when he opposed to the surge, but blame Bush for the economy when the Democrats took over both houses of congress in '07 -- and managed to defeat Bush's requests for ending sub-prime since '01, something like 13 times. Bush bears responsibility for the surge (it worked), at BEST, as a very politically weak lame duck, economic responsibility during the last two years of his term would be "shared". BO himself was in the congress that had significant responsibility for the economy.

If Democrats don't believe that control of congress is important, why don't they just cede control to Republicans without a fight? If it IS important, then how can they not accept significant blame for what happened to the economy after they took over in '07?

The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment?

The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment?:

The liberals were quick to declare "the end of capitalism" after the '08 election. It now appears that their declaration was far premature. I like this quote ... the whole article is excellent. This quote refers to an old observation on government spending -- typically, the "seen" are some more government jobs, some public works projects, maybe even a new building or bridge; the "unseen" is effectively "the bill", the higher taxes and the misallocated resources that result in a lower standard of living for all; since the "seen" is immediate, and the "unseen" tends to be less so, often even wildly off the mark government spending can be a political asset. Apparently, thankfully, not this time!!

"Because of these policies, the “unseen” became “seen” in a fashion devastating to the politicians supporting them. Americans judged that the party in power intends the radical expansion of the size of government in perpetuity. That expansion will have to be paid for. There is no reason to expect very much good from the future if you are the sort of person who generates income and creates jobs. Your “permanent income” is going to decline, and your gut response will be to husband your resources."

All the ways to Kill an Economy

Our Macroeconomic Fetish - Forbes.com:

One of they liberal problems is that they never know "when to say when". Everything they want calls for more, more, more ... more stimulus, more taxes, more entitlements, more regulation, but they have zero concept of "enough". They are addicted to government in the same way as a heroin addict is addicted to their drug of choice.

Now the semi-thoughtful liberal will say "conservatives are just the same with money, they want more, more, more money for the rich, and there is never such a thing as enough".

To which I'd reply, spending and making are NOT the same thing! Bill Gates is fabulously wealthy because he was the best at putting personal computers on everyone's desk. Warren Buffett is fabulously wealthy because he is the best allocator or scarce economic resources in the world. Putting limits on either of these guys limits us all -- not just them. Taking both their fortunes and spending them buying votes from unions doesn't grow a thing (other than more government bureaucracy when the same crooks get elected).

Great article, read it. A sample on the lack of limits:

"The situation is only worse because while our Keynesian disciplines preach the need for more stimulus now, they offer no explanation as to how much stimulus is too much. The law of diminishing returns applies to every known human activity, including government decisions to prime the pump. Yet both Tyson and Krugman give us no hint about when to quit or why."

Basically, there is more than one way to kill an economy, and BO and company are coming close to finding them all.

It is possible to tell a similar tale of woe in virtually any other sector that comes to mind: health care, energy, environment, banking and money, securities regulation, corporate policy, intellectual property. At every stage we see a populist frenzy to support new layers of regulation, each of which in its own way kills jobs and chokes off economic growth.

In sum, there is more than one way to kill an economy. Ours is dying a death of a thousand cuts, which no stimulus program can cure.

Government Pay, Upside Down

Government Pay: Now For The Really Bad News - Forbes.com

Not only are we getting fleeced, we are paying them make our lives even worse while we pay them more to do it!!!

By now, most Americans are familiar with the newly revealed statistics concerning federal pay. As we slept, as it were, our federal minders awarded themselves impressive pay/benefits increases that average out to $123,000 per year, compared with $61,000 in the private sector.

Not only are we fleeced to cover the rising pay and gold-plated benefits of federal workers, we're essentially paying them to make our lives more difficult. The more they're able to do so, the more they advance.

I Pray He is Right!

Hugh Hewitt: Seventy percent of Americans know they've been conned | Washington Examiner

Super column, concise, just READ IT! Something solidly over 50% ought to be good enough, please oh please make it so!

Two years into what had been sold as a new politics and a new approach, the 70 percent are fully aware that they have been conned, suckered, and taken to the cleaners by a hyper-ideological amalgam of leftist public intellectuals, snarling bloggers, career politicians with limited abilities who are often corrupt, and a president wholly inexperienced in the management of complex problems who is in way over his head and prisoner to slogans and schemes that make for great campus debates -- but for disaster in the real world.

Actually, it is more like 4 ... the Dimocrats took over congress in '07 and the slide got a good start ... but for two years, they have had no excuses whatsoever. 


Let the end of their disastrous rule be limited to just the two years of hell we have already been through!

BO On Bike

Ah yes, remember the days when a dorky picture of W would be plastered all over? Wonder how far and wide this gem will get to go? Maybe the worship has finally slipped a bit, this seems like a gem.

Remember Europe?

Op-Ed Columnist - The Parent Model - NYTimes.com

Back when W was President, any contrary opinion from Europe was automatically worthy of a lot of study -- and to pay a lot of attention to it was "arrogant". Naturally, with the advent of BO, the MSM is now of a completely different mind -- when Europe has a different opinion from BO, they must be wrong, as is everyone else that disagrees with the brilliant failed community organizer.

Now, we have some emerging results. Germany spends 1.5% of GDP, trims labor costs, increases employment flexibility and enjoys a 9% GDP growth. We spent 6% of GDP, give a bunch of kickbacks to unions/threaten future unionization ("Card Check"), pass a bunch of new laws to make employing people more expensive and restrictive and the result is 1.6% growth.

Is this absolute proof that Germany is completely right and we are completely wrong? **NO!! ... it is INFORMATION, just like when Europe would have some anti-Bush thing to say. We get smarter by looking at data and results, we get stupider when we let ideology be our ONLY guide ... which is the left-primary view.

Oikophobia

Oikophobia - WSJ.com

The Ground Zero mosque is an affront to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. "The center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence," as theAssociated Press has reported. That Americans would find this offensive is a matter of simple common sense. The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so common.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.

By jove, I think he has got it! It takes no other sense than "common sense" to identify a Victory Mosque opening on 9/11/11 as an abomination, and common sense is the the sort that Oiks oppose most vehemently!

Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.

Ok, I'm SURE that he has it! This is EXACTLY what we have going on, and BO is the "Uber-Oik"!

Telling Us How to Think

CNN Compares Ground Zero Protestors to Nazi Sympathizers | NewsBusters.org

Any questions how we ought to think about protesting the mosque if you are a "CNN believer"?

See any mild difference in CNN treatment of Muslims, compared to say "the Religious Right"??

 Remember, the positions of the farthest out of the "Religious Right" on gays, treatment of women, freedom of expression, etc are LIBERAL in comparison to even "moderate" Muslims. The only significant reason that I can see for supporting Muslims over the imaginary "Religious Right"  is that the percentage of Muslims that hate America is WAY higher. I'm still waiting for the left to come up with another reason --- "you are a racist if you don't support it" is name calling, not a reason.

Live Free or Die

Obama Misreads Message of ‘Live Free or Die’: Amity Shlaes - Bloomberg

The founders wanted states to be the "labratories" that allowed Americans to test various government policies to see what worked, and to allow people to choose between different approaches, yet remain American. Shales does a good comparison between Maine and New Hampshire (thus the "Live Free or Die" ... state motto). As should surprise nobody, larger government loses.

This jury has been in forever, the only problem is that peoples memories are too short, and they confuse best available and unattainable perfection as goals. Free market policies are more successful, they are not perfect (humans are still involved). Recessions and potentially even depressions will happen, but there is nothing that can't be made worse (or less good) by the intervention of the government! As in the '30s, government can always make the pain deeper and longer lasting.

Just look at the current TX economy relative to CA or NY. The world had the best laboratory case that one could ever see with East and West Germany for 50 years + of the difference between more free and less free -- same people, different government, vastly inferior result on the more government side.

Greed is a deadly sin, but so is envy. Humans are very prone to both, but capitalism harnesses greed to grow the economic pie for all (imperfectly). Socialism harnesses envy to get supporters, but it only "produces" increasingly angry people fighting over an ever shrinking economic pie.

RealClearPolitics - No Compromise on Mosque

RealClearPolitics - No Compromise on Mosque

This is not a complicated matter. If you believe that an entire religion of upward of a billion followers attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then it is understandable that locating a mosque near the fallen World Trade Center might be upsetting. But the facts are otherwise. Islam was not in on the attack -- just a sliver of believers. That being the case, those people with legitimate hurt feelings are mistaken. They need our understanding, not our indulgence.

See, it is simple. It has to be THE WHOLE religion before anyone MIGHT be "upset". Of course, the complete intolerance of Islam, a religion that demands the church and state be one, is not a consideration. Let's see, was it THE WHOLE "religious right" that "wanted to look in bedroom windows" just a little while ago?


The left wing of this country that can't stand even a Christian movie (remember "The Passion"?) is just brimming with "tolerance" for a religion in which wives can be beaten, gays are to be stoned, and ALL nations are to be united under Sharia law! How ought be "get along" on this?  The left has their typical answer; NO COMPROMISE! It is the "moral left" against the "bigots, demagogues and uninformed".

Appearing on ABC's "This Week with Christiane Amanpour," Daisy Khan, a founder of the mosque (and the wife of the imam), rejected any compromise. She was right to do so because to compromise is to accede, even a bit, to the arguments of bigots, demagogues or the merely uninformed. This is no longer her fight. The fight is now all of ours.

Reality Is

As economy slows and Fed voices conflict, markets look to Bernanke for guidance

The major power in the US Government is in the Congress. The Democrats took over in '06, we are now in our 4th year of Democrat rule and over 2 years into recession. Reality 1.

Wishful thinking is not a policy. Government is FAR more limited than what the left likes to believe relative to the economy. If it were not so, then the USSR would have been a huge success, and Japan and the European economies would have done vastly better than the US. They did not and are not -- but since we have made a hard turn toward emulating their approaches, we are seeing the same results -- only worse. We are much larger, so their bad policies are mega-bad when applied to the US.

The idea that "the economy always cycles and this is just a cycle" is based on way too short a sample set. BO and the Democrats talked the economy down as hard as they could in '08 in order to add to their election victories. The word "depression" was quite common leading up to the election. Their assumption --- and most people's assumption, was that the economy was going to bounce back quickly and that the stimulus was just a little extra insurance --- that is why they used most of the stimulus to transfer to states, largely to pay off government and teachers unions for supporting their election. They figured the economy would go up "like it always does" and they would claim credit.

Democrats yelled about deficits that were tiny relative to GDP -- and they always talked about those deficits "crowding out" loans to small business and consumers in the midst of a growing world wide economy. Now they are running multi-trillion dollar deficits in a global recession, and they have forgotten all about "crowding out". Democrats have no sense of perspective. I would have much rather seen smaller or non-existent deficits under Republican administrations, but those deficits were MUCH smaller, AND other than '82, they were in much better economic times. A few drinks are fine, not "perfect", but fine -- the Democrats are drinking a 5th of debt whiskey for breakfast, that is a problem!

At some point, people are going to have to start believing in THEMSELVES again! First, we have got to get a WHOLE bunch of government off our backs! 

Economy Stalled

GDP report - latimes.com

As we ought to have learned in the 30's, 60's, from Japan, from Europe, or from many other sources, capitalism is an imperfect system, but vastly better than the alternatives. Dem-O-nomics -- rob from the rich, the future and the productive, and give to the poor, the political cronies and the non-productive, DOESN'T WORK!!!!

That Old Ad Hominem Refuge

Charles Krauthammer - The last refuge of a liberal

If you can't figure out any way to beat your opponent on substance, call them names. The essence of liberal argument. Another great one by Charles.

Reviving Us-Versus-Them Politics - Newsweek

Reviving Us-Versus-Them Politics - Newsweek

Remember that point after the 2K election when Democrats said "the court has spoken, let's all come together behind our new president as Americans"? Or after we were attacked on 9-11 and Democrats said "we are all American's, let's come together and support President Bush as he goes after the Axis of Evil"? Remember that?

Well, Elanor must, because this idea of "us vs them" is a new idea that Republicans are just reviving now!

During the 2008 presidential primaries, 7 percent of those polled in Texas, Florida, and Ohio thought Obama was a Muslim and 40 percent didn’t know what his religion was, “a near majority guilty of gross ignorance.”

uh, so what does he mean by "Obama's religion"? I think everyone knew Kennedy's religion -- Catholic. I'm thinking that W was a Methodist, but I'd be completely unsurprised to find that 40% (or more) didn't know that that (or that I might be wrong). AFAIK, BO attends no church at all at this point -- so what is the right answer? Unchurched?

7%??? I believe that you could get a poll that had 7% believing anything ... including that both they and BO were space aliens. What does THAT have to do with anything??

Understanding Analogy

Charles Krauthammer - Moral myopia at Ground Zero

Charles scores a 2nd good column on the Mosque issue, but I think the discussion of the different views of analogy and symbolism are the important part.

I'd proffer two items that based on many books and articles I believe to be as close as we currently get to scientific understanding of human thought:

1). We ONLY learn via analogy -- there is no "built in human brain instruction set", or "engrams", "collective unconscious", or other techie or murky spirituo-psycho building blocks of thought. It is all neurons, and the only "there, there" is the sucking and startle reflexes. It is a vast web of neural relationship.

2). Every analogy is imperfect -- as is every model of the universe. There are many that map quite precisely, but then one gets to the quantum level and finds even those are less precise then we had hoped. We are often confused because our MODELS (maps) can be VERY precise ... but alas, they are not the territory.

So for me, the operative paragraph is this:

Where the president flagged, however, the liberal intelligentsia stepped in with gusto, penning dozens of pro-mosque articles characterized by a frenzied unanimity, little resort to argument and a singular difficulty dealing with analogies.

Since we understand by analogy, when there is a conflict on an issue, it is almost always a conflict of analogies. For some reason, that comes out especially clearly on the Mosque issue.

My belief is that is because liberals see Islam as essentially the replacement for communism in their "enemy of my enemy is my friend" model. The USSR used to be the most potent anti-American power, so liberals were USSR apologists. Now, Islam is the most potent attacker, so they have moved their apologetics to that front.


We know they are not huge "religious supporters" -- see constant battles on any sort of visibility of Christianity; 10 commandments, prayer anywhere public, Christmas trees and manger scenes, etc. 


We also know they are not "minority religion supporters"  in any general way ... see treatment of Mormon sects -- which BTW have many of the same problems as Muslims relative to multiple / very young "wives". 

Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson

By Jann Wenner and Corley Seymour.

This book is largely made up of anecdotes by a broad set of people that were in Hunter's circle to varying degrees over his life. Lots of reading and lots of detail not really required to draw what seem like the very clear conclusions -- the book lets to draw your own in general, which I appreciated. A summary:

• Hunter was a lifetime alcoholic and drug addict. Pot, coke, LSD, uppers, downers ... basically everything. Typical breakfast was a bunch of normal food, plus 6 Heineken and the better part of a 5th of gin. During the day it was constant beer and Chivas with a lot of alcohol diversity mixed in with an equal opportunity smorgasbord of drugs. 
• He was at some level, a "genius" in that "Hells Angles", "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as books and a number of other columns from Rolling Stone are considered required reading, at least in the American left-wing canon. 
• He was wired heavily into the American media left -- Rolling Stone, Saturday Night Live stars (Akroyd, Belushi, Murray), Don Johnson, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp, Jimmy Buffett, Sean Penn,  and many more.
• The American media left and the political left are one in the same. The book contains comments on Hunter by McGovern, Carter, Gary Hart, John Kerry, James Carvelle (major Clinton operative), Pat Caddell (Democrat Pollster), Jack Germond (used to be on PBS panel show), Ed Bradley (CBS, 60min) and a number of others.

My major reactions to the book are really twofold. If one removes religion and the concept of an afterlife with some sort of judgement and "significantly bigger picture" from life, then Hunter's lifestyle of being drunk and stoned with a parade of early 20's women in his life is probably "the male optimum". As James Carville put it:

"And Hunter did something that none of us had the guts to do --- he led the kind of life that secretly all of us would like to have and had the guts to lead. To hell with the whole thing, just stay drunk and high and smoke and hang out and write outrageous things. He's never lived his life on anybody else's terms."

There is a nice picture in the book of the Rolling Stone political "Brain Trust", including Hunter, sitting around a table with Carville and Bill Clinton. We know that Bill Clinton lived as much of that life as he could get away with, as did Obama (he is VERY clear about that in his first book, in case you think I'm being unfair). 

Hunter essentially lived "the Democrat American Dream" -- drunk, stoned, a string of young women, complete irresponsibility and absolute and complete disdain for "anything Republican" ... Nixon, Reagan, Bush, religion, sobriety, responsibility, laws, values, etc.

The other major observation is how open the connections with the Democrats and media outlets that supposedly cover them as "journalists" really are. 

The idea that "Fox is biased" drives the left nuts. Meanwhile, the whole Hollywood, MSM, Democrat establishment have this completely incestuous, yet actually "open" if somebody just reads a few books or reads a few articles in their own mouthpieces. The general Democrat-Media nexus is sort of this totally open "wink-wink, nod-nod" collective. We know that Clinton LOVED to go to Hollywood and hang out with his pals, that lists and meetings of "how to get people on board with what Democrat X is doing" are common place. This book covers a couple such conclaves where the Rolling Stone was only one of the players -- NYT, NBC, CBS were also involved -- "getting the message across" was simply "the right thing to do".

In the Democrat mind, their "care for the little guy" is more than the equivalent of Christ dying on the cross for a Christian. Their moral superiority is so pervasive that it completely justifies virtually any act in their minds. The Democrats feel that "their care for the disadvantaged" and through their willingness to get "somebody else to pay" for the cost of that "caring" has completely absolved them from all past and future "sin". Christianity assumes "spiritual fruit" -- it assumes that redemption creates a response, a change that isn't grudging, but genuine. Democrat faith is faith that creates certainty (and supposedly happiness), while relying on the actions of others ("the rich") as it's agents, with it's "benefits" bestowed on others (the "poor").

While snorting enough coke, smoking enough pot, and drinking enough expensive booze to lift at least 100s if not thousands from poverty, Hunter always "cared for the little guy" -- and Hunter could tell that Nixon and Reagan didn't, so that made them 100% evil, and Hunter 100% good. A moral universe devoid of gray.

The fact that he lived 67 years, never drying out or going straight is a testimony to superhuman organ strength. I suppose I'll get to reading Hells Angles and "Vegas" at some point -- if only to improve my understanding of the liberal mind by another meager notch.

Very hard to recommend the book ... skim for names that you find to be interesting would be my recommendation if so inclined.

Victory in Iraq - WSJ.com

Victory in Iraq - WSJ.com

"Success as a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan" (JFK)

What ever happened to the wisdom of that phrase? In Iraq, the US MSM and Democrats declared "Failure" loudly and often -- because they were certain they could stick Bush with fatherhood.

Now that Victory is the result, the response is very muted. (silent?)

Some will say, "oh, but the cost was too high". It was too high in WWI, WWII, Korea and every other war ever fought as well. Cost is what it is. The difficult, the worthy, the risky -- they never come cheap. The easy, the meaningless, the "gimme" -- they often seem cheap for a season, but their expense turns out to be even greater than a difficult, worthy risk that ends in loss. Some things are worth dying for, some things aren't worth spit.

We live in the statist house of mirrors where even victory can have no father, since the very concepts of "success" or "victory", except as expressions of raw political power, have been repealed. To be successful is to be suspect -- failure is the positive coin of the realm. It draws the support of the state.

Thank you George W Bush, and thank you to all the troops that fought the good fight! There are still those of us who celebrate victory, and we will taste it again.

How Low Can He Go?

The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown – Telegraph Blogs

One has to go overseas to hear the details of BO's negative poll numbers. Time was when every teeny slide down for W was front page news in every US MSM outlet. My how times have changed. Remember when the world was CERTAIN to just LOVE the scent of BO?

My title for this is just trying to help the MSM find the kind of headline that they would have been using had these numbers been for W vs BO!!

Against this backdrop, the president’s approval ratings have been sliding dramatically all summer, with the latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of US voters dropping to minus 22 points, the lowest point so far for Barack Obama since taking office. While just 24 per cent of American voters strongly approve of the president’s job performance, almost twice that number, 46 per cent, strongly disapprove. According to Rasmussen, 65 per cent of voters believe the United States is going down the wrong track, including 70 per cent of independents.

Being President Is Hard, Who Knew?

Washington, We Have a Problem | Politics | Vanity Fair

Oh the horror of the difficulty of being President. It was SO EASY just 10 years ago that even the village idiot, Bush, could do it. Now? The Federal Government has gotten so big an unwieldy, and those NASTY Republicans in the minority -- they just aren't docile and concerned about "the bigger issues" like the Democrats were back when Bush was elected. There is the internet, lobbyists, disasters, fund raising -- it is enough to make your head spin. WAY different from what it was for Bush, and so so much more difficult! If only poor BO had known!

Remember how the the whole media cheered for Bush to succeed after the drawn out election of '00? Neither do I ... but apparently Vanity Fair just discovered that it is a really tough job when some of media is against you. They must mean Fox, because clearly they will carry water for BO no matter how clear it becomes that failing at being a Community Organizer was a pretty darned good indicator how he would fail as President!

Perhaps BO and company ought to just bag it and go on vacation? Oh, they already did? Never mind.

Aftershock, Wiedemer/Spitzer

"Protect Yourself and profit in the next global financial meltdown".

You may read the sub-head and say "I hope that is a long time", but these guys would tell you that we have not yet begun. They called the housing bubble correctly in their first book "America's Bubble Economy" that came out in '06--something they are NOT going to let you forget during the book, and remind the reader CONSTANTLY.

The thesis of this book is that we have a series of bubbles, and they are all going to "pop" -- once it started happening, there is no stopping it:

1. Real Estate
2. Stock
3. Private Debt
4. Discretionary Spending
5. Dollar
6. Government Debt

While I think a number of their conclusions are essentially correct, I really question some of their overly confident what I would call "pseudo science" methodologies that supposedly go into their predictions. A big one is "Science, Technology, Economics, Politics" ... "STEP".  Page 189 "If our current economy is part of a long evolution of society, life, and the universe---starting from the Big Bang--then there are certain predictable forces that drive economic evolution."

Really? Let's get this straight, the Big Bang was a random purposeless event that randomly kicked off a random process on the third rock from a ho hum sun called "evolution", eventually resulting in organisms that formed cultures and eventually economies -- all without any direction of course, completely on a random basis. But that begets? "predictable forces that drive economic evolution"?  Can anyone say "leap of faith"?

While some of their thinking may border on New Age, and they are clearly liberal in orientation:

p 188, "candidates will step forward who are willing to support real and responsible reforms, politicians more like Franklin Roosevelt than Herbert Hoover".  Sadly, it is hard to be much more historically unaware than that -- both FDR and Hoover were huge "progressives", Hoover was ALL OVER the model of heavy government interference and was taking steps just like FDR even before the election, and certainly during the lame duck period until FDRs inauguration. Another huge parallel to now -- with Bush heavily "progressive", just less so than BO.

p221, box, "The only silver lining to this dreadful situation may be that after a while, people will become unhappy enough with the high levels of violence that they consider ways of reducing it that were previously unthinkable in the United States, such as gun control."

See the very clear crystal ball that these guys have says that unemployment is going to be over 60%, inflation is going to be in the 100's of percentage points, the government will no longer be able to borrow money and this will go on for "a decade", but there will be no real general move to any sort of a massive government re-structure. No, the "gun nuts" will just stick to shooting their own family, friends, and co-workers, so hopefully, that can get us the basic good of "gun control" -- all a matter of what is important to you.

Even with all their slightly odd views, we now have liberal gold bugs! We must have crossed some sort of metaphysical tipping point. P138, "Gold is a rising bubble on it's way to becoming one of the biggest asset bubbles of all time. Second only to the fall of the dollar bubble, the bursting of the gold bubble will be quite impressive as well."

But that won't be for a long time in financial terms -- they of course have huge faith in the system, so recommend having your gold held in some certificates, but since I'm not as liberal as they are, I'm betting BO and company are going to be looking to CONFISCATE any gold that is listed in that kind of account, and giving you a "really good deal" on some "inflation protected" government debt rather than that gold.

It isn't that super of a book ... but as I say, it does break some new ground to see relative lefties pretty convinced it is all coming down around our ears.

Location Matters

Charles Krauthammer - Sacrilege at Ground Zero:

Good coverage by Charles. One has to be VERY out of touch to support this Mosque--no surprise that many liberals do.

Ten Commandments in a public place? Christmas tree in the public square? Silent prayer in a locker room? Break out the "wall of separation".

Mosque at Ground Zero? Hey, what in the world would the problem be?

"

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed."

Never Enough, William Voegeli

"America's Limitless Welfare State", by William Voegeli.

SUPER, SUPER important, extremely well written and readable book. I reviewed it on Amazon (which I don't usually do), so I'll start with that as "the short version".

No review is going to do this book justice, just buy it and read it. While it is a very serious work on the very serious issue of the ever more unaffordable and expanding US welfare state, it is ALSO highly readable and witty. It successfully covers the difficulties of the competing liberal and conservative world views, philosophical strengths an weaknesses in each, and what Voegeli sees as the political realities that affect the debate. The conclusion is that the best hope for heading off the impending (or already occurring) collapse brought on by the lack of limit in the liberal view, conservatives must cease trying to turn the clock back and focus on a discussion about "how much" rather than "we have already gone to far". It may well be true that we have already gone too far, but a discussion of what is an appropriate limit will engage the liberals in a discussion that rests on the weakest part of there position rather than the strongest, and be the best hope for finally getting to some level we have at least a prayer to afford and sustain.

I stand by that, but I like to leave some key memories for myself out here.

p86 is a good discussion of FDRs "2nd bill of rights", which the left in this country has continued to try to pass.

p99, "Liberalism is even more of an attitude than it is a program. Liberals are critical of injustice, suspicious of vested interests, friendly to change, hopeful of peaceful improvement and convinced that reasoned argument ultimately overcomes selfish opposition."

One wonders if reasoned argument can also overcome vacuous platitudes, straw-man arguments and wishful thinking?  It reminds me so much of a liberal survey person that once asked me "are you in favor of clean water" -- to which I responded "compared to what?". They simply could not conceive of a heart so foul that there would be "strings". I think I proffered something like "at what cost? My eternal soul? the life of my first born child? a buck ??? ... it makes a difference." Needless to say, not to the "survey taker". "critical of injustice" is sophistry plain and simple ... the opposition is NOT "critical of injustice"???? Oh, I'm sure they are, they are in fact likely critical of the very injustice (in their eyes) that the "liberal" is about to foist upon them.

"The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from it's disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government. The operation of entitlement programs leaves the country financially overextended, while the rhetoric and rationale for those programs leave it politically overextended. They proffer new "rights", goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively, and disdain truth-in-advertising about the nature and scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender.  The moral and social capital required by the experiment in self-government is the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of forbearance, resolve, sacrifice, and restraint."

"The refusal to answer or engage the question of what would be enough--specifying the point at which the welfare state has done all we can expect and can no longer be expanded--leaves liberalism inviting, if not demanding, that dissipation ...permanently. Conservatives will have discharged a significant portion of their duty to protect our experiment in self-government if they can induce liberals to fulfill their duty by treating this question seriously--or make them pay a political price for refusing to."

The book is full of that kind of writing. It's major specific policy proposal is that means testing of all the benefits of the welfare system is our best hope. Conservatives need to admit that such a system is going to exist, but ask the question "should someone that makes over xxx $ be getting FICA"???  The only way that the welfare system can do the most good for the needy is to focus the benefits on the needy. The fiction that everyone in the US can be a net importer (eventually, if you live long enough) of the dollars of the welfare state, vs a net exporter has to stop!

4 Principles of Liberal Mind

American Thinker: Manufacturing Liberals

This article does a nice summary of how one can end up a liberal:

1. Education via indoctrination -- Unionized teachers, far left university professors, never being exposed to dialogue, different views, conservative thought as anything but a bad example.
2. Possibility more important than probability -- I MIGHT win the lottery, or we MIGHT be able to pay for this great program ... don't tell me it is against the odds.
3. Sympathy vs Empathy -- I may never have been poor, but somebody told me how to think about being poor. I don't know any "x" (illegal aliens, drug addicts, etc), but somebody told me the right (sympathetic) way to think about them. Empathy would call you to action -- not try to force someone else to take care of it.
   
4. Control vs Freedom -- Better have some "system" make things work out the way the liberal wants. Seems too hard to allow free people to operate. Better use force (control).
   

When we put these four principles together, we begin to see a familiar pattern. The mindset of ordinary liberals begins with indoctrination. The world is primarily viewed through the imagination. Liberals favor sympathy over empathy and embrace possibility rather than probability. Liberals long for a utopia, or perfect world, and believe that some greater power (the government) can solve problems outside of their personal control.

Notice how similar the liberal mindset is to the belief systems of the pious -- with a crucial difference: Members of the various religions accept the fact that many of their theological principles are based upon belief. Knowledgeable practitioners of most religious sects willingly admit that the acceptance of a particular dogma is, in the final analysis, a matter of faith. This is why the catechism and the various professions of many denominations feature the words "We [or "I"] believe ..."

As I've often said ... liberalism is a religion, it just doesn't admit that all of it's tenets are just as much a matter of faith than any other religion.

Political Payola on Parade

Stimulus Pushers - WSJ.com

Were the Republicans executing a direct political payoff for a major voting block with deficit funds in an an election year with all sorts of seedy attempts to contramand state budgets to the benefits of their special interest, the MSM would be screaming holy hell. Doing it during a recess, in August and rushing it through with no chance for media discussion? Sauce for the goose ... and again, not problem at all for the MSM. Remember when "the swamp" needed to be drained?

"Transparency"? HA! And some fools think that the Queen of Slither, Nancy, is going be doing any draining? Why don't we have Charlie Manson run a home for wayward girls? Those kiddies are no doubt distracted by her little forked tongue flicking in and out while she signs away more of our present and their future.

My god, have they no mercy at all? Those innocent kids in such close proximity to Nancy? What if her tail swings around and whacks one of them? Does the term "political grandstanding" just completely fall out of the MSMs brains when Democrats are in office? A spectacle that gives shamelessness a bad name.

Kickbacks and lining their own campaign coffers in one fell swoop ... with innocent litte kiddies looking on. Political child porn.

Keep in mind that this teacher bailout also amounts to a huge contribution by Democrats to their own election campaigns. The National Right to Work Committee estimates that two of every three teachers belong to unions. The average union dues payment varies, but a reasonable estimate is that between 1% and 1.5% of teacher salaries goes to dues. The National Education Association and other unions will thus get as much as $100 million in additional dues from this bill, much of which will flow immediately to endangered Democratic candidates in competitive House and Senate races this year.

***

So in the name of still another "stimulus," Democrats are rewarding their own political funders, putting the most fiscally responsible states into even greater distress, and postponing the day of reckoning for spendthrift states. Oh, and Mr. Obama rushed to sign the bill Tuesday, violating his campaign pledge to give the public five days to read legislation online. As we say, the only way for voters to stop such fiscal abuse is to run this crowd out of town.

US Bankruptcy

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know: Laurence Kotlikoff - Bloomberg

Actually, some of us DID know, but no matter.

But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”

That just means that we would have to DOUBLE our current tax take, which isn't going to happen ...

The Embarrassment of BO

Fouad Ajami: The Obsolescence of Barack Obama - WSJ.com

I'm a long way from declaring the danger or the damage of BO as being somehow "over" ... this column may be correct in a lot of it's conclusions, but I think it is too early to be drawing them until January 20th 2013 with the embarrassment safely out the door and healing under way.

This paragraph captures a general mood of August 2010 for more and more people. I've been embarrassed since the summer of '08.

It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails. The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer—a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.

Democrats Making Sense

RealClearPolitics - Real Democrats

Pretty good column. I hope BO fails to take her advice, because I'd love to see him be a one term president ... in fact, even with "compromise", I'm not sure our country can survive two BO terms. I'm absolutely sure that I don't want to try.

I think the real message here is how huge the difference is between the MSM treatment of Democrats and Republicans. I'm not sure that Bush vacationed much of anywhere other than his Texas Ranch -- and the MSM was all over him for taking any vacation at all with "troops in the field". (did they all come home recently?) My main MSM coverage comes from CNN and NPR -- they aren't very concerned about either Michelle's Spanish junket or the family planned outing to the Vineyard. In fact, were it not for some right wing media exposure, I'm not sure I'd know about either.

I think Susan is pessimistic here. The MSM is very powerful, and even more powerful among Democrats. While they constantly harped on W being "out of touch, arrogant, rich, not caring for normal Americans, stupid, not dedicated to his job, etc, etc", you can bet they will continue to do the opposite with BO ... even though I'd argue that actual evidence, even from a real Democrat like Susan, is actually pretty much that what they had wrong about W, they would have right about BO -- were they willing to say it.

NOBODY is more arrogant than BO, and that almost insures being out of touch. He is certainly "rich enough" now in his Tony Rezko aided Chicago home, and in the future, he will roll it in like Slick Willie to the tune of 100's of millions. BO has played plenty of golf all along and had his share of good times -- do I begrudge him that? No, only one ought to think a bit of the contrast with the quality of the work done by Bush, or for that matter Reagan, while the press harped and harped about any opportunity they took for R&R. Let's face it, over 50 days before hardly even noticing the oil spill would have been plastered all over the press forever -- see Katrina, or the Challenger disaster for that matter as past examples. When a Republican is in the WH and something bad happens, the MSM KNOWS who is at fault right away!

Stupid? Well, in Forest Gump terms, "stupid is as stupid does". IQ is pretty useless as a measure -- the Unibomber is a total genius, but I don't think that would make him a good President. Media pronouncements aside, "Presidential Intelligence" is pretty much "Emotional Intelligence", which means paying attention to the kinds of things that Susan discusses here. Very hard to rate it when the MSM goes completely overboard to try to make one guy look as good as they can, and to make the other brand look as bad as they can -- but I think the fact that we now have more and more Democrats seeing to the obvious concerns about BO that Susan does here, gives a bit of strong insight.

The Cash Nexus, Niall Ferguson

"Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000".

I continue to marvel at Ferguson, "erudite" is a word that clearly applies. Hopefully I'll be able to get some blogs out on a series of books to provide myself with perspective of the current financial and political state of the US and the world, and this book is one of the cornerstones.

"This books conclusion is that money does not make the world go round any more than the characters in "Crime and Punishment" act according to logarithm tables. Rather it has been political events --above all wars--that have shaped the institutions of modern economic life: tax collecting, bureaucracies, central banks, bond markets, stock exchanges. Moreover, it has been domestic political conflicts--not only over expenditure, taxation and borrowing, but also over non-economic issues like religion and national identity-- that have driven the evolution of modern political institutions: above all, parliaments and parties."

Niall isn't the most reachable of authors, but he did deliver on that thesis in my opinion.

"In the modern democracy...policy may ultimately be controlled by, and in the interests of, the majority of an electorate consisting mainly of the poorer classes, while revenue is obtained mainly from a minority of wealthy persons."

"The lack of deficits before 1973 also casts doubt on the theory of the inherent "democratic deficit", which predicts that democracies will tend to run deficits because the electorate favors public spending but is averse to taxation". 

Ferguson is British, so Britain gets at least as much scope as the US, but he is trying to be general. Essentially, a lot of the issues come back to the old "gold question". Without a fixed peg, countries and financial systems tend to just float off into speculation, inflation, and finally crash.

"Set in this comparative perspective, the subsequent increase of the debt under Reagan--which at the time caused commentators so much angst--was modest ..."

His point, as is the point of the book, is PERSPECTIVE -- relative to GDP, relative to winning the cold war, relative to historical debt in the US and other countries. One of the main weapons the MSM and especially left politicians like to use is the supposed "primacy of the moment". What is happening TODAY is "special, unique, maybe a "crisis", maybe "the greatest (or worst) ever" ... depending on of course who is in power. For the MSM, deficits under Reagan and under Bush were horrific -- deficits 3-5x as large under Obama? No problem at all, with many talking heads indicating that they "ought to be larger", and "deficits aren't really a problem.

"All these countries are actively encouraging their citizens, by a variety of incentives, to provide for ill health or retirement by investing directly, or through mutual and pension funds, in the stock market. In combination, these forces are causing an unprecedented shift in the balance of financial forces, so that the market capitalization of the NYSE is now for times greater than the stock of US Treasuries."

Er, at least they WERE encouraging (Britain, Germany, US, etc) ... with the failure of trying to start some privatization of FICA and now the add of health care to the never ending list of "entitlements", it appears that the US has lost it's way from this happy approach.

"Since 1899 the price of a loaf of bread in Britain has risen by a factor of 32; the price of an ounce of gold by factor of 38. Indeed, an ounce of gold buys approximately the same amount of bread today as it bought in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, more than 2,500 years ago."

As I said, I'm reading a series of books on past and present economic and political crisis. The basic bottom line is "get at least 5% of your portfolio in gold -- maybe 10%".  Pay no attention to what looks like "record prices"  --  ratios like the above tell you what you need to know. When governments get stupid, private ownership of gold as a store of value is key, and the time to buy is NOW -- before they make it illegal to own gold, as they did in the past.

"Past experience therefore tends to suggest that asymmetric fiscal problems--often, but not necessarily generated by war--quickly cause monetary unions between politically independent states to dissolve. In the case of present day Europe, it seems quite possible that the strains caused by unaffordable social security and pension systems could have similar centrifugal effects ..."

What is obvious to a historian like Ferguson, and what ought now be obvious to even the most out of touch liberal at this juncture, is that most of the worlds social security, pension, and medical systems are unaffordable. When something can't go on forever, it doesn't.

"further democratization may retard growth because of the heightened concern with social programs and income redistribution"

"...concluded that political instability is more harmful to growth than the absence of democracy".

In other words, investors and business people know they have to deal with "real risk" -- competition, natural disaster, price fluctuations, etc. What  they can't deal with is "created risk" -- what new tax, fee, rule, directive, price control, etc will be randomly hurled down from the idiots in Washington (or London). They know that the "real risk climate" is pretty much a constant and beyond anyone's control, but once they have seen "reasonable government", they are unlikely to invest and create under "activist government".

Excellent work, bit of a tug, but worth the struggle. Not reachable enough for me to recommend to all, but if one is up for a bit of a worthwhile challenge, I have yet to see Niall disappoint.